Happy Tuesday folks!
Can you believe July is right around the corner? Yikes!
The July 1-4th weekend looks to be on the cool side from Kansas to Ohio with the wet spots (mostly convective thunderstorms and not all day rains) from Arizona to Southern Illinois and the Outer Banks of North Carolina. There is a battle going on between the US GFS short range model (much wetter) vs the EURO (much drier) but our guesstimate is the Euro will again prevail. Even with the wetter GFS, the weekend rainfall is the least in 4 years for the nation overall trending 5th driest of the past 25 years (32% below average and 47% less than last year). More of us will have better weather for holiday festivities than last year. For the nation overall the holiday weekend will trend the warmest in 3 years but just +0.1F above average and +0.4F warmer than last year making it the 11th warmest of the past 25 years. The Northwest and West Coast is the hot spot.
July 5-11: A near nation-wide heat-wave takes shape with 90F to 100F temps in the Central U.S. and Midwest. National high temperatures trend the 2nd hottest in 25+ years, 2nd only to 2012...a scorcher. In comparison, last year was the coldest in 18 years so the year-over-year change is one of the greatest in 121 years. National temperatures trend +3F above average and +6F warmer than last year. For our big retail/supply side customers the week will bring exceptional YOY sales gains of seasonal merchandise:
9% increase in bottle water sales, 12% increase in beer/cold beverage sales, 15% increase in softline sales, 40% increase in pool supplies and 100% or more increase in AC sales.
Rainfall will again be subject to change with the wettest conditions in 11 years, mostly in the East with the Western half of the U.S. very dry.
Visit our Facebook fan page for a graphical map view of this outlook.
The Corn Belt(5-11 July) is entering a very critical phase where corn is silking and pollinating so the hot/dry weather is not ideal. For the Corn Belt overall the 5-11 July time frame is the 2nd hottest in decades with 90F to 100F temps over a 5 day period. About 40% of the Corn Belt had one of the hottest/driest Junes on record so there is high risk here for farmers and ultimately another major corn rally in the weeks ahead. For farmers interested in our year-ahead farm plans visit our new
FarmCast product - a daily email with specifics for your farm based on your planting date along with a year-ahead forecasts.
FARMCAST...see what it's all about in this video.
We hope you have a wonderful Independence Day weekend folks!
- Capt Kirk out.