Midwest Weather 2025: Corn Belt Drought Recovery, Extreme Wind, Rain Impact Crop Yields - Eric Hunt

[Yeager] To say that I'm fascinated with the weather is kind of an understatement, but I certainly think many of you are as well. Eric Hunt is back with us from the University of Nebraska. He's a meteorologist, also an extension educator. Eric, good to have you back. Thank you so much. First, for coming to see us when we came to Lincoln. And then you came over and saw the show in person. What were those two experiences like? You have to say nice things about his first. That's really what that is.

[Eric Hunt] I really enjoy the show. Well, your show in Lincoln, you're the heart building or the Nebraska Public Broadcasting building, as it's called now, is literally just north of where I had my office on campus. So that was really convenient. And then, yeah, I was doing a workshop in Iowa City on a Friday morning, and you invited me to come in and yeah, I was there when Matt Bennett came on and did the markets, and I thought that was really interesting. I really I'm not an economist, but I do enjoy hearing about what's going on in the agricultural sector economically, financially.

[Yeager] Well, and again, it's just being a full service. I mean, that's what extension is. And education is you trying to how it all fits together because it's not just 1 or 2 things that a farmer is thinking about at any given moment.

[Hunt] Oh, exactly. Yep. Yeah.

[Yeager] Okay. First, I want to say also, that I did some driving over, earlier in this week and I went down to Saint Louis and back and I didn't see but one field that was struggling in that area. Everything looked fantastic. I know rain has been an issue in your state. We're going to get to the rain. The wind? but the rain can lead to. Well, this is the time of year when diseases start to pop up. We start to see the crop scouting, and we can still maybe do something about it. What's going on with diseases in your world?

[Hunt] Well, what I've been hearing is just from educators that cover, you know, so I cover the whole entire state. A lot of educators actually have their own focus areas, your own counties. But I've been hearing from some of them is that sweeping garbage has been an issue. We see Regan Weeks, but a real big problem this year. Now, partly that's because of hail from last season. So that kind of gives you a double whammy. the other thing that I've heard, unfortunately, I've heard about third spot. So there's actually been some reports already in the state. Relatively low concentrations, mind you. I think. But the fact that it's already showing up, particularly the southeast, reports just a that's not a good sign.

[Yeager] And you have ways that Nebraska Extension can help.

[Hunt] Absolutely. So we have a wonderful plant and pest diagnostic clinic here on East Campus. And matter of fact, we serve Nebraska very well. We also are willing to take in samples from anybody in the country. So I know Iowa State and Illinois, I think all the grad schools probably have their own clinics. But if you're outside Nebraska, you're welcome to ship stuff to us for just like 25 bucks. Kyle Broderick will take good care of you. They do a really, really good job. They usually get turned up around really quickly. What they'll do is they'll get the microscope, really, to determine exactly what it is. And they can give you recommendations on how to treat it because you don't want to apply fungicide to something that's bacterial or vice versa, because you want to waste your money.

[Yeager] And we all know that every, every cent counts, trying to raise a crop right now. What they could do, Eric, is just throw that thing into the air, and the wind would probably take it across. In setting up this conversation, I said, one of the things I really want to talk about is the wind. Last weekend, at least in Iowa, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and to an extent, a lot of Monday. I don't remember a wind like that constant day and night for quite some time. Then my kids said, wow, our dad is old. He now is obsessed about the wind. Was I crazy?

[Hunt] You know I got more comments about this. Wind was crazy. Yes it was and that's something that we've seen more of in the last 20 or 30 years. Or I haven't done this analysis in either state besides Nebraska. But we definitely have seen a rapid increase in the number of days with high wind gusts over 30. Not that 30 miles an hour is an obsessively high wind gust, but that number of days has gone up. It's what happened last weekend. We had strong, very high pressure in the southeast. We had low pressure to our northwest, and we just had a very open corridor. What was more unusual about it, though, is that it was also, especially once you got further east. It was pretty humid. It's like usually if it's that windy, usually humidity is a little bit better because you're mixing down some drier air, but I think it's because there was so much late in the year around. There's a lot of it's been very, very wet across the South. So we are bringing moisture from areas that are very wet. So you have places that had some just kind of yearly unique, what we call all type parameter spaces. So Darrell Hirschman, that runs the Iowa Environment Mesonet website, an Iowa State wonderful website. Check it out. If you get a chance. But he was just looking at like, you know, some of these sites, like in Iowa and Illinois, Nebraska had combinations of temperature, humidity and wind speeds that we really have never seen before. And I know it was just like it was just constant. For three days. We actually lost power at our house for about an hour on Sunday afternoon, which was not great because it was like 95 degrees. The bit about 100, the two days before that. And, you know, I took a look at potential evapotranspiration rates from the measurement sites around the state, and almost every site had at least an inch and a half in the three days. Some sites in south central southwestern Nebraska, where it was a little bit hotter, had over two inches. I mean, you actually lost two inches out of the soil profile, but I think it's suffice to say that we lost a lot of soil moisture in this part of the country the last few days. So we didn't need seven inches of rain in six hours at some places. Got, you know, recently. But the rain that we did get here recently has been very beneficial in terms of recharging. What we lost has been you can lose a lot of moisture. We had that for several days.

[Yeager] We'll get into the moisture in a moment. Let's stick with the wind. Just again you had said something about wind gusts. We've seen more reports. There's this chart here that says the number of days with wind gusts over 30 miles an hour from 1980 to 2020. Now. Current. going up. Any idea why?

[Hunt] Well, I think a lot of that just is kind of a result of our planet's warming. So we are seeing a little bit stronger ridging at times in the summer. And if you get a decent trough that gets into the western United States, it's going to open up a corridor for more wind speeds in this part of the country. Now, Nebraska has always been a relatively windy place. And I, you know, Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois probably touched that as well. But if you look at that chart, you go back to the 1970s. We had some higher wind speeds in the 70s. And then we get it's about a ten, 15 year period where we weren't quite as windy. The last 20, 30 years. We've had a lot of days with, higher wind gusts, including during such stretch time that we were actually getting relatively good moisture. But I think the moral of the story, though, is that even if you are getting good precipitation, if you have a 4 or 5 day stretch, we're not windy. You could really take down your profile pretty quickly. I was actually thinking back to June of 2020, where we had a I wasn't as windy during that week stretch in June of 2020 as it was this last weekend, but it was enough that I think it really drew down soil moisture in western Iowa, northeastern Nebraska, and they never really ever fully recover from that. I think that was kind of a catalyst for the drought that started that summer, was that stretch of warm, windy days, and it continued into the overnight hours.

[Yeager] Well, and we had these, I think spring, early summer, we've had wind before. I mean, not just gusts, but just long sustained winds. I think at one point, even in March, we were saying or April, it was the windiest year so far, windy, a start to a year or something like that, right? Did I hear that right?

[Hunt] Yeah. I don't know about January. February. I don't think we're exceptional for what March was. It was off the charts for wind or at least wind gusts across pretty much anything between the Rockies or the Appalachians. April wasn't as bad. I think the mid spring wasn't as bad as it really has been in some years, but certainly. But we had this last week. It was almost unprecedented.

[Yeager] Yeah, it was crazy. And you mentioned the soil moisture lost and the profiles that have changed over time here. The wind. Yes. Soils get dry in June and July, naturally, but the wind just sucks it out. We had this rain. There was a chart I saw from a farmer friend, Friday that was right after the rain. He's like, we need some heat. Well, we got the heat, we got the wind. And then my mom sent me a photo this morning. Corn around her basically grew a foot in a week. So it seems to be that the crops are liking at least this, these conditions.

[Hunt] Yeah. And we we did need warmer temperatures. Now, I don't know that we needed it to be 105 in parts of Southwest or Nebraska. But I think, again, that southwest Nebraska can get pretty hot. That's not really that, you know, acceptable for them. but the thing with the we did accumulate a lot of growing degree days. So we did get really start picking up some heat units that we needed. But when we talk about heat units, like generally speaking, temperatures over the low 90s are not particularly helpful. You know, the base is considered 50 for corn and soybean, but you don't really accumulate. You'll get bonus points for being 95, 96 degrees. They'll get bonus points for being windy. But I do think on the whole, especially since we have gotten some rains and a lot of places the last 3 or 4 days that we're talking here on the 26, I do think that he probably in some cases was good. We also do this time of year. You do want good root development, but you don't want is to have so much rain in the spring, early summer that your roots are just horizontal. They're only the top foot after profile, because then usually what you end up with in Minnesota last year was once you go over dry, you get there's no water tapped into because the roots only went down so far.

[Yeager] We've had some pockets of heavy, heavy rain in the last ten days. between I think you said Nebraska. There was some heavy rain last night where Iowa had some, Illinois has had their opportunities. What has been going on this week with moisture? And what does that mean, at this time of year, to have these 4 to 6 inch rains, rain events. 

[Hunt] It kind of depends how they come. If they're coming over a somewhat longer period of time as a matter of fact. And some of that's going to depend on your soil type or land type. I actually just got a video from a farmer in the central part of the state that had seven inches of rain last night. And he's walking around. He says, you know, I'm not even tracking footprints because he's been really focused on soil health for last several years. And more or less implying that he got captured most of that rain. Now, I don't think that's pretty. If you haven't been doing that, that's probably not what is the cases. You probably have some flooding. You probably had some, some soil erosion. But certainly we can probably imagine that at least some of that, or maybe even a good portion of that one in the ground for a lot of places. And I think that's going to be really important for setting us up as we head into pollination. I think corn is at various stages around the Midwest, based on when things got planted, some people got something pretty early this year. I know parts of the eastern and southern portion of Corn Belt were much more delayed. but we are getting into that really critical time of year. So I think getting this moisture is an absolute blessing for a lot of farmers, particularly for some of the people out in central Nebraska, because they were really mired in short and long term drought conditions. And this is a moisture they really need to be. They're saving money from not having to irrigate for a while. You know, they're getting a time of year. They would maybe start thinking about turning those pivots on. They're going to have to keep them off for a little while, I think, which is really good news for them.

[Yeager] And have I noticed correctly that maybe some colors have changed in the drought monitor for Nebraska?

[Hunt] So the drought monitor that was released to sporting was reflecting data as of Tuesday morning. So a lot of places that were in severe drought actually have done very well with moisture in the last couple of days. So I do anticipate seeing some improvements. The good news though, really, if you look around the corn belt and, you know, down the southern Plains, there's really not a lot of drought and there's really not any areas that have like really extreme or exceptional drought. Even the western portion, Nebraska, and South Dakota have seen a lot of improvement in the last couple of months. And I think that's really good news. I think we have seen the rangeland conditions have improved, and I think the amount of rain they've got in portions of the Sandhills and portions of western South Dakota, western Nebraska, eastern Colorado, I think we'll at least give the warm season grasses such that there are a good chance for having decent production and, you know, I was listening to the Market to Market show a lot the last several months I've heard a couple of commentators talk about, you know, we're at 6 or 7 decade record lows for herd numbers, getting these pastures improved I think this summer, not improving, certainly keeping it from getting worse, I think is critical. I think someplace and hopefully we've seen some actual real improvement in their conditions. But yeah, looking through the May heart of the Corn Belt, there's really not a major drought concern, right now. But I think that's really good news going into pollination.

[Yeager] Well, and I was thinking about, you know, I know that data, data cutoff is a Tuesday and it comes out on a Thursday and it rains and it but when you have 105 degree temperatures, 30 mile an hour, sustained winds for four days, it can wipe out any of that moisture in a in a short amount of time. So it has been very hard for your friends there at the Drought Monitor. I know you helped put that together from time to time. 

[Hunt] I help write that for the state, yes.

[Yeager] Yeah. I mean, it's a hard job for you this year, right?

[Hunt] Oh, yeah. It does it challenges. And you know, I'm not saying the drought monitor is a perfect reflection of drought. It's the best thing that we can do right now. And we do really value the input from farmers and ranchers. So you actually can go on. Well, first of all, I would probably say you have a good relationship with your fellow educators, extention educators that cover your area. Talk to them, tell them what's going on in your area because they feed that information back to people like me. That is useful. So I think it's a very indicator driven process. But getting that local feedback can help determine which indicators are actually probably more accurately reflect the conditions on the ground now. Great. You can have drought stress on crops when you statistically do not have drought and the drought monitor may not show that at all. So, I mean, there's crop stress can isn't always going to match up exactly with the drought monitor some cases that match up at all, which is a problem. but I do think the authors really take pride in making sure that the map is as accurate as they can make it based on the information that they can use.

[Yeager] Okay, information that you can use. If you've been saying that you've been truly watching Market to Market for the last few weeks, like you always do, you always know that there's a few analysts to talk about, years that are similar. Does this year remind you of anything in 2025? Is there another year that this is like?

[Hunt] There's not another year that comes to my mind that's I would think is a really, really close 2021 that has some similarities. It's possible 2017 does. It's possible that we may see something that starts resembling 2020 a little bit more as we get deeper into the summer, but right now, I don't think there's a particularly good analog. I know earlier in the year I mentioned 21 and 17, in 2006. I mean, all those things I think maybe still could have some relevance. But there's not one that I would say is just like, yeah, this is exactly the same path that we're on.

[Yeager] Fair enough. No, none of the analysts are going to pick up on your hints then. All right. Sounds good. Eric. Okay, let's wrap up what has happened, what was forecasted and what has happened. Have those things aligned yet, do you think? Any surprises?

[Hunt] Well, I think the biggest surprise to me was the amount of rain they had in the Southern Plains this spring, that was not an expectation. I think that was an area that, myself and other climatologists, I think we're thinking about being pretty dry going into the summer and having some real drought risk. They not only they're not in drought, they're very, very wet down there right now. The severe storms and the amount of rain they had in the mid Sal, the eastern portion, corn belt, that was an expectation. And, you know, I was saying even back in the winter that their drought was going to be a potential issue here in the Western Corn Belt, but that there was going to be a path to getting moisture.  

And I think that we, through a certain degree, have gotten enough moisture to at least give this year's crop a chance. Now, we still got a good portion of summer to go, and I do think that there are some risk going for that may look a bit more like 2020. I do throw 1983. I was like, I will figure that shows 83 near that. They'll get to that the second. but, you know, I think for the most part, things have kind of turned out sort of like we were expecting. But there definitely been surprises, like always.

[Yeager] Well, then let's look ahead, because one of the things as sea temperatures, that's one of those things where you look at for your first indication of what's to come, what do you see?

[Hunt] Sure. So just looking at the current season, sea surface temperature, not only that, we are the Enso region, the central eastern equatorial Pacific, where we look at, you know, for El Nino, La Nina, we're neutral, like, we basically are kind of a neutral because as we have been for the spring, we are likely to remain in neutral conditions as we head through the rest of summer. And there is a chance, as we get into the fall that we may see La Nina redevelop. There's about a 1 in 10 chance that we go to El Nino as we head into the late fall winter. That, I would say, is a pretty remote chance. but what I've been really been watching very carefully is been what's going on in the somewhat in the Atlantic, but really focus on the Pacific, the North Pacific in particular, the fact that we haven't seen that water in the Gulf of Alaska go over colder than average, at least on a white, widespread basis, I think is good, because that means the chances of having a long live ridge, upper level ridge, sitting over the central United States for a good portion of summer. I think that is those chances are decreasing. I think that that risk is for that ridge is more toward the northwest, which is we're going to see it more here the next couple of weeks. but that tends to mean this time of year that we're getting northwest flow. In layman's terms, that means that we're going to get chances for showers and thunderstorms going through the Corn belt, through the northwest, the northern Plains. I think that also is going to keep any significant heat waves at bay for at least the next few weeks. So right now, my prognosis for the first half of July, for a lot of places in the north central U.S. putting most corn belt, actually, I think is is pretty good. I think there's going to be continue chances for moisture, including places that there still need it, like horses of Nebraska, Illinois. And I think there's going to be some warmer days, but I don't see any prolonged stretches of heat. There's a possibility that maybe around July 10 or 12, we could actually have a 2 or 3 four day stretch where we actually have some cooler temperatures, including overnight temperatures, which would be very, very useful during right after pollination.

[Yeager] Right. Because it sounds like we're going to get to pollination then, and get to the other side and go, hey, this is setting up pretty good, which means the weather premium disappears from the market.

[Hunt] That could happen. Not great. The corn prices, general commodity price right now thing like they're awful low. sure. A lot of farmers probably would agree with that. but, you know, we as I mentioned earlier, we are kind of in different places, with corn development stage, probably soybean development stage in, in part because, you know, we have a very wide range of experiences of getting stuff in the field this year. I know when I popped into the studio earlier in June, that Matt was on. I forget exactly what town in Illinois he was from, but he I think he said he was around Mattoon or Shelbyville.

[Yeager] Windsor is the official town that he's from, but that's south of Champaign Urbana.

[Hunt] Okay. But I know he was saying that he was in an area where if you went ten miles north, they were done planning in late April of you May ten, 20 miles out. They were still trying to get a crop, which is highly unfortunate. Early June. but the High Plains Future Climate Center has a really nifty growing degree day tool that anybody can use and I've got a link in it on the slide that's being shown up.

[Yeager] Now. It's up on the screen now.

[Hunt] Excellent. So I took a couple different points in Illinois. One, near Galesburg of one year. Effingham and I assume the planning date of like April 21st for that site in Western Illinois. I know they were able to get it fields earlier there, downstate. I heard they were having some issues related to a planning day to May 30th. I'm not sure that was remotely realistic. but if you did have a later date, you can see here that your soaking rains is likely to be later in July versus western Illinois. You're likely probably going to get that here in the next week or so, maybe even within the next ten days. Absolutely. To warmer temperatures and the areas that were able to get that crop in earlier, I think you're going to have a pretty good period for pollination. Still being I really think the weather we'll get we'll have the moisture we need in the ground. And I think we may even have the temperatures that we want, going forward. So I think that's going to be very, beneficial. Now, I am concerned going forward though, for a place that did get the crop in late that we could be putting a real strategic heat right of pollination. So not only did you not get to crop it when you wanted, you may be getting the heat when you absolutely don't want it.

[Yeager] Stress at the wrong times, not just over what to put on the hot dog at, the 4th of July, the Grand Forks, early 95F rule. This one. I try to pay attention, but I don't know anything about what this is.

[Hunt] So. Well, that's that that just means you're a normal human being, Paul. So, so they had a heat wave in the northern Plains back in the first part of May, and Grand Forks had, a couple, three days where they were over 95. So I say, okay, what, going back to 1980, what year have they hit 95 before Memorial Day? Those are 1980, 85, 87, 88, 2006. Now, ironically enough, they haven't had that happen that much year. The last 30 years happened a lot in the 80s, barely. And if you look at temperature, precipitation, you know, and a composite, you tend to be dry in the central U.S. you tend to be pretty warm in this part of the country in July. Now, not every one of those years was bad for precept. Most of them were pretty hot. But I think what that what that rule is basically saying is that that that those temperatures in the northern plains in early May is the sort of the act of doing something, meaning a strong ridge over the north central U.S. and historic precip would suggest that if you have that in May, usually shows up somewhere in this part of the country. Again in late June. It does show up again in July. And I do have concern as we get into the back half of July, maybe the first part of August, we may be spending more time than we would like. pretty warm. I'm a little less concerned about the faucet shutting off, at least immediately, just given that there's just so much light moisture across a lot of the southern U.S., a lot of the Midwest, like it wouldn't take much of any to subtle shortwave or kick up showers or thunderstorms. in the afternoon and evening hours. So I don't think we're going to go bone dry for just a little bit, but the heat does concern me. So we had the back half of July.

[Yeager] And that is always the farmer will, at least the ones I know in my area of much stronger knowledges. Anything above 95 is stress and you talked about the cool nights. You need those two. If you can stay under 95 and get cool at night, you can withstand a lot. But any time you tick over that 95 it is a problem.

[Hunt] It is. And actually the temperatures at night sting, especially once you're staying well into the 70s. That really becomes a problem, because that means that you are really starting to accelerate through that reproductive stage. You want that reproductive stage to be. You want to be kind of like cooking a pork barbecue. You want it to be a slow cook. You don't want it to be. You don't want the heat on real high, because that means it's probably going to taste, bird. It's not going to be nearly as good. And, you know, again, the a lot of models right now are showing a warm, dry signal last part of July getting in August. Now, those models have been showing that I feel like for quite a while it's to this point they really haven't been coming to fruition. I think there's been a real disconnect. And, you know, I think the models, especially the European models, had a pretty good job of picking up here in the short term, you know, the 5 to 10 day, some cases, even two weeks. but we really haven't seen good skill score in like the sub seasonal time frame. So when I see these maps winds blow dry across the entire central U.S, I do take that with a little degree of skepticism just based on that. They haven't been performing, they haven't been accurate. So far. But I am a little bit more concerned that the heat portion may be a little bit more accurate. Last part of July. And one of the reasons that concerns me is the Madden-Julian oscillation, which, you know, looks at where you have rising and descending motion in the tropics. So I have to figure that probably makes no sense to anybody. That's normal. but I have a picture that shows that we have more rising motion being expected in the Indian Ocean, you know, kind of a period between the 15th and 20 of the July. That equates about phases two and three and here's where we tend to spend more time in phases 2 or 3. The back half of July or a couple years were 2020, 1983. If we tend to spend a lot of time in that with the MJO being in that part of the world, what you tend to have is you tend to have a decrease of what we call angular atmosphere momentum or atmospheric angular momentum, meaning that you tend to start getting more blocking patterns. You can start building up a ridge somewhere between the Rockies or the Appalachians, or certainly somewhere on the North American continent. And there is a tendency for that to be in an area that does tend to promote more heat across the central and eastern U.S.. So I do have concerns that if this forecast or where the best rising motion may be, you know, in 3 or 4 weeks, if that's accurate, especially if that persists, that we may have a longer stretch of heat starting later in July, going into August than we would like in this part of the country. And I think those places that are going to be going to pollination later, because later planting, I do think there is a risk of seeing some yield decline there.

[Yeager] Especially in those behind areas. I get you, what about the rest of August?

[Hunt] Well, I mean, the official prognosis for August is not very good. So if you look at the CDC, they're showing warm and dry, especially Western Corn Belt. The European, monthly. The greater their update was earlier June. So I haven't seen a reset big just perfectly for August. But their most recent update they had shows warm and dry over pretty much the entire Western, some of the central Corn Belt kind of warm everywhere. So that if that were to be the that were to be true. But I'm not saying that that's going to be exactly true, but it was. And that means that you're probably going to be having a less than ideal finish for the crop. Certainly, it's not good news for soybean, where you tend to really like that August timely August precipitation. But certainly that heat would mean that we're going through a reproductive stage of corn work, because then we would like that probably means warmer overnight lows. And just because how much water that we have in general around this portion of the country, I is concerned that we are going to have more nights this summer with overnight lows in the 70s, more high humidity. I do think it's going to put more disease pressure on our crops, and I do think that may mean that we just go through things just a little bit more quickly than we would like.

[Yeager] Well, my energy company will be happy because it, you know, and, the state fair, I'm going to sweat out all the good food.

[Hunt] State fair, it's always the hottest weekend of the year. Well, not always, but it seems that way. But if we just think about what we've had in August in recent years, we really have not had, optimal August sort of. While 2021 wasn't terrible for a lot of people, but certainly 2020 was not. Was too way, too dry, 2022 was terrible. Out our way 23 there is some moisture, but we also had an insane heatwave. The last year is pretty spotty precipitation as we look at temperature. You know, maybe not the worst for the Corn Belt, but there's a large area that we're just been kind of drier in the last 4 or 5 longer tonight. I just do think that there is a risk that we may start turning over a bit drier as we head into the month of August. Certainly, if we have that stretch of heat July, where we could really start zapping that moisture on the profile and then eventually August, you know, that moisture starts getting drawn down more in the evapotranspiration. Evapotranspiration rates are declining a little bit. Then that means that some of those short waves that were producing more precipitation on a widespread basis get a little bit more isolated and scattered in the sky. What we've seen in recent years, August, is a few people do pretty well. A lot of places get their mediocre in. Some places are terrible. For recent.

[Yeager]  As long as it's hot for football practice. That's all. my youngest wants. Is it just to be hot for football? Because, you know, or maybe that's me. And I want that for him. I think it's one of those two. I have to figure that one out.

[Hunt] But there is also a possibility, based on years like 2021 and 2017, those six, I said, or so those are years that we really had some especially oh six and the lower degree at 2017, we got some real heat in this part of the country in the back half of July. But what you saw and what you got in August is that ridge really retrograde and off toward the west. So it planted that ridge off the coast of Washington instead of being, you know, really could find more toward North Dakota, Minnesota. If we get that, then we go back in the northwest flow. That doesn't mean we're going to get a lot of rain. So if you're really needing a lot of rain in August, that may not be the mechanism to deliver it. But what we do do, though, is at least would deliver some more frequent chances of rain. Getting the timing that also would mean that we're going to keep the heat, at least the significant heat, away for a good portion the month of August. So those years, actually, if you look at temperature, you know, the average out, about normal. I know 17 was cool, 21 was maybe slightly weird, but it wasn't super warm. And I think that's critical that we really, in those years did not have like a long stretch of heat in August. And if we do have a warm back half of July, if we could turn down the heat in August, I think that would probably lead to, possibility having pretty good yields, especially for places that have a good experience, with pollination.

[Yeager] That's always the key. That's why we talk about it every week on market to market. And you talk about the weather quite often on Market Journal, Eric. And there's also a podcast that you do or a webinar. Where can people see you?

[Hunt] I do a monthly webinar called the Second Tuesday at Nine. You can get that on Crop Watch. It's that literally means the second Tuesday the month will get posted on the crop watch. Later that day. I also, have a TikTok page. Sure, I hope I one of my interns, help me start their TikTok page last fall, and I mostly focus on Nebraska, but I do sometimes talk about more region wide. I understand that some of my colleagues in states like Iowa are not allowed to, even post anything on TikTok. Now, I'm not using a state-owned device. I'm doing that. But I am allowed to actually still do that here in Nebraska. So I and I find a lot of farmers really appreciate the information. It's about a three, four minute video where I just tell you what the forecast is for the week, and sometimes is probably pretty good. Sometimes it's probably not.

[Yeager] And you never know until you watch. And that's why you subscribe. follow the TikTok as any climate office is how you would find Eric. And this is how we find him on the MToM podcast, which is produced each and every Tuesday from Iowa PBS in the Market to Market TV show. Eric, thank you so much. Good to see you again.

[Yeager] And we'll see you again soon.

[Hunt] Thanks, Paul. Appreciate it.

[Yeager] All right. Thank you for watching. We will see you next time. Bye bye.