East Australia Crops Still Suffering From Heat, Dryness

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By Andrew Owen and Drew Lerner

Kansas City, February 12 (World Weather Inc.) – Dry and hot weather has plagued much of eastern Australia the past few months hurting production potential after one of the wettest spring seasons on record for some areas. Production cuts have occurred, but a substantially greater amount of area planted to cotton, sorghum and other crops because of an unusually wet spring will still leave production above average. In the meantime, the heat and dryness continues to have a negative impact on production and dryness relief is not very likely this week, although temperatures will be less oppressive.

An unusually wet spring and favorable precipitation starting the summer led producers throughout eastern Australia into planting much more than usual grain, cotton and oilseed crops. This was especially true for cotton and sorghum in Queensland and New South Wales. Crop establishment and development got off to an aggressive start before the more recent dry and hot weather trend evolved. The ground is now critically dry in unirrigated areas and dryland crops have suffered the consequences. Production losses have already occurred and additional yield declines will be possible if the dry and warm weather persists. Irrigated crops have remained mostly in good shape, although some of the excessive heat recently has stressed and strained some of these crops, as well.

.           Precipitation from November 1, 2016 through January 31, 2017 was below to well below normal across Queensland and New South Wales’ main crop production areas. Most locations reported 20% to 80% of normal rainfall with pockets reporting near normal precipitation. Many key crop areas have also been dry since the beginning of February further straining crops as they reproduce and fill.

In addition to the extended period of drier than normal conditions, Queensland and New South Wales have also been warmer than normal in recent weeks. Maximum temperatures across many production areas were over 10 degrees Fahrenheit above average for the month of January. Daytime highs often peaked from 90 to 110 degrees recently with pockets warming to 118.

Soil moisture in unirrigated areas is critically short in much of eastern Australia stemming from the lack of rain and excessively warm weather. The ground is too dry to support the best crop development conditions, but mostly in the unirrigated areas. Stress in irrigated fields has been most serious during periods of extreme temperatures and the heat has been most oppressively hot for the longest period of time in northern New South Wales and southernmost Queensland. The most significant yield and quality declines are suspected in unirrigated sorghum, corn, soybean and sunseed production areas. Cotton has likely performed best in this environment, but it, too, has suffered some yield decline, especially in central and western unirrigated Queensland locations and the same for some unirrigated areas in interior New South Wales. The most important cotton and sorghum is irrigated and it should still produce relatively well, although perhaps not quite as greatly as once predicted.

The huge increase in area planted during the spring will help production from Australia be notably better than in many years, but with the stressful summer weather of late the expected yields will be down from what was predicted earlier in the growing season.

Livestock stress has reached some extreme levels at times this summer. Animals in northern, central and western New South Wales and interior areas of Queensland have been most impacted. Coastal areas have not been impacted nearly as significantly, but there have been some impressively hot days for brief periods of time in South Australia, Victoria and rather rarely in eastern New South Wales and eastern Queensland. Just last week extreme highs reached 118 degrees in the interior parts of South Australia stressing animals. Milk production from dairy areas has been least impacted, but enough stress may have occurred for short periods of time to impact yield, but the situation was much harder on sheep and cattle further inland.

Much of the extreme heat is expected to be gone this week, but temperatures will continue warmer than usual in eastern parts of the nation. More importantly rainfall is not likely to be very great. A few showers will pop up in easternmost portions of the nation, but the resulting rainfall is not likely to be great enough to counter evaporation or change production potentials.

There is potential for greater rainfall to evolve briefly in the latter part of this month. However, no general soaking is presently anticipated. Scattered showers will evolve and temperatures may not be quite as oppressively hot resulting in at least some partial relief. A general soaking of rain and more notable cooling will be needed before the stress comes down to a minimal level. Irrigated crops will perform better than the dryland crop – at least during this next two week period.

Temperatures this week will peak in the 90s to 108 degrees with most of hottest conditions occurring well inland staying outside of some of traditionally highest yielding crop areas.

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