“Missouri is the wettest of the wet in the Midwest.”
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Rainfalls totals across northern and west central Missouri since May 1 now top 12 inches in some locations, said a University of Missouri climatologist.
“It’s beginning to look like 1995, when we had very wet May and June,” said Pat Guinan, with the extension Commercial Agriculture program. The years 1993 and 1995 are referred to as “flood years” in Missouri.
The rainfall is spread over the northern Corn Belt. “Missouri is the wettest of the wet in the Midwest,” Guinan said. However, southeast Missouri remains dry.
A national map of the stream flow also shows northern Missouri and northern Illinois as the wettest, Guinan said. “A lot of streams and small rivers are in flood now and there’s more rain to come.”
The continuing accumulation of rain comes from a frontal system that has moved slowly up and down the state, Guinan said. “It just doesn’t go away. Disturbances move along that front, creating thunderstorms that drop rain and hail.”
Compounding the problem is a strong flow of moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, where tropical storm Allison dumped a foot of rain over Houston, Texas. “That’s a separate system and it has been downgraded to a tropical disturbance as it moves inland,” Guinan said.
However, the moist air still flows north, available for thunderstorms.
“That’s our forecast,” Guinan said. “More of the same for the foreseeable future.”
The long-term outlook for the summer from the national climate prediction center indicates above normal precipitation and below normal temperatures for the northwestern half of Missouri, Guinan said.
In the most recent storms, heavy rains were along and north of a line from Louisiana, Mo., to Jefferson City, then to about 60 miles south of Kansas City.
From May 1 to June 6, some rainfall totals at Missouri locations include 14.24 inches at Sweet Springs; 13.9 at Chillicothe; 13.78 at Pattonsburg; 12.6 at Marshall; and 12.2 at Carrolton.
The weather station at Sanborn Field on the MU campus in Columbia has already recorded in the first week of June more rainfall, 4.53 inches, than is normal rainfall for the month.
Guinan recalled that after the wet spring of 1995, summer arrived with extreme humidity in July. “That moisture was coming out of the soil all summer, adding to the humidity,” he added.
Eldon Dilworth, extension agronomist in Edina, Mo., where there has been 14.74 inches of rain since May 1, said most of the corn looks yellow and stunted. “The creeks are out and the bottoms are flooded,” he reported.
“There’s a lot of ground that hasn’t been planted.”
Tom Hansen, regional extension agronomist at Springfield, Mo., said, “We are about right, with about an inch and a half of rain every week. The pastures are beginning to look good, recovering from the armyworm damage.
“We may have some hay after all.”
But Wayne Crook, extension agronomist in Chariton County, said they had far too much rain. “My phone has been quiet,” he told participants on the weekly MU teleconference. “People have stopped calling for me to come out to look at problems.”
Dean Wilson, extension agronomist in Jefferson County, just south of St. Louis, where it has been dry this spring, welcomed the rainfall. “The pastures are looking about 10 times better,” Wilson said. “Now farmers are anxious to get back in the fields.”
Extension agronomists across north Missouri expressed concern about the soybean crop. Some farmers will have to replant for the third time, if it ever dries up.
Guinan said that the heavy rainfall totals in 1995 were much more wide spread, from Kansas to Kentucky. The heaviest accumulations are now concentrated in Missouri.