Milling & Baking News - August 14, 2018 - 30

Weather Outlook

Brutally hot summer rages
on around the world
BY DREW LERNER

No, this is not going to be another
global warming story, but if that were
the intent of this writing, it would be
an easy case to make whether right
or wrong. No, this article is about
the extent of warm weather around
the world right now and the implications on crop production both near
and long term.
One of the failings we tend to have
when it comes to weather-related issues is a short memory. We react to
what we feel - and it has been hot.
However, it was just a few months

consistency of the warm weather.
The record-breaking hot summer
of 2003 in Europe had many days
over 100 degrees reaching far to the
north in western and central Europe,
but this year has only seen such temperatures once or twice. However,
Europe's temperatures consistently
have been in the 80s and lower to
a few middle 90s, and that relentless heat has affected many crops,
especially since there was little to
no meaningful rain during much of
the warm period in July and early
August. Soil moisture is about as

Average 7-day
topsoil moisture
ended Aug. 6, 2018

ago that the entire Northern Hemisphere was affected by colder-thanusual weather, and April was the
most anomalous of the cool months
that began in January. More recently,
most Northern Hemisphere crop areas have dealt with excessive heat at
one time or another this summer; for
places like northern Europe, North
Africa and Pakistan it has been almost non-stop.
The heat relative to normal in
each of these areas has been impressive with a very long stretch
of 120-degree Fahrenheit days noted in Algeria and 90-degree days
in Europe. Pakistan has reported
only a few days cooler than 100 in
recent weeks. It has not been the
extreme readings that have been
so impressive this summer, but the
30 / August 14, 2018

Milling & Baking News

low as this meteorologist has seen it
in 39 years of work. Oh, there have
been many short-term bouts of dryness in the continent, but this year's
low soil moisture has lasted a bit longer than some years. With that said,
it has mostly been a northern Germany, Scandinavia and U.K. issue in
recent weeks.
Other areas in Europe have dealt
with some dryness, but places like
France had good subsoil moisture
for a large part of the early summer
and only encountered serious stress
in more recent weeks. Still, the shorter root system of wheat in Europe
failed to carry crops through the
growing season without losing some
precious yield.
Dryness in Poland earlier this
summer was also significant enough

to harm small grain production, and
an early-season dryness issue in
Ukraine, southern Russia and Kazakhstan brought down production
in those areas as well. Summer crops
have been affected, but assessing the
impact of damage to corn and soybeans has not been completed successfully. Since many coarse grain
and oilseeds are produced in southeastern Europe there is relatively
good chance that production may
not be as far down from expectations
as small grains because of favorable
weather in the Balkan Countries, Italy and southern France.
It is not unusual for Pakistan
and northwestern India to be hot
at times, but this is supposed to be
the peak of the summer monsoon
season. Rain, cloudiness and high
humidity are normally dominating
these areas during mid-summer and
hold back temperatures. Not this
year. Low humidity, abundant sunshine and warm to hot temperatures
have prevailed since March and
April in Pakistan and northwestern
India. Daily highs have been running from 100 to 113 degrees nearly
every day this summer, and there is
no sign of monsoonal rain reaching
Pakistan this summer. Cotton, rice
and sugarcane produced in Pakistan
may still perform relatively well due
to abundant irrigation, but the heat
is likely to still have a negative impact on production.
The remainder of India's weather has been a little better mixed this
summer with a huge improvement
in rainfall in the Ganges River Basin in the past few weeks after the
area slipped down more than 40%
of normal rainfall in June and early
July. Now rainfall is much closer to
normal and likely to continue falling abundantly to eventually make
the summer wetter biased. In contrast, though, western India has
been drying out recently, and the
trend will last for another week and
perhaps two for some areas. The
same is true in southern India, but
that area can still receive significant rain in September and October
supporting crops nicely.
China has had plenty of warm
weather this summer, but temperatures have not been quite so anomalously warm that analysts have been
reducing summer production. The
first weekend in August caught some
folks a little off-guard when extreme
highs in Liaoning and Jilin reached
over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, but that
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Milling & Baking News - August 14, 2018

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