Guest post by David Archibald

Following on from this post on the effect of excess water in the Midwest affecting planting, this graphic shows rainfall in the 30 days up to 26^th May:

Figure 1: Rainfall in the Midwest in the 30 days to 26^th May.

One place had almost an inch a day on average with a maximum of 28.25 inches. And what follows? The answer is more rain as shown by this seven day forecast:

Figure 2: Precipitation Forecast to 06/02/2019

The same area is going to get another four to five inches. The window for planting corn this season is now closed in the northern Corn Belt. All that water is going to end up in the Gulf of Mexico and that journey will concentrate a lot of minds in the floodplain of the Mississippi over the next few weeks.

The Bonnet Carre Spillway 12 miles west of New Orleans has had more use in recent years as show by this figure:

Figure 3: Bonnet Carre Spillway openings 1948 – 2019 and F10.7 flux

The last time there was a cluster of opening was during the 1970s cooling period associated with the weak Solar Cycle 20. The F10.7 radio flux is the most accurate measure of solar activity. Interesting reading on the history of flood control in the Mississippi valley is provided by this article and this book.

The story so far is that a lot of the corn crop in the northern Corn Belt didn’t get planted this year due to excess water on the ground and there will be a big flood of the Mississippi valley. What is the worst thing that could happen from here? Frosts hitting the emergent corn. The following graphic is from this tweet from a farmer somewhere on the Great Plains who says:

Going through some old stuff in my office. Came across this slide show by Dan De Boer (marketing) in January 2012. He died during the “grain rally” that summer. Lots of prophetic tidbits from 2012 drought to the cold/wet #noplant19 God help us if these things keep coming true.

Figure 4: Graphic warning of freezes in the northern Corn Belt in 2019-2020.

The chart at the top is from this article of mine in 2011 comparing solar activity during the Dalton Minimum with the setup for Solar Cycles 24 and 25. Mr De Boer’s warning is this:

Look out for summer freezes in the northern corn belt in 2019 – 2020. Look out for summer freezes in all of the US in 2030-2031.

A few days ago the New York Times carried an article on an algae bloom killing farmed salmon in Norway. By line four they had blamed global warming for that. The owners of one of the farms affected told me that it was a natural event that was mostly driven by high stream runoff in this instance.

The New York Times will have a hard time blaming global warming for frosts in July. But they will try.

David Archibald is the author of American Gripen: The Solution to the F-35 Nightmare