[Beagle8U]

“Here it is October and they just now spotted this monster crop? Something’s wrong with that picture...”

That is common in the Midwest. They don't bother looking much until Sept-Oct.

The reason is that pot stays green long after the normal weeds/bushes are turning color. Thus the pot really stands out and is easy to spot from the air.

I see police choppers and planes flying over my property every fall.

[equaviator]

Cannabis has a unique infrared signature and if an aircraft with that capability flew over that acreage in July they would have spotted it. Sometimes, if not most of the time, authorities will have detected it earlier in the growing season but they'll wait until it's mature enough to have a much greater street value than it would've had they busted it right then and there or the next day. Sometimes they fudge the street value of the plants they find. For example, a novice grower will have a plant or two growing on the porch or in a window box and a neighbor or (ex)girlfriend rats them out. The cops show up loaded for bear but nobody knows whether the plants are male or female. It's the female cannabis plants that produce the THC content when the plant flowers and that's what a grower wants but the cops and neighbors don't really care. The neighbor may be ignorant but the cops aren't. They'll proceed with the bust as though they're taking down some kind of drug kingpin but then the plants turn out to be male or just immature to the point that the ACTUAL street value is next to nothing. Once they have court case, they'll exagerrate the estimated street value even though they know that the plant(s) couldn't yield enough TCH to get a fly high.