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All right.

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Thank you so much, Kevin, and good afternoon, everyone.

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Like Kevin said, my name is Josh Bendorf with the Division of Extension and the Wisconsin State Climatology office.

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And today I’m going to be delivering your AG weather update as part of the Badger Crop Connect series.

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Just as a reminder, this is a condensed version of the larger AG weather outlook for Wisconsin that we put out weekly with extension.

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A link to that will be in the chat.

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And the most up to date version of this should be coming out either later today or early tomorrow.

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Excuse me.

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So looking back at precip over the last 14 days since the last time we’ve all come together for a Badger Crop Connect series, we see that there’s been a fair amount of precipitation across the state of Wisconsin.

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But what I will say is a lot of this has occurred going back one to two weeks now.

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The last several days here across most of the state have been very dry, less than one inch but less than a .1 inches across most of the state between the 19th and 26th of August with some pockets of 1/4 inch or more and a little bit higher totals further to the north.

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So a lot of this precept that you’re seeing on this map here was accumulated going back 7 to 14 days ago with between August 12th and 19th.

1:19
There were totals were highest in the southern central and west central parts of Wisconsin where two inches or more were widespread with some pockets of five inches or more.

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Those areas there on the map shaded in red with lesser totals to the N .5 inches to two inches.

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So, looking out a little bit further now to the last 30 days, what have we been seeing for precip in Wisconsin since the end of July?

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It’s kind of been a tale of two halves, the northern half of the state and the southern half of the state.

1:51
In the southern half of the state we’ve seen about 5 inches or more of precipitation, which is about 150% or more of normal.

1:59
And that includes that a very impactful rain event August 9th and 10th around the Milwaukee area where there were 9 inches or more precipitation recorded.

2:08
So, there’s near to above normal precipitation totals in the central and west central parts of the state with totals of 3 1/2 inches or more.

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And as you get up into the northern tier of Wisconsin, we’re below normal pretty much across the board with totals of 3.5 inches or less.

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And looking back over 2025 as a whole, if you remember earlier in the year, we had several inches deficit in the southern part of the state of Wisconsin.

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We’ve pretty much made that up to this point with now everyone running kind of between an inch or two below or above normal across the board.

2:45
You see some pockets there of more above normal as areas in blue and purple and then a little bit higher deficits up closer to Lake Superior and in the far southeast parts of the state.

2:57
And on the topic of precipitation, I want to remind you once again, as we did two weeks ago that CoCoRaHS is currently doing a special promotion for anyone who would be interested in getting involved in CoCoRaHS.

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This is a citizen science opportunity where you get to record measurements of precipitation daily on at your home and then report that data and that data goes to the Weather Service and other stakeholders who use precipitation data.

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So, there’ll be a link and a promo code in the chat which you can use if you’re interested in signing up for CoCoRaHS and that is good through the 10th of September.

3:32
So looking at soil moisture across Wisconet sites, 4 inch soil moisture across the various UW AG research stations, looking at current compared to last week and one month ago, we see that those dark blue bars, a lot of sites had decreases in topsoil moisture after what was a relatively dry week.

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Some of these sites saw no precipitation between August 18th and 25th, which led to the the the decline in soil moisture.

4:01
But overall soils are still looking pretty good in Wisconsin.

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82% of agricultural soils in the state are reporting adequate topsoil and subsoil moisture from all the the ample precipitation that we’ve gotten this summer so far.

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And only 9% of fields in the state are reporting having short to very short top and subsoil moisture.

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How does this soil moisture compared to what we would expect to see for this time of year?

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We have our NASA SPoRT-LIS model, which shows the top meter of soil and how moisture this year compares to what we would expect to see for this time of year.

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We have near normal soil moisture levels in the top 1m of soil across most of Wisconsin.

4:41
Those areas shaded in gray above normal levels across south central Wisconsin following some above normal rainfall totals over the past two weeks and then below normal levels in parts of the north and east after drier after another drier than normal week in those areas.

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But drought has still is still non existent in the state despite some of this dryness.

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We have a little bit of a D0 or abnormal dryness lingering up in the North Central parts of the state and little slivers of D0 and Douglas and Kenosha counties.

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But right now, drought is not an issue in Wisconsin.

5:16
Turning now to temperatures, we’ve gotten a little taste of fall over the last couple days.

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This table here I compiled this.

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This is how the average temperature for the for these individual days compared to our 30 year climate normals.

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And we see that August 19th across our nine climate divisions in Wisconsin that we had pretty much below average temperatures across the board.

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We kind of flip flop between above and below average between the 20th and the 23rd, but then the 24th and the 25th were quite a bit below average, several degrees below average and we had some some pretty cold nights during this time.

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The morning of August 26, we had 11 Wisconet stations that had low temperatures dipped down into the 30s with our lowest up in Iron County of 34.2°.

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And on the morning of August 25th, we also had a 30° reading up in Forest County.

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And the map there on the left, you can see how average temperatures this week, average minimum temperatures this week have compared to average.

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You see they’ve been several degrees below average these last few days.

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Temperatures for the last 7 and 30 days. Last week, average temperature range of upper 60s to low 70s from South to West central and upper 50s to low 60s in the north, which is slightly below normal for this time of year, more so in the central to northeast region.

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And over the past 30 days, one to three degrees above normal.

6:40
So kind of a switch from what has been in warmer than average last 30 days to the coolness that we’ve had these last few days.

6:47
Corn and soybean progress, this is these maps show percent doughing and percent setting pods.

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Right now, both of those are running a few percentage points behind normal, which could be due to some of the cooler temperatures that we saw last week.

7:00
But overall silking is nearly complete in cornfields.

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Denting is reported at 22%.

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Soybean pod setting is nearing completion, but like I said it’s slightly behind normal pace for late August.

7:14
But looking at corn and soybean condition, both corn and soybeans are rated at 83% good to excellent right now, which is the highest across all Midwest states.

7:23
Well for soybeans and it’s just slightly behind Iowa.

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But overall, even though progress might be was a little bit behind average, right now, things are looking great out there according to the NASS reports.

7:34
Looking ahead now, 7 day precip forecast, this is for August 28th through September 4th.

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You can see the map there on the left.

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We see anywhere from like roughly about 1/2 inch to 1/4 inch across most of northern Wisconsin and then a little bit less than that in the southern part of the state.

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Best chances for rain during the middle of next week.

7:55
We have a few chances for some light precipitation to wrap up this week through the weekend, but the best chances are in the north for Tuesday, Wednesday of next week.

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So yeah, the highest totals are right now projected to be in the northern counties.

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But as always, please check your local forecast.

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Be it your local TV station or the National Weather Service for details on totals and timing in your area.

8:18
8 to 14 day temperatures and precipitation.

8:21
There’s a strong lean right now towards cooler than normal temperature statewide.

8:26
The whole map there is shaded in kind of that blue color.

8:28
That’s a 50% to 60% chance that temperatures are going to be below average.

8:32
You can see what normals are for this time of year on the bottom of the slide and precip is leaning near normal statewide.

8:40
So right now with this, as we’re getting into the fall months, we’re starting to get at a time we could see some temperatures like I showed a few slides back that are getting down into the 30s at night.

8:50
So just be aware of the risk of frost in your area.

8:54
And I believe a link to the National Weather Service freeze guidance tool out of NWS Milwaukee was put in the chat.

9:00
So be sure to check that out and 30 day temperature and precip outlooks, these came out August 21st.

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This is for the month of September, temperatures leading slightly towards above normal statewide, that light orange color that you see there with uncertainty for precipitation.

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So equal chances for above, below or near normal.

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So right now we can’t say with any certainty what precipitation is going to do in September and same thing for the rest of the fall, September through November, uncertainty for precip and that slight lean towards above average temperatures a little bit more so further South and east in the state.

9:39
And so with that, I will turn it back over to Kevin and I’ll be happy to take any questions.