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an impact other than potentially delaying maturity and harvest. "Cooler conditions should be generally favorable for small grains once planted," she said.
• She added that because wetter than average conditions are more likely throughout most of the state, for areas south and west this also should be generally beneficial. "Even if wetter than average conditions do not pan out, the cooler temperatures would help overall soil moisture conditions," Edwards said. "Cooler conditions reduce crop water use. Thus, less moisture would be needed even in drier soils."
• The long range outlooks are also interesting, Todey added, because the Climate Prediction Center rarely says much about temperature or precipitation in the northern plains during the summer months. "The current outlooks are not indicating wet or cool conditions strongly. But that they indicate anything different from equal chances is an interesting feature of the outlooks," he said.
• Why cooler and wet conditions?
Part of the reasoning behind the change, Todey explained seems to be the development of the current El Nino. "Warmer than average sea-surface temperatures have developed rapidly in the equatorial Pacific leading to a quickly developing El Nino," he said.
• Recent numbers from the Climate Prediction Center have noted a 65 percent chance of El Nino developing this summer. This situation has impacted the potential outlooks over South Dakota and the Corn Belt for the summer.
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