CHICAGO (Reuters) — Above-normal temperatures are forecast for the U.S. Midwest for the rest of this week but a cold spell next week will produce widespread frost, slowing the start of spring planting, a meteorologist said Wednesday.
“We are going to see temperatures dropping below freezing across the central United States,” said Kyle Tapley with MDA Weather Services, a firm respected among grain traders.
The United States is the world’s top supplier of corn and planting this spring is off to a slow start, although it’s still early. Farmers in top producing states such as Iowa can plant well into May without sacrificing much yield, agronomists have said.
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But the slow start to seeding, following an unusually cold winter, has helped lift CBOT corn futures. The new-crop December contract is up 2.2 percent so far this month.
“Concerns (are) starting to abound after some forecasts are calling for more rain and cold that could further delay corn planting. Planting is progressing in the South but struggling to make its way North,” CHS Hedging said in a daily market note.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s first weekly crop progress report of 2014, released on Tuesday, did not include figures on corn planting progress — an indication that U.S. planting progress was not yet statistically significant. But the agency said it expected to release a corn progress figure next week.
Warm and mostly dry conditions expected this week should allow producers to get some spring fieldwork done, although showers were forecast to move into the southeastern Midwest on Friday.
Another round of storms was expected in the northwestern Midwest on Saturday, including Iowa and Minnesota. Rains should spread into the central Midwest on Sunday, Tapley said. His forecast was little changed from a day earlier.
Temperatures should drop early next week in the wake of the storms, with highs in Chicago falling from 16 to 20 degrees Celsius this week to four to nine Celsius.
