Farmers in the midwest U.S. have usually harvested a sizable portion of their corn and soybean crops by now but the weather has slowed down their harvesting efforts. Persistent cool and rainy conditions have helped to make things rather unfavorable for crop harvesting. This weather has helped to make the ground very muddy in many locations and thus harder to navigate the heavy farm equipment through.
To illustrate this point here are several cities in the Midwest that experienced a substantial number of days with rain this month:
| Location | Monthly Precipitation Total * | Number of Rainy Days |
| Estherville, Iowa | 4.90 inches | 21 |
| Mason City, Iowa | 5.63 inches | 17 |
| Norfolk, Nebraska | 2.93 inches | 21 |
| Valley, Nebraska | 3.29 inches | 19 |
| Springfield Airport, Illinois | 8.07 inches | 18 |
| Bloomington Airport, Illinois | 6.96 inches | 15 |
*Monthly precipitation totals as of October 26, 2009
Data courtesy of the National Weather Service
Estherville and Norfolk have only had 5 days this month (less than 20 percent of the month) without any precipitation being measured!
This slow rate of crop harvesting has been the slowest on record since the 1980′s.
The other downside to all this precipitation is that in some instances the longer the farmers wait to harvest their corn and soybean crops the more likely it is that some of their crops will rot. So the balance between weather and crop harvesting is delicate. What does the forecast look like for the remainder of this month: there will likely be some more rainfall in parts of the midwest over the next few days and there may even be some snow just to their north by the weekend.
