Kenneth Blumenfeld - Spring of 2024: Is this Normal Minnesota Weather?
Good day, and welcome to the University of Minnesota podcast, University of Minnesota crop cast. I'm your host, Dave Nicolai, with University of Minnesota. I'm educator in field crops. I'm along here with my, cohost, doctor Seth Nave. Seth is extension soybean specialist here at the University of Minnesota.
Speaker 1:And, Seth, we're pleased to have in the studio with us today, Kenny Blumenthal. Kenny is a senior climatologist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, and, he's also an adjunct faculty here with, the University of Minnesota soils department, as well, with with that. So, Kenny, we're gonna set the stage here a little bit and we're gonna talk a little bit more about where we're at, and then we're gonna get into a little bit on the from a climate standpoint and, the weather. Seth, in terms of the situation of where we're at right now, we've had, really quite a bit of moisture, rain here the last week and a half. In fact, I know that's kept you out of the field in terms of planning some research projects and and situations with that.
Speaker 1:At at the time of this recording, on or in the early in the week, we're expecting some more rainfall, but then I think smoothing out a little bit after that. But in general, I think, you know, crop is looking pretty good, but we are gonna have some problems in certain fields and certain areas.
Speaker 2:Yeah. From just just from the agronomic standpoint, I think we got off to a pretty good start. I mean, we've there's been windows that farmers have been able to get in between showers and get most of the crop planted, and especially in southern Minnesota. I think the biggest challenge right now is the crop looks good, but we've had considerable heavy rainfall multiple times here. So we've got have really saturated soils.
Speaker 2:And so there's some areas where we have some ponding, and I'm sure there's some drown out spots that farmers are gonna be interested in getting back and and seeding or replanting, when some of this rainfall, recedes. So when when the when the grounds kinda dries out. So I think that's that's really the question we've got here, today is that we've really been weather driven this spring, and that's why we wanted to bring in Kenny to talk a little bit about what what's happened and what this foretells for the future and what kinds of patterns we've have brought us this kind of thing and maybe where we're going from here. So I do, I think we do need to make a correction on Kenny's name, though. So maybe he can he can give us the correct the correct pronunciation.
Speaker 3:Are you kidding me? I can barely pronounce it. It is, it is Blumenfeld. Yep. Not Blumenthal.
Speaker 3:Feld. Feld.
Speaker 2:Got
Speaker 1:it. Alright. We are really privileged with the, opportunity to have this partnership with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources right here on Saint Paul campus. Kenny, you've been around for a number of years. Maybe tell us a little bit about, your own background and, how you ended up here on Saint Paul campus and within, this particular area.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Sure. Well, it was incredible luck. I grew up in Minnesota. I actually grew up in Minneapolis, but I got out a lot, and I've always loved the weather.
Speaker 3:And, you know, I first went to University of North Dakota for some undergraduate work, and then came back to the University of Minnesota to finish up and get a couple graduate degrees. And I studied, kind of what people like to talk about, extreme and hazardous weather. That was my, focus throughout throughout my education. So thunderstorms, heavy rain, hail, tornadoes, strong winds, blizzards. Those kinds of weather systems always got me really excited.
Speaker 3:And, you know, I was teaching classes and doing some research for a while, and then I I landed in the private sector for a few years, and this position opened up with the state climatology office. And I'd actually worked in the state climatology office as a student. So the idea to come back here and have a full time job that was, you know, is beat anything I was doing in the private sector. And so now I get to engage with Minnesotans on a you know, multiple times per week. I give a lot of I do a lot of public speaking.
Speaker 3:I'm out there talking with anyone from, you know, foresters to farmers, hydrologists, talking about not just what's happening now, what we've been observing, and not just what the kind of near term outlooks are, but also talk about some of the longer trends that we've observed in in Minnesota's climate. But at heart, I still love talking about the weather.
Speaker 2:And the extreme weather. So I I you know, in in listening to the popular press, you would think that we didn't have any extreme weather earlier than the the last 5 or 10 years. So we did have extreme weather when you were in graduate school, apparently.
Speaker 3:Yeah. We've always had. I mean, Minnesota's a naturally extreme climate. And as long as there have been people here, we've had, you know, intense winters, often followed by very intense summers where you swing from, you know, extremes of cold to extremes of heat. Even in a rather tame year, I think people from, say, the coast of Oregon or Washington would be surprised at how hot and how cold we can get, even in a tame year.
Speaker 3:And they'd be surprised that we have, you know, sometimes blinding snow, and then we get these torrential downpours in the summertime. And, you know, people who aren't familiar with the weather of this region, I think, could be taken off guard pretty quickly.
Speaker 2:I think they'd be surprised just by our closets. I had this discussion with somebody yesterday that they just changed their closet over to their summer closet. You know? And and I said, well, it's a little bit early for that because we still have those cold nights coming. And, you know, you still need that heavy sweatshirt and maybe even that down vest, some of these cool days that we've got.
Speaker 2:So it is it's sure it it is a Minnesota phenomenon. I I really I'm not a native Minnesotan, so I really appreciate how core to all of our beings that weather is here. And maybe maybe it just gives us something to talk about or gives us something to be beyond our own our own of us that work outside the weather community. It gives us something to to talk about other than our jobs. Right?
Speaker 3:Right. I think so. I think it defines us too. I mean, you know, if we're gonna talk about farming, the weather shapes what can grow here, and it shapes the conditions, and that you can apply that to just about everything. I mean, it shapes the construction industry.
Speaker 3:It it shapes what grows on the land, whether we're farming it or not. And, it's just incredibly powerful. And because it has that power over us, it determines what we wear. Right? And I know that you know, I'm sure all listeners know that that sort of wardrobe dilemma you just described.
Speaker 3:I don't have a huge closet, so I really have to choose. Is it time now to put my long sleeve shirt away? Are we ready for that? Do I have enough you know? And and so I think a lot of Minnesotans are used to that because even you get into summertime, you still have some cool nights, or maybe you're going somewhere else in the state.
Speaker 3:Cool also. Our climate can bring quite a lot to us.
Speaker 1:You know, you mentioned some changes. As a Sage Observer, would you say more recently that we're more of an extreme in terms of our weather phenomenon? You know? And everybody has a time horizon in which they make that judgment. But, you know, the last, you know, 10 or 20 years, these these volatile swings, so to speak, are are we more in a in a sense getting used to the fact of of living in the land of extremes than we would have been, you know, in earlier decades?
Speaker 3:It it really depends on which which extremes you're describing. And for a lot of them, I would say not necessarily. Not necessarily a more extreme period. I think that but if you look at certain extremes, absolutely, the hydroclimatic extremes. So, you know, think of what's been happening for the 20 twenties here.
Speaker 3:Our growing seasons have been incredibly dry. You know, we obviously don't know really what the bulk of the 2024 growing season is gonna be like. We know how it started, but 2020 even, but especially 21, 22, and 23 had really dry growing seasons in either much of or at least parts of Minnesota. But in between those really dry growing seasons, and I mean, in some cases, they competed for, you know, the driest run of, you know, 3, 4 months on record. They were often bottom 5, bottom 10 for precipitation for these, you know, 2, 3, 4 month periods in certain parts of the state.
Speaker 3:So they were truly extreme. And then we would follow that with a a cold season, you know, think November through April, that was as wet as the previous growing season had been dry. So in the 2022, 2 and 2023 winter, basically, the period from November through April, a lot of parts of Minnesota had record precipitation, and we had flooding across the state as a result. And I think that, you know, we've seen, especially in the 2020s, those types of kind of flipping and flopping from one extreme to another. And if you think back to the 2000 tens when we were just breaking precipitation records like nobody's business, I mean, those we were really, it was kind of amazing working as a climatologist during the 2000 tens because you'd have, you know, the wettest June on record anywhere in the state, and then you'd have, in 2016, Waseca, set the all time state precipitation record.
Speaker 3:And then in 2018, that record was broken by 2 stations, 1 in 1 in Caledonia and then in and then Harmony set the all time all time record. And then 2019 didn't break any of those records, but was, on a statewide average basis, the wettest year we'd observed. And so if you think of all that wetness and then the extreme growing season dryness that followed it, and then the fact that we've been toggling even during these dry years in between hydro climatic extremes. I would say those extremes are definitely they're more prominent right now. They're as prominent as they've as they've ever been.
Speaker 3:Some of the other extremes that we think of in Minnesota, though, haven't really changed all that much. So for example, you know, that we still know the famous 19 thirties Dust Bowl that's still kind of the highest temperatures ever recorded almost everywhere in Minnesota occurred during that time. So we're not seeing we're not yet observing more of those summer temperature extremes than we ever have, although I think one could easily argue that we are seeing some humidity extremes that are kind of taking charge. You know, our winter cold just isn't what it used to be, so that's an area where it's it's actually less extreme. As our as our climate has warmed, we've lost, some of our our winter cold.
Speaker 3:Some of the things that we used to really like to brag about here in Minnesota. Just, so I think it depends on how you answer that question, Dave, but I I would definitely say that if you're looking at the hydro climatic extremes, in other words, the ups and downs associated specifically with how much precipitation is falling. Yeah. We're in a quite volatile period, and you do see a lot of extremes, for sure.
Speaker 2:I this is you know, you really touched on a question that I've kind of thought a lot about, and I think part of it is, you know, that a lot again, back to kind of being Minnesotan. We're all kind of these amateur climatologists. Right? And we hear all of these things on the weather, and we hear these always daily records. And so there's this notion that there's always a daily record somewhere in the state for something, it seems like.
Speaker 2:And so they don't and I think and I think you kinda touched on it, but this idea of how you measure extreme in terms of time. So is is a daily extreme, is that what's important? Or is it a weekly or a monthly or a seasonal or an annual extreme in weather? And and I guess part of this is what's, you know, what do you see? What are you thinking about?
Speaker 2:What with this kind of climate change that we've gotten or where we're moving, is it what's the timescale of those extremes? Because it seems like we have both. We have this really high you know, these record rainfalls that we see that are kinda daily extremes, and then we have these kinda long seasonal ones too. So is it is it combinations, or does it take both to get does it take one to get the other? Or or how maybe maybe and maybe my question doesn't make any sense to you.
Speaker 3:Oh, no. It makes it makes really good sense, Seth. And I think that the, I think everyone might answer that. Everyone working in climatology might have a different way of answering that question, because there are so many different scales. Not not because any answer is valid, but there there are different scales.
Speaker 3:And I think it kinda depends again on exactly what you're after. If so we always talk about how, you know, a single day's weather really doesn't tell you all that much about the climate. And I think the only exceptions are when that single day's weather is extraordinary to a level that you had not observed before in an area with long records like Minnesota, then you can start to consider the climatic implications of a given weather event. So if you look at, you know, okay, so you set a record high temperature or a record rainfall at a at a location, well, maybe that's not a big deal. Where it starts to become climatologically interesting, and where I think it's worth people's attention is when those records start coming in groups, or you start seeing more of a certain type of records than another, or you start seeing the margins with which those records are broken really exceeding anything that you used to observe.
Speaker 3:So just this past winter, the 2023, 2024 winter, we really observed temperatures that were higher than anything we'd observed in any other winter in Minnesota since we've been keeping records. Not daily highs necessarily, but the aggregate over the season. So, you know, it's not that unusual in a period where the climate is warming and our winters are warming pretty quickly. It's not that unusual to have a month or a season that breaks the former monthly or seasonal temperature record. What was bizarre about this past winter was the margin.
Speaker 3:You know, our winter was almost 5 degrees, and that's averaged across the state, almost 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than any other winter that we had observed. And so that margin, I mean, that's a huge margin. Usually, you break records by a tenths of a degree, and we broke, you know, we're breaking a record by a statewide record, by almost 5 degrees Fahrenheit is that's extraordinary. So that would be an example of a record breaking event that you really pay attention to as a climatologist, where whereas maybe, you know, if we had just edged out another record, we'd kind of think, alright. Well, that was we'd set the record, but it's gonna get broken again pretty soon.
Speaker 3:Whereas this one's cemented for for a while. It'll take another extraordinary year, which, you know, will come eventually, but it'll take another extraordinary event to break that record.
Speaker 1:So that gets back to my previous question. Are these record breaking events happening more often?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So for great question. And for temperature, especially high temperatures or seasonal temperatures on the sort of positive side of the distribution? The answer is yes. We are breaking, you know, and and our friend and colleague, Mark Seeley, has tracked this extraordinarily well, and he could he could summarize it better than than I could.
Speaker 3:But we basically break more warm records than cold records by a substantial margin. I mean, we hardly ever set records for coldest, you know, coldest date on his you know, coldest day, of that date. So, you know, just as an example, we don't set a lot of coldest March 11th on record. What we are setting a lot of is warmest March 11th, or and and it's not just the high temperatures during the day, but it's it's actually the low temperatures at night that sometimes are as warm as we've ever seen too. So, yes, we set we set the most of those, those low temperature, kind of high minimum temperature records, and then and then also the daily maximum temperature records are next.
Speaker 3:And we set far fewer of the, of the, like, coldest night and coldest day type records.
Speaker 1:I wanted to change the subject just a little bit and talk about precipitation. So the leading question that a lot of farmers have and other people have is, are we finally out of a drought situation and sequence that we've been hearing so much on the television, this last year? Have we in other words, are we have we broken the drought?
Speaker 3:So as of the day that we're recording this, there is still a sliver of drought left in North Central Minnesota, and I'll go on record saying that that's actually an artifact of the of a radar problem. But by the current definitions, there really hasn't been any area of Minnesota now for about over a week that has any real drought in it. And I think I wouldn't be surprised if by the time people hear this, there is effectively no drought category anywhere in Minnesota. Now that'll be you know, we're talking about June of 2024. If someone's listening to this, it's a different month and a different year.
Speaker 3:Right. There's gonna be a different drought situation. So what that means is by the practical definitions used to identify drought, the drought US drought monitor authors and then their partners at state and and, you know, local agencies do not currently see any real drought in Minnesota. The reason I use such a if you hear, if you detect some kind of cautious language there, that the US Drought Monitor, you know, it it really is reflecting relatively recent conditions. And for the last 4 years, Minnesota has built up pretty good precipitation deficits.
Speaker 3:So even with the wet regime that we find ourselves in, much of the state is still 6, 7, 8, even 10 inches below normal going back to 2020. So that you know, it's hard to know exactly how much ketchup we actually need, because soils right now, if you look at the soil moisture at Lamberton, it's it's abundant. It's as high as it's been, for this time of year, any time in the last several years, and possibly, even through the 2000 tens. Hard to find a June one measurement at Lamberton that that's higher than what was than the 8.4 inches that was just observed. So we're definitely in a wet pattern, but we know that the overall system is still a little depleted, which is why it's taken a while for for the rivers and the lakes to rebound.
Speaker 3:And and one way we could sort of think about it is the the very dry conditions are still working there in the background and actually have prevented much worse flooding and and wet field problems with this wet regime. They kind of were almost like a counter buffer to, to the wetness that we had, so that when it started getting really wet, a lot of that moisture went into the soil, and it did not result in runoff, and it did not result, until somewhat recently in streams and lakes and whatnot rising.
Speaker 2:You're really getting at my question. I've been trying to I've been thinking about a way to ask this question about the drought monitor. I I'm one of these people that that watches all of the folks or listening to the all the people regurgitating the drought monitor weekly, especially last year, of course, when, you know, we had 3 years of drought in a row. But we every week, it was, oh, we're 79% d 1, 23% d 2. And my feeling was that people utilize this very broadly in terms of the impacts and how to how to interpret the drought monitor.
Speaker 2:But you're really point painting a picture that that that NOAA drought monitor maps that we all utilize because they're so so colorful and and updated so, you know, rapidly every week, that they primarily have a hydrological purpose. Is that really the rationale to look at water and river, reservoir, and those types of things. Where what's the real basis for the output of those those drought maps? And what who's the who do they impact? Who's who should be really watching those, and where do they pay a little bit less value for the Yeah.
Speaker 2:For the user? Does that?
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's a good question. I I would say that some of that perception, that could just be an error in my explanation. I would say the the the user group that, you know, is most closely wed to the results has across the country is agriculture farmers. Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's for sure. I think the the the problem is is until very, very recently, most places did not have good, real time or near real time reporting of in a way that could be organized centrally, you know, soil moisture conditions, topsoil conditions. You know, that sort of hard to quantify information that farmers know when they're out in the field and they say, you know, it seems kinda dry here. That's not necessarily something we have equipment for. Right?
Speaker 3:Instead, the the bedrock, the real the real bread and butter of climatology has always been daily temperature and daily precipitation measurements, usually made by humans. Although now, more and more we have some automated systems that that help, but still humans are kind of the backbone of that. And so if you think about it, all we really know is, well, what's the high and low temperature on a given day, and how much precipitation fell? And that's why the drought monitor has, you know, historically been so geared to just trying to answer as many questions as possible about the combination of temperature and humidity, trying to understand what it means for evaporation, trying to understand what it means for for water demand in plants. So it's not as and and and then, you know, over the last 50 to a 100 years, and in some areas more recently, we've developed better stream and lake monitoring systems, and so that can tell you something.
Speaker 3:Groundwater monitoring too, it can tell you something. But, ultimately, those things respond to not just the climate, but also human use of water. So there's there's actually a lot going on. I would say that drought monitor's probably still strongest at looking at these you know, looking at the the baseline data, but there are more and more things that the, that the folks at the US Drought Monitor have access to, including satellite products, including, you know, stations that are now closer to where people work out in the fields and also the real time, conditions reporting through things like CoCoRaHS where people can say, hey. I've never lost this much topsoil from dry conditions and wind, and I've been doing this for 40 years.
Speaker 3:That that's actually really important information that also gets considered with the hydro climatic information.
Speaker 2:Very good. It's very interesting stuff. But I think we should talk a little bit about what all this historical weather portends for us going forward. Right? I think this is this is always my pet, is that when I'm talking to folks, they say, well, it's been so wet the last 2 months.
Speaker 2:I'm sure that, you know, the tap is gonna get shut off, and we're not gonna get another drop of rain until September. Right? So, there's this real and you actually mentioned that there's a flip flopping of the weather that we've seen at some scale. I think it's human nature for us to think that way because we're so used to having warm spells and then dry spells and rainy and and then, you know, those those types of things. So what what does all this rainy weather what what does it tell us about what kind of summer we're gonna have going forward?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, all we can say is I mean, we're we're kinda best at describing what has happened. Right? I mean, just being honest about what climatologists do. I mean, yes.
Speaker 3:We also do a little bit of forecasting, in the office, but mostly we're mostly, we are people who look at the data and try and understand what's happened. But we can also look at past years that have behaved similarly. Yeah. I think the one thing that we know, I mean, and this is obvious now, we have, in terms of water, we have some, proverbial money in the bank now. We could probably, that just means that if June goes dry, we're probably not gonna feel it right away, and we've got pretty good pretty good prospects because we had this this wetness.
Speaker 3:We actually had we've had similar summers where it starts out really wet and then gets dry. Most of the signs that we're seeing from the longer range projections show the Midwest remaining in what's considered to be an active pattern for at least the first half of the summer. Now that that sounds specific. It sounds like, oh, he's forecasting a lot of rain and thunderstorms. But, actually, all that all that we can really see from some of the long range models that go out weeks and and in some cases, over a month, is that they continue to generate low pressure systems.
Speaker 3:Low pressure systems are these, you know, counterclockwise circulating, weather systems that, you know, often have cold fronts and warm fronts, and therefore, bring different air masses with different moisture quantities together and produce precipitation. And these model forecasts continue to show those types of systems parading over the region more frequently than not during the at least the first half of summer. So think, you know, into through June and maybe even into into parts of July. But we don't know exactly what part of the region that would be. If it's if those storms all end up going kind of far north, then we end up on the warm side of them, and the precipitation would tend to be a bit more spotty, and it would be in between waves of maybe intense heat and humidity.
Speaker 3:Whereas if the storm track stays more southerly as it has been this spring, then that would keep us kind of on the business end of things, getting a lot of rain and getting frequent cloud cover and rain and not a lot of heat and humidity, which is, I think a lot of Minnesotans appreciate we haven't had much of that yet. This, so I guess I would say mostly active. In other words, weather systems within a few 100 miles of you every few days, but not a real clear signal of exactly where those weather systems would be.
Speaker 1:Well, certainly, I know that there's situations and, doctor Mark Seeley talked about this too in in terms of the landscape and things that would fire off some of these more extreme thunderstorms and situations. A lot of, you know, transpiration off of the off of the crop area and so forth, but feeding into that, you know, at at certain times of the year is making things a little bit more volatile. Because we've done some different things in the way we we farm the land in in terms of that and that evapotranspiration and transpiration. So, building up that relative humidity. I know a lot of us are thankful that we probably aren't living farther south with, what I call a, you know, more of extreme weather, the tornadoes and situations.
Speaker 1:So, we come to appreciate the colder weather, in terms of that. But we're kind of closing in on the, end of our time here. Kenny, anything that you would like to add in here? Observations and every and everything else? Subsoil and topsoil moisture seem pretty good.
Speaker 1:Anything else on on the front, or are things coming up new in, in your office?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think one thing about so if we so, basically, Minnesota switched into a stormier pattern on March 21st. I mean, as climatologists, we recognize that date as the end of a prolonged dry spell and the beginning of this regime of moisture that that has continued right up until we're talking and might continue beyond when we record this. And what's been really fascinating about this, and I know we sort of kicked off this conversation, and and even off the mic, we're talking about, you know, some of the some of the grumbles we've been hearing from the community because things have gotten so wet, and there's too much water now. One of the things that has been really fascinating about this is up until about the last week or so of May, the rains have been primarily steady.
Speaker 3:They have not been the, you know, those sort of overwhelming torrential downpours. Now, again, beginning around actually right around May 21st or so, we started getting more thunderstorms, more heavy rain, and we started seeing these, you know, runoff type events, spotty, but more of them, around the state. And that kind of more summer like pattern has now established. But most of this wet spell, which has delivered Minnesota I mean, just to kinda put it in perspective, since about 21st March through the end of May, most of Minnesota received about a summer's worth of precipitation, which is a lot. Considering that usually the end of March April, you only get, you know, an inch and a half.
Speaker 3:You know, maybe April, you get 2 and a half to 3 inches of precipitation, depending where you are in the state. Getting a whole summer's worth is really saying something, and most of that came from low runoff, high absorption, long duration, light to moderate and steady rain events as opposed to what we're seeing more of now, which are those big booming thunderstorms. So I guess one thing I would say is, you know, we've been sort of lucky that this wet pattern has been so gentle for as much as we might wanna complain about it. It's it's been the the part up till now, anyway, has been remarkably gentle compared to other really wet patterns that we've been in. So, I guess that's one thing.
Speaker 3:And the other one is, as of now, you know, it's been wet, but I know if the wet conditions continue, we'll start getting a lot of media requests. People wanna know, is this the wettest we've ever been? Right now, we're nowhere near that territory. You know, think of something that's above average, and in some cases, well above average, but nowhere near that upper tier of wettest we've ever observed. We're not there yet, and maybe, you know, maybe by the end of the summer, you'll invite me in to eat some crow.
Speaker 3:And, we'll talk about how much, you know, how many records we demolish through the through growing season precipitation. But that's not where we are right now.
Speaker 2:I think we should, put a date on the calendar. But I I wanna go back. I because I I'm fascinated by the human side of this whole thing is the the psychology of how we approach it. And that was part of my first couple of questions was about, you know, how how we approach the weather. But I you you brought up a really important point is that you talked about how lucky we were that we had these rainfall events that, that were measured out over time.
Speaker 2:And I kept thinking that all spring, all we've had is these, you know, every other day rain events that were just nagging us.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And, you and I paint a completely different picture of the exact same weather is that I looked at these things as farmers could just about get out to the field and then they'd get an inch of rain. And they would wait a day and then they'd get another half inch rain. But you said that that was just a perfect measured out rain that we didn't have any problems with. And it just shows your perspective, and and maybe it maybe it shows my negativity with the whole thing. But I I think that's the other really cool part about weather is how we can all look at the same events and look at the same data and actually paint a different picture in our own minds about how those events are.
Speaker 3:That's a great point, and I think that there's probably some oversight on on my part. But I can tell you, when I'm out with, you know, farmers and and some of the consultants, and I'm out giving talks, and they'll often wanna know, you know, well, what do you really think is gonna happen? What's gonna happen this growing season? And my favorite diversion is to say, well, I'll tell you what I want to happen. And for the last 4 years, I've been answering that question with our backs up against the wall in drought, And here's what I wanted to happen, and everyone nodded along and agreed.
Speaker 3:I said, here's what we want. We wanna have a prolonged period of slightly above normal precipitation, where we get a steady diet of precipitating weather, pre precipitating weather systems do it slowly so that we don't get runoff, so that we don't so that we can actually utilize that moisture, put it into the soil and avoid, you know, wasting so much of it, which is what happens when, you know, if you just turn the spigot on and you end up with downpours and downpours, you might get more than enough precipitation to get you out of the the deficits, but most of it doesn't even end up in the soil. It ends up in the river, and it ends up in the Gulf of Mexico. And so from that standpoint, from kind of getting everyone in the room to sort of nod along and say, yeah. It would be nice to have, you know, a prolonged period of slightly above normal precipitation, I look back on and say, wow.
Speaker 3:That's we are really lucky. That's basically what we got, and we did it without we did it without any real flooding for the first 8 weeks. That's pretty remarkable, but then I acknowledge that that kind of situation where it is raining every 2 to 3 days, and sometimes day after day after day, yeah, you can't get in the fields, and things start becoming difficult. You lose traction. Some of your vehicles don't work as well.
Speaker 3:There's mud. You know, you got a lot more cleaning to do when you are out there. So I get that part too. So good point. I think it's I think maybe we can sort of meet partway there.
Speaker 3:Your your pessimism and my optimism, maybe we can move forward.
Speaker 2:I think I think we should go all the way to the end. And if you and farmers are not really they don't beg for more than they really deserve. But I think if you I it just occurred to me that if if you really asked a farmer what they wanted, they would probably tell you they don't want any rain until June, and they want 2 inches a week all the way through August, and then they don't want any rain after that. I think knowing what the ideal for the farmer is, I think, is a good starting point, and then we can we can work backwards from that. And and then we have something that maybe we can all agree is is a nice middle ground and something that we could we could say, this is a this is a perfect perfect kind of a summer.
Speaker 2:Because the first thing we we talk about now is farmers are they're so sensitive about cloud cover because we had a few smoky days in the last couple years. Now they don't want too much rain because then they're afraid they don't have the the light to capture in their crops. So I'm getting way, way off of the the theme here today, but I just I think it's really interesting to think about climate and what we all what we all think is ideal and and what we're looking for out there. So I'll get off and let Dave close it up before we, before I get too far into another tangent.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you very much, Kenny. We wanna thanks again, to having, Kenny Blumenfeld here at with us at the University of Minnesota Podcast, Minnesota Cropcast. And, I think we're gonna take you up on that offer to come back and, prove you're right or wrong or look in the mirror, so to speak, in terms of where we are down in the future. But this has been Dave Nicolai with University of Minnesota Extension Educator in Field Crops along with my co host, doctor Seth Neeb, University of Minnesota Extension Soybean Specialist, here with our presentation in this episode. Thanks again for listening, and we'll catch you next time.
