Dry conditions across the the major corn and soybean producing states has hastened maturity of the crops, but lowered good to excellent ratings in some regions. In Iowa, ninety-four percent of the corn crop was in or beyond the dough stage, five days behind last year, but three days ahead of the five-year average. Sixty percent of the corn crop has reached the dent stage, eight days behind last year and three days behind average. Corn condition rated 62 percent good to excellent. The Illinois crop shows a good to excellent rating on corn at 54% and Indiana 51%. Illinois soybeans are 58% good to excellent with Indiana at 53%.
Illinois and Indiana corn is now 13% mature. In Iowa, only 3% is mature.
In Iowa, eighteen percent of soybeans have started to turn color, five days behind last year and three days behind average. Soybean condition improved to 61 percent good to excellent. There were scattered reports of disease issues in soybeans such as sudden death syndrome.
The weekly weather summary showed a cool and dry week. Harry Hillaker, State Climatologist, filed the following preliminary summary:
It was a dry and unseasonably cool week across Iowa. Temperatures were below normal throughout the week except at a few western Iowa locations. Monday (28th) and Friday (1st) were the coolest days in most areas with daytime highs in the seventies. Temperature extremes for the week ranged from Friday (1st) morning lows of 41 degrees at Cresco and Elkader to a Saturday (2nd) afternoon high of 86 degrees at Albia. Temperatures for the week as a whole averaged from four to seven degrees below normal over the east to slightly above normal in the far northwest with a statewide average of 3.0 degrees subnormal. Most of the week?s rain came on Sunday (27th) when rain was scattered nearly statewide with some very small areas of heavy rain in the Dubuque and Burlington areas. There were some thunderstorms on Monday over extreme eastern Iowa, with some localized heavy rains around Burlington. There were some isolated showers on Thursday (31st), Friday (1st) and Saturday (2nd) but with rain totals mostly under one-tenth of an inch. Asbury in Dubuque County reported the most rain for the week with 3.31 inches while Burlington saw 2.72 inches. Much of central and south central Iowa saw little, if any rain. The statewide average rainfall amount was 0.11 inches while normal for the week is 0.88 inches. This was the state?s driest week in 12 weeks (mid-June). At Fairfield the summer rainfall total (June-July-August) was only 3.51 inches. This was their lowest summer rain total among 137 years of records at that location (old record 3.77 inches in 1911). The Ottumwa Airport recorded even less rain for the summer with 3.38 inches, but this amount ranked a distant second behind 1911?s 1.80 inch total at that location.
