There is still a lot of weather to get through for the 2025 crop season. So far, this summer has seen a little bit of everything. There have been some hot days and some mild days; some stretches of dryness and plenty of rainfall. For those of us east of the Rockies, this summer has been fairly typical, which in itself is very atypical. Usually, we see large areas with significant developing or persistent drought, extended heatwaves, and overall miserable conditions. But other than temperatures being slightly above normal east of the Mississippi River, the summer so far has been fairly good at keeping drought at bay and temperatures more seasonable.

The pattern is about to change, though, and that could be the start of a much more typical summertime pattern of hot and dry conditions that could threaten an otherwise good situation in the Corn Belt.

The summer so far has been characterized as active, with regular systems, fronts, and disturbances passing through the country's midsection providing widespread rainfall and variable temperatures. Those temperatures may have averaged out near normal in the Plains; but they have been above normal east of the Mississippi River. Drought is almost nonexistent except for some long-term drought remaining in the Dakotas and Nebraska, and limited other dry areas from northern Kansas into northern Illinois and Indiana. Overall, though, the coverage of drought east of the Rockies is lower than it typically is for this time of year. That has allowed crop conditions to be very high, with NASS reporting 74% of corn and 70% of soybeans are in the good-to-excellent category, both above the numbers from this point last year and above the long-term average. In fact, the only state with more than 10% of either the corn or soybean crop in the poor-to-very poor category is Michigan, which is at 11% for corn and 12% for soybeans.

But the crop is not made in July, it's made in August and into September. The good weather we have seen thus far will not sustain either crop if the pattern makes an abrupt change. The change in the forecast may not be abrupt, but it may be the start of some poorer weather conditions that could expand over the middle of the country at a time when crops -- especially soybeans -- are more vulnerable.

What this summer has been missing is a persistent upper-level ridge of high pressure dominating for a long period of time east of the Rockies. Ridges tend to lead to hotter and drier conditions, though there are usually some caveats. We have seen some ridges develop and be transient this summer, but none that have been large and stout, creating blocks in the atmosphere that push the jet stream well north into Canada.

But we could start to see one developing later this week. It would start over the Southeast, gradually building strength, but have a tendency for the core of it to build westward into the Southern Plains for next week. Through next week, the ridge will tend to be smaller, as an upper-level trough of low pressure over central Canada challenges the ridge. This trough will send plenty of systems, fronts, and disturbances over the top of that ridge through next week, leading to a continued active weather pattern for much of the Corn Belt.

At present, the forecast is only to turn the southwestern Corn Belt drier, states like Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri. Temperatures will increase in this part of the region but could also expand northeast through the Corn Belt as well as temperatures ahead of fronts and systems rise well-above normal only to be pushed back closer to normal after these fronts and systems pass through. The result would be a generally cool and wet northwestern Corn Belt, hot and dry southwestern Corn Belt, and a hot and wet central and Eastern Corn Belt, through about the end of July.

Models have that ridge expanding in August, covering more of the Northern Plains and at times into Midwest; but they have been hard to trust in the extended range this summer. Just about every day, models have suggested hot and dry conditions would be coming beyond the two-week time frame, but as the next day progressed, they kept pushing that forecast back. Continually, the hotter and drier forecast has been pushed from late May to mid-June, to late June, to early July, and now to late July. But now that this ridge is finally in the 7- to 10-day window, it is getting easier to trust the extended forecast. There is still some model disagreement though, and the areas that see the highest temperature anomalies do not align just yet. But the overall pattern does suggest the Western Corn Belt starts to get hotter and drier in August, while the Eastern Corn Belt is more variable with possible better chances for rain than they have seen so far. Some periods of hot and dry conditions would be likely, though, and that could stress some of these areas as we go through the month.

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John Baranick can be reached at john.baranick@dtn.com

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