By Cole Lauterbach /Illinois Radio Network
SPRINGFIELD – Illinois is seeing much less snow than it usually does. While it’s good for your car and pothole repair, it may be bad for farmers banking on winter wheat yields.
Even with last Wednesday’s light snow in northern and central Illinois, most of the state is experiencing significantly less snow than normal. Before last week’s flurries, the majority of Illinois hadn’t seen any measurable snow since mid-December. Most notably, Chicago went more than 50 days without any measurable snowfall, a record going back to 1900.
State Climatologist Jim Angel said this is far from average.
“The season as a whole has been well below average for most of the state,” he added. “Central Illinois is down about eight to 12 inches below normal snowfall for this time of year.”
Angel said there is an even larger disparity between the state when split at I-80.
“If you look a map of Illinois, right at the top, it’s about 20 inches in the far northern counties for total snowfall so far this season,” he said. “As you go downstate, it drops off pretty dramatically.”
Even though downstate Illinois averages much less snow, he said they haven’t accumulated more than an inch of total snowfall this winter season.
Angel added that farmers are worried about the quality of their winter wheat, which is planted in the fall and harvested in the spring. With no snow cover to protect the plants from temperatures in single digits, the plants will produce less grain.
On the bright side, the USDA reported that Illinois farmers seeded less winter wheat this year than normal, with farmers reporting only 500,000 acres of seeded land.
