BY LINDA McGURK
Indiana Correspondent

COVINGTON, Ind. — While race fans may have been disappointed when heavy rains forced the drivers in the Indianapolis 500 to call it quits after just 166 laps, many Hoosier farmers appreciated the much-needed relief from an extremely dry month.

“I think these areas got rain in the nick of time,” said Greg Preston, director of the Indiana Field Office of the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). “But the rain came through the central and northern part of Indiana, so there are still a large number of farmers that got zero rain in the southern part of the state.

“We’re still dry.”

The planting season started with cool temperatures and several weeks of heavy rain all over the state, producing an average of fewer than three days of fieldwork per week in April. By the end of the month, corn planting was nine days behind the five-year average, while soybeans were trailing seven days behind average.
When the weather finally turned around in the beginning of May, farmers raced to the fields and crop planting surged.

“For three weeks, we had ideal weather. Then it started to get too dry and we started to see some germination problems,” Preston said.

By the end of May, 37 percent of the farmers who collaborate with NASS in Indiana reported their topsoil moisture was short, and seven percent said it was very short.

Before the thunderstorms during Memorial Day weekend, May had been Indiana’s driest on record since the Dust Bowl days of 1934, only producing 1.18 inches of precipitation, compared with an average 4.46 inches. As of May 27, all but one of NASS’ measuring stations in Indiana showed considerably lower precipitation than normal, especially in the southwestern part of the state, where rainfall is up to 3.7 inches below average.

The good news is, as of May 27, 99 percent of all corn and 89 percent of all soybeans were planted, ahead of schedule compared with last year and the five-year average.

“If we just get some new rain, we should be in pretty good shape. It looks pretty encouraging,” Preston said.

Even better, 73 percent of NASS’ farmer respondents reported their crop was in excellent or good condition at the end of May, compared with 53 percent at the same time last year.

The June forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra-tion (NOAA) predicts an equal chance of either above-normal or below-normal precipitation for the Midwest. After that, however, NOAA’s forecast is uncertain due to surface temperature fluctuations in the tropical Pacific Ocean, also known as a transition between an El Nino and a La Nina.