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Eastern Midwest Off to a Poor Start

Farm Futures has partnered with the Ecology and Agriculture Spatial Analysis Laboratory (EASAL) at Kansas State University to bring these maps to you. Each map is composed from satellite data taken over a two-week period. The EASAL maps show current vegetative health for the past two weeks and compare vegetative health with the previous two-week period, with the previous year and with the long-term average. Green reflects healthy vegetative development, while brown reflects a lack of healthy vegetative biomass production.

This graphic shows seasonal greening across much of the eastern third of the nation. Greening now continues well up into Eastern Canada and along the West Coast as well.

Areas of the West Coast, the Mid-South and the southwestern Midwest show better than normal vegetative growth due to this year's active rainfall pattern in recent weeks. Meanwhile, the eastern Midwest has reduced vegetative health due to excessive rainfall, while drought continues to show its affects in the Southern Plains relative to normal. A cool persistently wet pattern has also resulted in lower than average vegetative growth in the northwestern Midwest.

Recent rains have greened up the Flint Hills of Eastern Kansas relative to early May, while dryness has begun to cause deterioration in vegetative health in the Southeast relative to the two weeks earlier.

The drought of the Southern Plains leaves the region with much poorer vegetative health versus the previous year at this time, while the opposite is true just to the east in the Mid-South and Delta. Meanwhile, a combination of cool persistently wet conditions has resulted in much slower vegetative growth in the eastern and northern Midwest than the previous year.

This graphic shows the average vegetative health for this time of year.