Ain't No Small Talk About Weather

With your Southeast Regional Ag News, I am Haylie Shipp. This is the Ag Information Network.

This week finds me at a convention for grain growers with a plethora of speakers. One of those, called the “Weather Wizard” of Nutrien Ag Solutions, is Eric Snodgrass. His presentation “High Impact Meteorology” had full audience focus. Mine, too.

I couldn’t help but showcase some of his highlights, so here we go…

• The Himalayan Mountains and the Rocky Mountains are the birthplace of every weather system. They are the constant disruptors to the flow of the atmosphere.

• A 10-day forecast is chaos. His visual interpretation of that reminded me of the screensavers from when we all got our first computers.

• Weather patterns have deep roots in historic war strategies.

• And, right now we have more land area – over 80% of the U.S. - in drought than we have ever had. But, he says that based on changes we’re seeing, he thinks the total area covered by drought in the U.S will drop by 20% by this spring.

For many people, weather is the ultimate small-talk topic. But for the farmers who feed the world, weather is huge – it can be the difference between a bumper crop and a total loss – so weather talk is anything but small.