The Long and Short of Terrible Conditions Impacting Wheat and Pastures

Hunt: Well, good morning. Welcome to the Market to Market podcast. I'm Eric Hunt and we're with Paul Yeager. Paul apparently needed a guest this morning. I guess I'm popular because I'd like to talk about the weather — so either you're coming on here to hopefully hear some useful information, or you're on here wanting to throw tomatoes the next time you see me in the state of Iowa.

Yeager: We'll see. Dare you be wrong half the time, Eric?

Hunt: I might be generous.

Yeager: You are at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. What's your title there, sir?

Hunt: It's long. Assistant Extension Educator of Agricultural Meteorology and Climate Resilience is technically my title.

Yeager: We're recording this a week before it's released. The night before we recorded, there was a big line of storms headed to the eastern half of the United States. Has the weather pattern changed here in the last week? Is this just a pattern change, or is this just normal weather?

Hunt: It's both. We have seen a distinct pattern change from what we had earlier in May, when we had a lot of upper-level ridge of high pressure across the western and central U.S. We were pretty dry across most of this region. A lot of eastern Nebraska and portions of western Iowa had not received any measurable precipitation in the first half of May. Then we really flipped the switch — a deeper trough of low pressure moved in from the west. We've opened up moisture, so we've had a lot of severe weather. At different points in 2026, we've had a lot of severe weather across portions of the Southern Plains getting into the Midwest. April was just gangbusters for severe storms in Illinois. For a while, Illinois may still actually have the most tornadoes in the country so far in 2026, which would be a bit unusual. But here in recent days, we've seen severe weather really fill in across portions of Kansas, Nebraska, and western Iowa. In my home state, we'd hardly had any severe weather in 2026. In the last three days, we've had just constant severe weather across portions of central and eastern Nebraska, including some pretty brutal tornadoes.

Yeager: I've seen those photos — making sure they're not AI-generated like we've seen. Eric, I keep hearing about Nebraska. It is dry in the west. How dry is it? Has that changed given what you just said about the pattern change?

Hunt: There was some moisture across portions of central to western Nebraska — it really needed it. There were definitely areas that got beneficial moisture, a couple inches in the last three or four days. Unfortunately, the Western Sandhills and a lot of the Panhandle, where I would say the drought is the absolute worst, didn't pick up that much. Some places around there picked up absolutely nothing. The wheat out there is basically done. Any dryland wheat out there — my understanding is almost none of it is worth harvesting. To say it's dry is an understatement. I was out in the Panhandle about a month ago, and at that time I did not see a single blade of green grass in a pasture that wasn't irrigated. The wheat was very, very short. It is really a dire situation for a lot of folks in that area. A lot of farmers in the Panhandle are relying on surface water, and because of western water issues — Ali talked about that a while back on a podcast — the amount of water coming in is going to be not only a lot less than usual, it's going to be early, meaning they're not going to have the water they need when they need it. A lot of farmers are taking prevent plant as an option this year, putting in some type of cover crop for forage. This is also bad for cattle. We literally have almost no good pasture in the western two-thirds of our state, which is where we have our prime rangeland.

Yeager: And when you say western two-thirds, you could almost draw that line to Lincoln, right?

Hunt: You could. Things are better here now — the drought monitor will change on Thursday based on what's happened the previous couple of days. But even in portions of northeastern Nebraska, we really have not had much moisture. I think some of that dryness has extended into portions of Iowa recently, and you even see some portions of Illinois that have been kind of sneaky dry the last 30 days. But the worst pasture conditions really tend to be in the High Plains — Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota.

Yeager: Those listening might want to pull up the graphics. Eric, you kind of teased about the storms. We've talked in interviews in the last couple of years about this tornado belt thing moving north. You mentioned Illinois having a lot of storms. Where are the storms happening, and is it any different than normal in 2026?

Hunt: At this point in the year — about May 19th as we're recording — this doesn't look too abnormal now that we've filled in more of Nebraska and Iowa with severe storms. It tends to show we're also getting precipitation. I would say, though, for Illinois and probably Wisconsin, this is definitely more than usual. As you alluded to, in the last couple of decades we have seen tornado alley shift a bit to the east — more of a shift out of the Southern Plains into the Mid-South region, Arkansas, Tennessee, northern Mississippi. But we've also seen an uptick of tornadoes in places like Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. As we go forward, it's very possible that places like Illinois, Indiana, and southern Wisconsin may be more vulnerable to tornadoes than they were historically. Tornado sirens actually went off in Lincoln on Sunday evening — first time in a couple of years, and before that it had been at least five years.

Yeager: So it's possible. I also look at some of those areas — Louisiana over to the Panhandle of Florida — that pattern has changed just in the last week. We've also discussed before how tornadoes and wildfires are affecting insurance costs. You want to get into that?

Hunt: Sure. The Wall Street Journal had a very interesting graphic a couple of weeks ago showing the average homeowner's insurance premium by county in 2025, and also a graphic showing premium relative to risk. If you see yourself in brown or orange, you're probably paying more than your risk warrants. If you see yourself in blue — which is a lot of Iowa — you're actually probably paying less than your risk. In Nebraska, we have a lot of dark shading, meaning we're paying a lot for homeowner's insurance compared to other parts of the country, but that's also kind of in line with our risk. The hail risk has increased, we have a lot of wind damage, and in recent years you're also getting wildfires. So we're probably paying about in line with our risk. It's possible Iowa has regulation that's a little more favorable to consumers, but that also means insurance companies may be more likely to want to flee your state.

Yeager: I'm looking at the insurance capital of Iowa right here in Des Moines. Insurance is a big, big deal in this town and this state. Eric, when we last talked you mentioned Ali — a professor at Colorado State. We talked weather three or four weeks ago. You had some late freezes come in too.

Hunt: We did. A freeze in early May in western Nebraska and the High Plains is not extremely unusual. But it's more unusual in northern Indiana and Ohio. I would imagine that may have caused issues with things like quarter-stand soybeans that were just emergent — people may have had to replant. I definitely heard stories of replanting across portions of south-central Nebraska. For wheat, we did have freeze damage in Nebraska from freezes between mid-April and early May. In some years those freezes wouldn't cause as much damage, but because we were so warm in late winter and early spring, the wheat was a lot further advanced than it should have been. When temperatures got even somewhat below freezing, we had significant freeze damage. In general, the winter wheat in this country is a disaster this year. I would be shocked if yields are anything close to trend.

Yeager: To their defense, the crop is pretty much done being made at this point. Winter wheat — smallest crop in about 54 years. Significant. Keep going, sorry.

Hunt: If you look at where the winter wheat is, this is probably either a major drought — a lot of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas — I think the bottom of Texas is over 70% poor to very poor as of May 1st. Nebraska was at 35% or so at that point, but I'd be shocked if it's actually that low — I think it's probably closer to 50%. If you look further east, there's more winter wheat in portions of Ohio and Michigan, but that area got frozen earlier this month and also had just insane amounts of rain, meaning the plants probably had too much water. There are very few places growing winter wheat that actually had a good spring. You really could not have drawn up a worse possible spring for winter wheat in this country.

Yeager: Which translates to pastures — you alluded to that. The pasture regions of your area largely overlap the winter wheat area. Two parts to this story. Give me the weather part first.

Hunt: The map I'm showing uses QuickDry, which is a combined short-term precipitation metric — the last couple of months — with satellite reflectance of vegetation. In other words, it shows where you've been dry and where vegetation is really stressed. The numbers on that map show the percentage of pastures reported as poor to very poor. So 83% in Nebraska means 83% of pastures are considered poor to very poor. You see a lot of yellow and orange on that map — things are very, very stressed. We've had drought across a large region. Things are still pretty bad in the Carolinas and Virginia. But the Panhandle of Nebraska is sort of the epicenter of drought right now in terms of absolute severity. Literally, even the weeds aren't growing out there — the cheatgrass isn't growing. This is kind of a broken record for this decade, which has been full of years with drought for good portions of it. We just cannot get a sustained period of recovery to actually get these pastures back in good shape. At this point, pastures are probably the limiting factor to getting herd size back up. Ranchers in the Panhandle and Sandhills are having to make very tough decisions on selling more cattle. Thankfully, prices are high for them right now, but they would like to build the herd back up and literally can't. When you're having to import hay from other states, that tells the story.

Yeager: That's item two — the livestock portion. How big are some of these lots, and what does it mean for markets if they start liquidating?

Hunt: We have more cattle than people in Nebraska — I don't think it's even close. Iowa, I think it's a little closer — you have more hogs than people and more cattle than people, but probably a closer ratio. The part of our state where we don't have as much pasture is also the part of the state that's doing a lot better agriculturally. But the areas where we have a lot of range and a lot of cattle — Wyoming, northeastern Colorado — are just under a lot of stress. It's very difficult to maintain a decent herd size. It's like if you have eight kids and you're short on food — at some point you have to find food somewhere.

Yeager: You don't have to go very far for a different crop in a different state. Let's talk corn and the Corn Belt.

Hunt: Some places have had too much moisture lately, some are slightly dry, but in general, if you look at where drought is in this country — and a majority of the country has been in drought; we've actually had record percentages of the U.S. in drought this spring — the drought has generally not been where we have a lot of corn and soybean production. Basically only about a quarter of our prime corn and soybean production area is in drought. And in Nebraska, a lot of that prime corn-soy area is irrigated, which can offset some drought impacts. Right now, there is a low probability of major drought issues in the Corn Belt this year for corn and soybeans. I think if people are hoping for a drought to increase prices, I don't necessarily see that coming this year.

Yeager: The areas that were dry in spring for planting — are they going to stay that way?

Hunt: Some places in the Plains were too dry for planting. Further east, in Indiana, Ohio, maybe portions of Illinois, there have been folks who had a hard time getting crops in because of how wet it was. You'd rather be a little too dry than a little too wet to get stuff in the ground. In terms of where things are going, I think we're going to see moisture continue for a good portion of the region. The portion of the Upper Midwest that includes probably northern Ohio, northern Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and maybe a portion of northern Illinois may remain a little on the dry side the next ten days — but that's actually good news for getting some late field work in and helping get roots deeper. Even if it stays a little dry for two weeks, those roots are going to find that moisture. Having a little dry spell in late May and early June, if you have a good reserve to work with, means you'll get good root depth. If it's wet constantly the first two months, those roots are going to stay up and won't have the depth to find moisture later. Plants are like people — they're willing to work as hard as they have to. If they have all the water they need at the top of the profile, they're going to stay up there.

Yeager: Using my very localized area — we went two or three weeks without rain. I think we're going to have a good root system in parts of Iowa. Let's go to the drought outlook. It looks like things will stay dry really in the Mountain Time and Pacific time zones. Talk to me about the eastern part of the country — Georgia up to Pennsylvania. The drought has been bad there. The outlook looks like some change in the north?

Hunt: The CPC will probably release another outlook later this week, but their expectation was that drought would persist in that area. I do think there's a chance things get a little better in Georgia and the Carolinas — we're dealing with near-historic levels of drought across portions of the Southeast. It doesn't quite get as much attention as drought in the West or Midwest, but when the Southeast gets a drought, they're a lot more vulnerable to wildfires. We've definitely seen some instances of that in recent months. I think there's a possibility some of that area does get a little better as we head into the later portion of the summer. I also think we're going to see a period of decent improvement across portions of the Mid-South getting into the Delta versus Texas — and that's critical, because I do think there's a decent chance that as we get later into summer, we dry back out again across a lot of Texas, maybe Louisiana, Mississippi, and the Gulf Coast area. 2023 and 2015 both got hammered by flash drought — rapid onset of drought. So it wouldn't shock me if we see a really wet July, then dry back out in that region again. Further north in the High Plains, if you're in extreme or exceptional drought, you're probably still going to be in drought early this summer. We may start getting a little more moisture to help things get better. It's possible we may see enough to get the pastures going along, but I would say in some parts of Nebraska — and probably across northeastern Colorado and Wyoming — we're probably less than a week away from needing a good rain to actually get the cool-season grasses growing. They won't grow if they don't get moisture in the next week. And we're probably not that far away from seeing the warm-season grasses turning too, basically meaning that if the next month is really bad, there will be historic shortages and forced reductions across portions of the High Plains, which is really bad for cattle.

Yeager: You're talking long-term impacts. This is not "if we get rain in two weeks, things will grow." You're talking seasons.

Hunt: I'm talking the rest of this season would be shot. You would have to have a very impressive fall, a good winter, and a good next spring for next year to turn right. There is a little bit of memory in the pasture — if your year before was decent, then usually the following year, if you are dry, it can be okay. But the problem is that a lot of the prime range area of the High Plains was okay last year, then we were historically bad this last winter and the spring has been terrible. We've put ourselves in a situation where if we're not getting moisture this summer, we're just not going to have much forage production.

Yeager: I guess the next two graphs on shifts in rainfall are going to fall a little deaf in some of those areas, but it is happening in parts of the country.

Hunt: If you look at the first graph showing precipitation from late March to mid-April, it was very, very dry across the Mid-South through the Southeast. That's why you see those drought conditions in Georgia, Alabama, Virginia — we had really significant precipitation deficits. We were very wet along the high I-44 corridor and along I-80 from western Iowa through western Pennsylvania. We were historically wet across portions of Wisconsin and Michigan, which is why they're having trouble getting crops in the ground. Very, very dry across the High Plains region. The averages are much different that time of year — meaning you got almost no precipitation in eastern Colorado, western Nebraska, western Kansas during that period. If we look at what we've had recently, we're still fairly dry across portions of the Southern Plains, but places like eastern Oklahoma, southeastern Kansas, and southern Missouri that were very wet have flipped over drier. We've gotten a lot wetter on the Gulf Coast — some drought improvement in Florida getting into East Texas. We've also gotten drier across portions of Iowa, Illinois, and Michigan. In some years I would say that's an issue, but given how wet it was, it was actually pretty useful. I think we're going to turn the faucet back on just enough for a lot of those places — particularly Iowa and Illinois — to get some decent moisture this summer. I'm not overly concerned by the lack of precipitation there in the last two or three weeks.

Yeager: That has led to some soil moisture changes. Let's go to the outlook. On the CPC extended outlook, temperature-wise — orange means above average?

Hunt: The stronger the shade of orange, the more confident they are in projections of being above average. What they're showing in the first half of June is they're expecting to be warm across most of the country, but also wetter than average across a lot of the country. A lot of the South is expected to be wet. We are looking at more tropical moisture coming in. I do expect it to be pretty wet in the Southern Plains through most of the Southeast, and I do think there's going to be a chance of getting some beneficial moisture across a lot of the High Plains, Central Plains, and Western Corn Belt. You want some precipitation across the Corn Belt, and I think it's not going to be exceptionally wet but that's okay — as long as you're getting some precipitation in Illinois, Iowa, and Indiana, you're going to be okay because I think there is a decent reserve of moisture to work with in that area. The CPC is showing a little bit drier across portions of Michigan and the upper Midwest. Even though CPC is showing above average temperatures, I think they're more likely to be probably average or somewhat below average. Being a little cooler and a little drier is okay. What you don't want as you get into the first part of June is very warm and very dry if you're a little short on soil moisture, because that means you're going to really exacerbate drought conditions.

Yeager: All right. That's good for the first 20 minutes. For the next six hours, we're going to talk about El Niño.

Hunt: You know what I like about this?

Yeager: I know — and that's why I say we should pause and let stations identify themselves here on the MtoM podcast. Eric, El Niño — even since you and I talked last in late winter, El Niño was forming. Now it is. I read all the time: is El Niño here? And if it is here, where is it?

Hunt: It is here. Where we look for it is in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific — basically from the international date line to South America, south of the equator. You see the oranges, yellows, and reds there — that basically means sea surface temperatures are above average, which is an indication we are in El Niño. We achieve that because we see a reduction in the easterly trade winds in the eastern Pacific. Normally those winds push colder water from the coast of South America via upwelling. During an El Niño, those winds weaken. We've seen a lot of westerly wind bursts pushing that warmer water from the western side of the Pacific further east. So we are officially in El Niño. Now, I've heard a couple of different terms in the media recently — "super El Niño" being thrown out there a lot. I was literally up at Nebraska Public Media doing an interview and they asked me about "Godzilla El Niño." Well, Godzilla — I think of Japan, which is not the area I would look for it. But regardless, we are going to be in El Niño as we get into summer, fall, winter, and there is a reasonable probability it's going to be a strong to very strong El Niño — meaning we're probably going to be between 2 and 3 degrees Celsius warmer than average for sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific. That is going to have a major impact on weather around the globe. I do think it's going to have some impact on our sensible weather this summer, increasingly having an impact as we head into fall, winter, and into next spring. We tend to see the biggest impacts from El Niño during that fall-winter-spring window.

Yeager: I like "super mega ultra" — all of those descriptors work for me.

Hunt: Whatever floats your boat.

Yeager: When you say El Niño, does that mean only the United States is in it, or is it global?

Hunt: It is global.

Yeager: Okay, so global. Let's talk briefly about South America and the impact El Niño has for them. The colors coming off Brazil are the brightest oranges. What does this El Niño mean for Brazil and South America?

Hunt: For the southern portion of Brazil and Argentina, it can be a little bit drier, but it tends to be about average — sometimes a little wetter, sometimes a little drier. El Niño droughts in parts of South America tend to be further north, toward the Amazon. The Amazon still gets rain, but it can sometimes get substantially less than normal. Northeastern Brazil in particular is most likely going to be in a major drought by next spring. Australia is probably going to have a rough time as well. Indonesia, India, parts of China, and parts of sub-Saharan Africa could all see major drought conditions. On the flip side, the southern portion of the U.S. this next winter could be very, very wet — we may see some flooding across portions of California. That depends on the year. In the summer, getting closer to home, we tend to see a little more of an enhanced subtropical jet pushing better flow into the western and central U.S. With the warm waters across the eastern Pacific, we tend to have a little more energy transfer, so we tend to have better flow coming into the Midwest. We'll see more northwesterly flow from the polar jet, which means more frontal passages — meaning we're getting a lot of the ingredients we need in terms of atmospheric flow and moisture to actually produce storms across a good portion of the Corn Belt. That doesn't always include the Upper Midwest — Minnesota, Wisconsin, northern Michigan can be a little drier. But most of the prime Corn Belt from eastern Nebraska through Indiana and Ohio tends to do fairly well for moisture in the summer months. In some years that can extend down into Kansas, Missouri, maybe northern Oklahoma and into the Mid-South. Some places do tend to be a bit wetter going into an El Niño. A lot of that will depend on what happens in the Northern Pacific. If waters warm up in the North Pacific — and right now they are warmer across a lot of the North Pacific, especially if they warm all the way up to the Alaska coastline — then I would anticipate a pretty active northwest flow pattern this summer. Translation: lots of chances for storms, which means good moisture in the Midwest and parts of the South. That can also mean more severe weather though.

Yeager: Which goes back to what you said a few minutes ago about being a little bit dry but not too concerned about the rest of the growing season.

Hunt: Exactly. Also, if we were heading into a La Niña, particularly with a lot of cold water everywhere in the Pacific, and we were already turning dry in Illinois and northern Indiana and Wisconsin, I would be sounding alarm bells for a major drought being a real problem across a lot of the Corn Belt. But because the expectation — based on historic precedent and what I'm seeing in most of the global models in terms of seasonal forecasts — is for El Niño, I feel fairly confident that most of the Corn Belt is likely to do fairly well with precipitation. That can extend down into some of the Mid-South — Arkansas, Tennessee — where we have some corn, soy, wheat, and rice production. We may actually do fairly well with moisture the next couple of months. Any moisture we get in the Southern Plains — that may be too late for the wheat crop this year, but may be beneficial for corn and soybean production there as well.

Yeager: Moving ahead toward fall. You've watched Market to Market enough to know we love comparisons. Let's talk 2015 and 2023. Why did you put those two together?

Hunt: Those are the last times we were going into El Niño in the summer. We were a little further along with El Niño at both 2015 and 2023 than we are now. We were definitely much further along in 2015. But I think this is a rapidly evolving El Niño, and I think we're going to catch up to 2023 pretty quickly. Combining what happened in both those years — on temperature and precipitation — we see a few things that were similar. One, the Northwest tends to be pretty hot because we tend to have more upper-level ridge of high pressure there, and that region stays warm and dry. We also got dry and quite hot across Texas and the Gulf Coast region early in 2015. So I think there's going to be some risk that Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi at some point toward the summer solstice flip over hot and dry. But you'll notice a lot of the central U.S. — Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois — tends to have decent moisture through most of the summer. We also tend to have average or somewhat below-average temperatures, which leads to more of that northwesterly flow, bringing in cooler air on a more regular basis. I want to emphasize that if we do get regular frontal passages this summer — especially late June through August — that would be very critical for bringing chances of thunderstorms and precipitation and also cooler temperatures. We also need to break the streak of years with bad southern rust and tar spot issues affecting corn. Southern rust was horrible in the western Corn Belt last year, and one of the reasons is if you just have very persistently southerly flow for seven to ten days straight in late June and early July, you're bringing those spores up from northern Mexico and Texas along with warm, moist air — very optimal conditions for southern rust. Regular frontal passages with drier air would help break that cycle. If we could have a frontal passage every week or so, that'd be nice. It would also reduce the risk of southern rust a little this summer. Last year we were not expecting the Bermuda High to be quite as strong as it was in the first half of summer — and I would say that was the main culprit for pumping all that warm, moist air back up here.

Yeager: Part of that story last year and maybe the year before was haze from wildfires, which also contributed. And given what you've shown about it being dry in the West, if that leads to fires, we could throw another wrench into that plan.

Hunt: Absolutely. If Washington, Oregon, or British Columbia are hot and dry this summer and we see fires there, that smoke would probably infiltrate into the Midwest. That would reduce solar radiation a little bit, which reduces photosynthesis capacity. We've probably actually taken some of the high-end yield off the corn crop in particular in recent years just because of the amount of smoke. The question I get the most is about smoke — people saying they don't remember it being like this. We have more fires in the northwest United States, and that smoke makes its way into the central and eastern U.S., which can be a health hazard for people with asthma. But it really does take off that high-end yield in plants. If you get that smoke at the wrong time — particularly right around tasseling into the early portions of grain fill — it can really reduce photosynthesis capacity and will reduce your yield.

Yeager: All right, Eric, where can we find you?

Hunt: You can find me lots of places. I'm a statewide educator for Nebraska. I do market journal segments — that's on YouTube — and I also talk about things going on around the country because whatever happens affects prices. I put stuff on the State Climate Office webpage pretty often, and I run the Crop Watch podcast locally. I was on Fox Weather this morning. I'm on different things.

Yeager: And if people want to email you — you always send me great slides — they can reach out and you'd open a dialog with them?

Hunt: I absolutely would, as long as it doesn't go to my spam folder, which doesn't happen too often. I also post on TikTok fairly often — it's a bit more Nebraska-centric, but I show anomalies of temperature and precip, severe weather risk, cold risk, things for other parts of the country. I like talking about the weather. I like doing something useful and hopefully accurate.

Yeager: Eric, I'm looking at July to get you back — a mid-growing-season update. We'll catch back up later this summer.

Hunt: That sounds great. Thanks, Paul.

Yeager: Thank you very much. That's Eric Hunt here on this week's MtoM podcast. We are produced at Iowa PBS. Our production supervisor is Sean Ingrassia. His crew is Reed Denker, Kevin Rivers, Julie Knutson, Neil Kyer, and David Feingold. The executive producer of Market to Market is David Miller. I'm Paul Yeager. We'll see you next time.