LEXINGTON, Ky. — The weather throughout the winter was warmer than usual, for the most part, and early spring has been more like summer. But for those who remember the spring of 2007, a warm spring isn’t always the best-case scenario.

The weather conditions this year are similar to those five years ago, when fruit trees had an early start and planting began sooner than normal. A crippling Easter freeze wreaked havoc in the produce and orchard industry from Michigan to the Deep South, then, as tender plants and buds were killed by freezing conditions and Kentucky’s wheat crop suffered insurmountable damage.

While ag experts and producers are hoping the same does not happen this year, there are reasons for concern. Wheat producers have been watching the conditions with concern all winter, while corn growers are deciding whether to gamble and plant early or wait.

Chad Lee, extension grain crops specialist with the University of Kentucky (UK) College of Agriculture, said producers are wanting to plant and everything around them is saying now is the time – but the calendar and crop insurance guidelines say to wait.

“The farmers are struggling to decide which they are going to do,” he said. Typically the planting date for western Kentucky is around April 1, while producers in the central and eastern parts of the state plant between April 10-15.

For those who have chosen to plant early, there is the chance seed companies will not offer any discounts for replanting. While there are those who want to plant some early and the rest later, Lee said it is difficult to stop once a producer begins the process of corn planting.

But corn growers here remember the prolonged wet spring last year, causing many to plant later than normal. So it becomes an individual decision with much of the process dictated by Mother Nature. Currently, weather has created wet field conditions and kept many producers out, something that could be a positive.

“The little bit of rain we’re getting right now and slowing that whole planting process down is a good thing,” said Lee. “Farmers are used to taking risk, and make a lot of management decisions trying to guess what the weather is going to do, and this is no different.

“But, the odds are good that we are going to have a freeze event sometime in April and the earlier that corn is planted, the greater risk we have of that corn not surviving that freeze event.”

Flashing back to 2007, Lee said corn planted the last two weeks of March emerged in less than seven days, grew rapidly and was no match for the cold weather. “Farmers replanted 100,000 acres or more of corn that year,” he said.

Weather is anything but an exact science, even with all the computer models available to forecasters. Tom Priddy, an agricultural meteorologist at UK, said after a study he conducted with Lee, he found a warm March is no indicator of when the last frost will come.

“We are still early on our frost probabilities for the entire state,” he said. “The concern is trying to slow farmers down, and once they get started, they don’t like to stop.”

There is reason to believe the warm weather will continue. Priddy said the latest outlook for April calls for above-normal temperatures still for much of the United States, and above-normal precipitation for the Ohio Valley. The even longer-range outlook through June projects warmer than normal temperatures and near-normal precipitation.

He also pointed out if indeed the warm weather transcends into a hot summer, as long as the precipitation is adequate, farmers could see an excellent crop season.