After experiencing dry and near record warmth over such a large section of the country the last few days, planting progress has likely caught up in most places.
Rains have been MUCH less than expected. Rains over the past week, 2 weeks and month have been below average over much of the country:
This is a good link to seeing past rains:
https://water.weather.gov/ahps/
Go to precipitation, then scroll down to pick the time frame that you are interested in. It helps to see locations better if you check "state" on the map overlay.
Under "products" you can see % of normal for all the periods.
The area with the biggest delay/wet problem right now continues to be southern MN/northern IA. This is very high production country, so it matters. Rains over the next 7 days will keep this region from doing any widespread planting.
I expect tomorrow's planting progress report to have leaped and be above the 5 year average. The 5 year average is a low ball number because it includes 2013, the slowest year ever, when only 28% of the corn was planted on this date.
Last week, we had 39% of the corn planted. I will guess 68% for tomorrow.
NWS Forecast for Northeast IA this week:
For Southern MN, not quite as wet:
might want to also check the drought conditions and its affect on the corn crop in parana and matto grasso where it has not rained for over a month. some techys can now chart corn bouncing off this low and thru the resistance of the 430 area
Thanks mcfarm,
I've never known the grain markets to trade Brazil weather during their Winter but have heard comments similar to yours the last couple of weeks about their 2nd crop corn.
This is the much drier season in Matto Grosso, when rains only total around 30% of what they do in their rainy season, which typically starts in late October and runs well into April:
Parana looks like it should have a decent rain event in 5 days with more in week 2. However, they also are in the dry and turning much cooler season.
What happened in Parana, is that they harvested their main crop, soybeans late and so the corn(their 2nd crop) that gets planted after the beans was planted late.
This has resulted in the corn maturing later this year(behind by several weeks in some places) which, if you noticed on the previous graph of Parana's monthly rains, means that corn which would already be mature before the dry/cool season kicked in, here in 2018 is still not mature yet.
Parana corn in a typical year is mature in Mid May, so outside of extremely heavy rains, messing up harvest, weather would not matter.
https://www.producer.com/daily/brazils-parana-soy-harvest-corn-seeding-way-behind-last-year/
When corn and beans are in different directions, like they are tonight, it makes trading them trickier.
Corn has been lower from the get go............probably the excellent planting weather for much of the Cornbelt(which was very warm and dry the last few days) that resulted in corn planting catching up is a big reason.
More corn planted means less beans planted(bullish beans) but there is probably more to the bean strength tonight than just weather.
Once we get most of the crops planted, the effect of weather on price will be almost the same on both corn and beans.
The USDA crop report out last Thursday was bullish for both corn and beans.
For wheat, it was bearish.