Good Morning. Let's take a look at the over night and weekly rainfall:
Southern SD, NE, KS, MO, Southern IL and SW IA all picked up substantial moisture over the past week. The Northern Tier area and Maryland, not so much. My neighbor over at my former farm says that the corn there is starting to fire. He also said there are a LOT of fields that have not tasseled yet, with some fields apparently only waist high. Sounds like that is probably going to make some high priced grass when it's all said and done. You can't plant corn in Central WI in July and think it's going to make much of anything - especially this year. JCCWIS, are you seeing stuff like that by your place too?
The stock market had an outside trading day higher on Friday, and has gapped higher this morning. Hopefully my investments can regain some of what they have lost over the last week or so. My municiple bond with the City of Birmingham is doing really good though. I still wonder about lending money to a city in bankrupcy.
An active Jet Stream stays in play this week for the US. Currently, it looks like this:
The Low in the SW will get reincorporated into the Jet, and as it does, it will help give a chance of rain to the Pacific NW, but don't expect a lot. Wednesday's map is much like we've seen all summer long:
The big High in the Pacific still blocking cold fronts from coming into the US from the West. High's in the Gulf and along the East coast protecting us from hurricanes. We have High Pressure dominating the Central US this week, with the low in Canada and cold front that did drop some measureable rain in the S and SW corn belt exiting to the NE and giving Maryland's huge acreage a drink. In the above forecast map, you can see the Central US's next weather maker, again, we have to look North at the big Low pressure system up by Alaska. That Low actually again gets killed by that big High in the Pacific, but in it's wake, a new Low will form, again in Northern Canada, and it will again join with that Semi-Permanent Low we again see over the Panhandles, and by the weekend will once again bring showers and Thunderstorms to much of the Midwest.
It looks a bit dryer than it did last week, and will probably be on the order of what we just saw, but because of the location of the Jet, some of the more Northern areas should also pick up some rain later this week and into next.
Broke Farmer in AZ - you get a 7 day vacation from hay cutting. Be back for next Monday ready to move into the hay.
That's it for today. I work a swing shift today, a double tomorrow, and a day on Wednesday. I hate the double quick turns, as I will probably only get 4 - 5 hours of sleep between the two turns. Not exactly a healthy schedule for a bunch of 60 year old instructors.
Jen
