0:05
All right.

0:05
Thank you so much, Dane, and good afternoon, everyone.

0:07
Like Dane said, my name is Josh Bendorf.

0:09
I work as a climate outreach specialist with the Wisconsin State Climatology Office and the Division of Extension.

0:16
And today I’ll be delivering your Ag Weather Update that we do as part of these Badger Crop Connect webinar series.

0:21
Just as a reminder, this is a smaller version of the larger Ag Weather Outlook for Wisconsin that we put out weekly during the growing season.

0:28
The latest version of that should come out either later today or early tomorrow.

0:33
And just as a quick note about that, we do these updates weekly during the growing season, the AgWOW updates, but starting, starting now, we’re going to be doing these and through the winter we’re going to be doing these monthly.

0:45
So, the next Ag Weather Outlook for Wisconsin will come out in early December.

0:53
So, let’s do a recap of precip over the last 14 days since the last time we had a Badger Crop Connect webinar.

1:00
Looking back two weeks back now, October 23rd to the 29th, it was a very dry week in Wisconsin and really these past two weeks in general have been very dry across the state of Wisconsin.

1:11
We are getting into the time of year where things are going to be a little bit drier.

1:14
Winter tends to be the driest season in the state of Wisconsin, but even by those standards it was a dry week.

1:21
Most of Wisconsin received less than 1/10 of an inch of precip between the 23rd and 29th and no precip at all during those seven days was common across the northern tier of counties in Wisconsin, and there were some higher totals down in the far southwest.

1:36
Those areas kind of near to Dubuque up to as much as 1/2 inch of precip.

1:41
And then over these past seven days, the 30th through November 6th, totals of less than 1/4 inch were common across Wisconsin with the highest totals near to Superior

1:51
up on the other end of the state, again, totals anywhere from about 1/2 inch up to an inch.

1:57
So, pretty dry over the past two weeks.

2:00
And looking over the past 30 days, it’s been a very dry past 30 days in general.

2:05
We see on the map on the right there that’s the percent of normal precipitation over the last 30 days, 25 to 70% of normal is come was common across the state.

2:15
The area is shaded in red and dark red, particularly those northern tiers of counties in Wisconsin where less than 25% of normal was common.

2:24
And in those areas up north we had totals less than an inch in some cases over 30 days.

2:30
So, very dry for this time of year.

2:33
We did have a localized area of near to above normal precipitation in the west central, that area between La Crosse and Eau Claire where totals of two inches or more were common.

2:43
That was really the only area in the state though that was near to or above normal.

2:49
Looking at precip since the beginning of the year and where we stand with that, you see the totals there on the map on the left and how that compares to normal on the right.

3:00
We see anywhere from, it’s kind of a mixed bag in the state, anywhere from ±3 of normal for most in Wisconsin.

3:09
Some areas are a little bit drier further in the south and in the far northwest, near to normal across that kind of northwest north central part of the state.

3:20
What does this mean for soil moisture?

3:22
So, looking at Wisconet 4-inch soil moisture at the UW research farm stations, looking at the current soil moisture, how that compares to last week and where we were one month ago, there was very little change in soil moisture in the top 4 inches of soil across those stations, maybe 1 or 2% change.

3:44
And really this time of year, even though we haven’t been getting much precipitation, we’re also not losing a lot of soil moisture to evaporation transpiration because we don’t have crops actively growing and temperatures are a little bit cold cooler than they are in the summer.

3:58
So even though we’re not putting in a lot of moisture in the system, we’re also not losing it through those mechanisms.

4:04
Looking at modeled soil moisture, this is a satellite soil moisture product in the top 1m of soil estimating moisture, how current soil moisture compares to what we would expect for this time of year.

4:15
We saw increasing dryness in the northeast part of the state from last week with very little precip that we had up there with the driest soil moisture conditions in the northwest and the eastern parts of the state and nearest to normal.

4:29
Some patchy areas there in the kind of on the West, central, northwest part of the state are in gray.

4:35
Those are areas that are near to normal.

4:40
What does this mean for drought?

4:41
This is the latest drought monitor report that was released today.

4:45
We see there was a a pretty substantial gain in D1 or moderate level drought coverage across northern Wisconsin, jumping up from 12% up to 36% coverage in the state.

4:57
We also saw a little bit of an addition of D2 drought up there in Douglas County.

5:05
Looking at this at a regional level, there was one class improvements, so reduction in drought severity and coverage in the southern part of the region from southern Missouri up through Ohio kind of right along the Ohio River Valley, you see that area now is pretty much a drought free.

5:23
But on the flip side of that, up here in Wisconsin, we are seeing degrading conditions and overall about 65% of the Midwest is drought free.

5:33
Turning now to temperatures, average temperature range last week was mid to upper 40s in the south and west, upper 30s lower 40s in the north and parts of the west.

5:42
And this was right around average within ±2° of normal, little bit above normal in the north. Freeze, freeze update.

5:50
So, looking at how many days we’ve had with a hard freeze, which we’re defining as 28° or low as our minimum temperature. Pretty much everyone in the state so far has seen at least one night so far since October 1st that has had a low temperature of 28 or lower.

6:06
I have a table there in the middle that’s showing what the counties that have stations that have not hit 28 yet, when is the latest we’ve had a 28° temperature measured.

6:16
A lot of these have gone,

6:18
some of these have gone to the end of November before they’ve received a 28° reading.

6:22
So we’re running a little bit late in some of these areas for receiving our 1st 20° temperature, 28° temperature reading, but it’s by no means setting a record quite yet.

6:33
30-day temperatures been above normal pretty much across the board in Wisconsin, two to six above normal. And what looking at October, the month of October and how this ranks in terms of the rest of Octobers we’ve seen since 1893.

6:48
So how this October ranks to the others.

6:50
It was one of our driest and one of our warmest Octobers that we’ve seen kind of in that top 20 to 30, 30 tier of Octobers for both temperatures and driest precipitation.

7:04
And just a caveat to this, these are estimates from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet.

7:08
We usually see our official rankings from NOAA, but with the government shutdown, those have not been released yet.

7:16
Turning now to our outlook 7 day precipitation forecast.

7:20
This is going out to November 13th.

7:23
We see that the the highest chances for precipitation over the next seven days are concentrated more in the southern part of the state as well as up near the UP of Michigan.

7:34
There’s multiple chances for rain and or snow through Sunday.

7:38
Keep an eye for those of you in the southern part of the state.

7:40
We could see our first measurable snowfall of the year later Saturday into early Sunday in the southern tier of counties.

7:48
And just for reference, the average precipitation for this week is about half an inch. 8-to-14-day temperature in precip outlooks.

7:58
This is getting into mid November.

8:00
There’s a strong lean towards warmer than normal temperatures, kind of 50, 50 to 70% odds for warmer than normal temperatures, more so in the south and west.

8:09
And then precipitation is showing a slight lean towards above normal statewide for the rest of November.

8:17
There’s a statewide lean towards above normal temperatures, not as strong of a lean as we’re seeing for the middle part of the month.

8:23
And right now, there’s uncertainty for precipitation.

8:26
So we can’t say right now if we’re going to be above, near or below normal for precip.

8:32
And then heading into the winter months, there’s equal chances for temperatures statewide.

8:37
So again, uncertainty.

8:39
There is a slight lean towards above normal in the sar south southeast, but it’s by no means a strong lean.

8:45
So can’t say with a ton of certainty what temperatures are going to be for these three months.

8:49
But there is a slight lean towards above normal precipitation statewide.

8:53
Part of this might be due to the fact that we’re getting into a weak La Nina.

8:57
Right now.

8:59
And so with that, that is all I have for you today.

9:01
Please ask any question that you have in the chat and I’ll be on for the rest of the call.

9:06
Thank you.