When it comes to growing crops, weather is a constantly changing variable. These past few years, grain farmers have been on a veritable weather roller coaster. The floods of 2011 were followed by perfect spring planting conditions in 2012. Conditions deteriorated rapidly, resulting in one of the worst droughts in at least 25 years. This year, the weather has thrown yet another knuckleball at farmers, idling field work and reducing plantings to the slowest pace since 1984 in many areas.
As a result of all of these fluctuations, as the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) looks at crop progress each week, I inevitably get questions about the impact of the weather on the crops. Analysts, reporters and even farmers themselves want to know what can be expected for crops this year.
To give everyone a chance to ask these and other questions, I will host a Twitter chat session with USDA meteorologist, Brad Rippey, tomorrow, May 14, at 3 p.m. ET. We’ll both take your questions about crop conditions, how we track crop status and report every week, and climate this year and in the past.
You may have questions like:
Have we seen anything like these impacts before?
What can we expect for crops going forward into the year?
Can the farmers still catch up on their planting?
Simply tweet your questions with a #CropWeatherChat hashtag and Brad and I will respond to as many as he can from @USDA_NASS. We look forward to seeing you tomorrow!
