Latest / AG Bull / AG Squawk with Davis Michaelsen | Eric Snodgrass | Weatherman

Transcript

AG Squawk with Davis Michaelsen | Eric Snodgrass | Weatherman · AG Bull

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm calling it a quiet day in the corn and soybeans on this, the first official day of unofficial, not summer anymore.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a real live actual scientist on hand today, and I'm hoping this meteorological Merlin brought his crystal ball.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: From behind the big blue, bodacious microphone of Ag Bull in Kansas City, USA, welcome to Ag Squawk in the afternoon on this Monday version of a Tuesday, or is it a Tuesday version of a Monday?
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you had a great Labor Day weekend.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're on the downslope to fall now, folks.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if if your weather has been like mine around here, can't come soon enough, y'all.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's still hot in Kansas City.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: They promised us that today was a day.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: They had promised us Friday there for a while.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And no, she didn't break.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: So today is supposed to be the day for cooler temperatures, at least in Kansas City.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: I we're we're speaking with an atmospheric scientist today, and I couldn't be more excited.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Eric Snodgrass is with us to talk about what's going on in the weather.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard a term and I just want to throw it at Eric and just see what his scientific mind makes of it.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Godzilla El Nino.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Godzilla El Nino.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk about that as well as whatever he he thinks is important for us to know as we're moving into harvest.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, right after that, we've got Thanksgiving, we've got winter time coming, and this El Nino could really throw a throw a wrench into the whole deal there.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: He's the uh perfect guy for the job, and I can't wait to bring him in.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, before we do, let's go ahead and take care of the markets.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And may I just direct you to Agbull.com where you can dig deeper with AgBull Intel.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Take your marketing by the horns with AgBull.com.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Visit Agbull.com or dial 855-737 Farm for all the details.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go to export inspections first.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Corn export inspections were more than 15% above year ago.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like to see that.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: 10% above the previous week.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Soybeans were above last week's meager tally, but nearly 10% below the same week last year.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Wheat export inspections fell 20% both from the previous week and from the same week last year.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: We've been talking and we we talked about it a couple of times last week.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Wheat is kind of in a pinch here, where fundamentally we should we should see some demand come to the U.S.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: But doggone it.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: When I read these price quotes, we are really not uh not priced all that attractively, especially compared to the rest of the world.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Stay tuned on the on the wheat situation there.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Had a good day today.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, let's go to the tail of the ticker where corn and soybeans chopped around unchanged early in the session as winter wheat posted double-digit gains.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Livestock futures were higher across the board with lean hog futures leading gains at the start of the session.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Rounding into the lunch hour, corn was down around two cents, soybeans up two to four, and winter wheat had sort of stabilized after posting eight to twelve cent gains early on.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: That was right around the lunch hour.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Livestock futures were fading from early session highs, but still higher on the day.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Before I get to the quotes, let me mention plus five hundred T4 software for real-time quotes and a host of dandy features.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Me and my crew trust plus five hundred T4 software.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's plus five hundred.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And looking over at my chart right now, I've got the November soybeans settling out at 13, 16 and 14.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's up six and one half cents on the day.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: December corn features down three and a quarter cents at 5.33 and one half.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Nonetheless, I'm still calling it quiet.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Not a lot of big moves in the corn and soybeans.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Just sort of quietly moving along.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: We do have reports coming up by the at the end of this week.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Stone X is out with some estimates, I believe, this afternoon, after the show is done.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: So there's something for the market, and it feels like it's waiting to get some numbers that it can digest before it wants to trade real hard.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And speaking of trading hard, let's go over to the winter wheats there.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: The December Chicago wheat up 13 cents on the day,$7.47 at settlement.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: To the Kansas City up 16 and three quarters in the December contract, 8.19 on settlement.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Over to the livestocks.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: October feeder cattle were up$5.30.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: $3.25.45.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: December fat cattle,$219.22 and a half, all told.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: That one's up$4.50.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like the looks of that.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: And look at them hogs.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: October lean hog futures up a buck 95, 84.25.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Looking further out.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: The uh December contract up 257 and a half.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: That one's at uh 75.05.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: A heck of a good day in the livestock markets today.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: And with that, it gives me great joy to bring in Eric Snodgrass, atmospheric scientist for Nutrient Ag Solutions.
• 5:37
  unknown: Mr.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Snodgrass, is it Dr.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Snodgrass?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Is it Dr.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_03: No?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_03: Just Mr.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Eric.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Eric, may I call you Eric?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: How's that?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, buddy.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Great to talk to you again.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: You and I have talked before and starting a new show here.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: We're getting our feet under us, and I'm anxious to uh to chat with you for the first time here on Ag Squawk.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to it, brother.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Viewers, if you don't know this guy, if you've never seen him speak, he is Mr.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Excitement in front of a crowd.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: I have a couple of questions about that further on into the conversation.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: But first, tell us about yourself a little bit.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: What do you do?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: What what's uh what what's your interest in in the atmosphere, in the weather?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Atmospheric scientists, that's I love that title.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know that.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_03: Well, life for me started off just pursuing a degree in meteorology, and I did my graduate work at the University of Illinois.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_03: And after uh working there for a number of years as a teaching, I taught 25,000 kids.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_03: I I had a couple of startups that I've kind of got going along the way.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_03: And Nutrium picked us up in 2018, and now I do weather forecasting on the day every day for you know the global ag community.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: We're just trying to predict what's next and try to help folks manage around the unmanageable, which is sometimes what the weather does, certainly the unpredictable.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_03: And uh so yes, my my day in and day out is just about communicating what weather risk looks like.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: It I get the impression from you that you are absolutely blessed to be doing what you love.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a fair statement?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah, it's a lot of fun.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the best part about being a meteorologist is you wake up to a new problem every day, so there's no boredom in it.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_03: There's always something new and fascinating to discuss.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: And and the nice thing about it is the ag community is all ears.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I don't I don't ever have a problem with the ag community not wanting to pay attention.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_03: There is something that they're gonna be cued in on and uh questioning every single day.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: So plenty of of interesting and fun stuff to talk about.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: You and I ran into each other a few years ago in Wisconsin in February.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, I know that you do so much more traveling and and speaking than I have, at least lately.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: You've been you've been out speaking and traveling at all lately?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, see, you know, la last week started off with something on the web.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_03: It was great to webinars I love because I can do it from my from my office, but head up to northern Illinois, then out to Nebraska.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_03: I got this week home, but then I get on the road pretty consistently for the next, well, let's call it October to April.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of meetings that are happening across the world, and uh it's nice to be wanted to to come speak at those events.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_03: And we just try to tell folks what we know, what we don't know, and and make a good stab at maybe what the future may hold.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, about a hundred events a year is is typical for me.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow, that's uh that's an awful lot.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, no stranger to ag audiences in particular.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't know how much how much elbow rubbing you do at these functions, but are are there issues as far as the weather goes that are at the top of mind for farmers right now?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: What what sorts of questions are you getting?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Any have you noticed any trends?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think the biggest question right now is what the heck is El Nino and what is it going to do since it's getting so much news and hype?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_03: There are a lot of questions about longer-term trends.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, folks just want to know about maybe the longevity of their operations.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_03: I'll be honest with you.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_03: I had a guy, you're talking about how it was in Kansas City.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_03: I had a guy three weeks ago leave a comment.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, he's a farmer down in Oklahoma.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_03: He left a comment on a forecast video I produced.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_03: He says he's done.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, I cannot take the the chaos of Oklahoma summers and the heat that can happen.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_03: And then they seem to be more frequent for him.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_03: And he's like, I'm done.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm gonna change my operation, go somewhere else.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_03: And so there's a lot of serious stuff like that.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_03: I get asked a ton of conspiracy theory questions.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_03: You would not believe some of the stuff that I have to answer.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_03: My favorite of the past year, I've been joking about this at all my presentations, but I got asked seven times last winter in public places, like giving talks in front of large groups of people, seven different times if the world is flat.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, where are people like where we we we discussed this millennium ago?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_03: But I get questions like that.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_03: And and that's not what I thought you were gonna say just then.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_03: That's not it at all.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's it's it's really quite interesting.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_03: Some of the things we get, and then of course, you get like, hey, I always get the questions like my daughter's getting married next November.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think the weather's gonna be?
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_03: And I'll get asked that question in like March, and and uh so it's it's a challenge, but you know, there's a lot of day-to-day things too.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_03: They want to know, you know, drought overall, what it's gonna look like, moisture, soil moisture specifically, and they really want to understand their windows of operations.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_03: So I do get a bunch of serious questions too, but man, the ones that come out of left field, they keep me on my feet.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_03: It makes it kind of fun.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: I I'll be honest, I'm a searcher.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: I I think maybe you can appreciate that that term.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, uh, this the search for knowledge really never ends.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: I went down some of those flat earth rabbit holes on YouTube and on Facebook and everything.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm pretty sure we're on a uh on a on a spinning globe.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, pretty sure.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: Pretty sure.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, don't let me remove all doubt.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't work uh any other way.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_03: You you want to get down to the fundamentals of gravity or even just think about you know what it even means to uh have an atmosphere on a on a flat surface.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my goodness, there's uh it doesn't work.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_03: So thankfully the planet is round, very steady state.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_03: We we don't have believe it or not, as far as planets go, our planet's climate system is about as as hospitable as you can get for life.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_03: Thank goodness for that, because otherwise we wouldn't be here to talk about it.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm glad we got that out of the way.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: That was the only question I had.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm kidding.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm kidding.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, here's here's one coming out of left field.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Are you ready?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: I got one for you.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been struggling with this because I was an Iowa boy, all right.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: And this Northeast Iowa, pretty easy to orient myself within you know, kind of national weather coverage in reference to what part of the country they're talking about.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in Kansas City and I read weather commentary, and unless they actually say Kansas City, yeah, I'm not sure what applies to me locally, is is Casey central Midwest, like my northern south, my southern plains, are we east?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Can you can you help me with that?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'll just tell you this.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_03: I'm from Illinois, so you are in the central and southern plains, like that.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: We just say everything over there is you know central southern plains.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_03: We kind of keep the Midwest.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_03: I'd say that the very you know western edge of the Midwest, I guess, would border up against eastern Kansas.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, you're kind of in the middle of of a cross section there.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, shoot, you go any farther to your east, and you're gonna be talking about some folks are gonna throw you to the Ozarks of the Mid South, and and really, I think we should do it all on river basins.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_03: That would be the smartest way to do it, but yeah, you know how it is.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, it's it's it's tricky trying to pin down those geographies.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_03: And and what's funny is folks are attached to them.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_03: So if you tell if you call somebody the wrong geography, especially across the south, if you don't refer to certain parts of the south properly.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I'll tell you one time I was in South Carolina, it was a group of 800 people.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_03: I'm talking up on the stage.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_03: Now I'm from Illinois.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_03: We grew up saying the Appalachian Mountains, right or wrong, that's what we said.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_03: I had a guy stop me, put his hand up, stood up, said, Look, look, you gotta stop right now.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, oh shoot, what did I do?
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_03: He goes, I'm gonna teach you something.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not mad, but I'm gonna teach you.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_03: I said, What?
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_03: He goes, We call them the Appalachian Mountains.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_03: I said, just like you're latching a fence, Appalachian Mountains.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_03: And he sat down and everybody had a good laugh about it.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_03: But boy, my face turned red.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, okay, I'll never gonna get that one wrong again.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_03: So you got to be careful sometimes.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're out giving giving talks at different places around the nation, yeah, do you do you find yourself adjusting your verbiage?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, because I've I've gotten stuck on Appalachian too.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: I and I've kind of just done like every other one.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'll do Appalachian and then Appalachian, you know, kind of alternate them.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I do.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_03: And and my goodness, I'd say I get grilled the most when I'm in the Northeast.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_03: Like if you refer to some part of the Northeast as the Mid-Atlantic, or you start talking about New England versus oh, they all get mad.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if it's an associate with a football team or whatever, but boy, you've got to get it right, or they'll just uh discount you and run you out of the building.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, it's it's funny how attached people are to their geographies, and uh they they want to make sure that it's known.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a sense of identity there.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm you know, I've been down here in Kansas City for about four years now.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still not sure if I should be or shouldn't be saying y'all.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: I find myself saying it, but I also hear people say oofta every once in a while.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_03: I gotta be like the UP to hear that.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like an identity crisis I'm in down here, but but it'll it'll be fine.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned the heat.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mentioned the heat, and we're we're talking about well, I mean, the the extreme heat has been a lot more extreme over Oklahoma, uh West Texas.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: I know they had over a month of was it 100 plus temperature days right in a row?
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds terrible.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned the the farmer, the rancher who was ready to throw up his hands and and move somewhere north a little more hospitable.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Where did that heat come from?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because it just seems so pervasive.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it I get it, you know, when we're in August, okay, the joke is, well, why is it hot?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's because it's August.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Bro, we're I mean, we're into September now.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't the switch supposed to flip here?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, it usually takes a little bit of time, but this particular summer had a few different flavors to it.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the things that happened in early July, and this is kind of when it all started, was we saw the atmosphere lose a bunch of momentum.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_03: So where we live, the momentum in the flow comes out of the west.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_03: You go down to the equator, it comes out of the east.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_03: You go up to the polar areas, it comes out of the east, but we are in what's called the westerly wind belt.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_03: Well, the westerly windboat lost it.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_03: And whenever it loses its flow, what happens is these big ridges of high pressure build in.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_03: And the problem was one of those was just in the southern and central plains of the United States.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_03: Now, what did it do?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_03: Well, on one side of it, it sparked off, you know, just a tremendous amount of thunderstorm activity in the inner mountain west.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_03: So we had an active monsoon.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_03: Over the northern edge of it, which comes through parts of like Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, we saw the the flooding that happened back in in August.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_03: But if you're inside of that ridge, there's nothing really that's going to break it down.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_03: And so what happens is day after day, you you beat on the ground with all that sun, you evaporate whatever little bit of water and moisture is in the soil and vegetation, and therefore you don't have anything in reserve to kind of take the heat of the sun out.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_03: So it gets hotter and hotter and hotter.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, we got some places down there that have gone, well, shoot, I think in Dallas, they're on day like 57 of no measurable rainfall in Dallas, you know, proper at the airport, and temperatures well above 100, you know, most of those days.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_03: And that just takes that's a takes a toll on humans and livestock, and certainly on the crops.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: But always around the edge of that, the periphery, those big domes of heat is where we tend to find very favorable weather.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: You get rain, you get cooler shots, and but it wasn't where you were, and it certainly wasn't south of you down in Oklahoma or Texas either.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: I I can't help but notice you're sporting a beard.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a is that prophetic?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a message we should take from that at all?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_03: No, but I will tell you, I had a guy come up to me once at church to ask me if I was a divinator, which is like if you go back to like Levitical law in the Bible, you know.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_03: I said, Well, kind of, but I don't I'm not making uh predictions about this the second coming, it's more about just trying to figure out the weather tomorrow.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, All right, I'll let you go then.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's right.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_03: No, it's uh I actually just grew the beard to kind of hide the chubby cheeks a little bit.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_03: It gives me a little bit more of a jawline.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you look fantastic, you look terrific.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Let's uh let's talk about El El Nino at the risk of forcing you to talk about something that everybody wants to know about and nobody knows anything about, but but help our audience get our heads around it because I have seen now, I think I've demonstrated I'm willing to go down rabbit trails on just about anything on YouTube.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I have the clickbait got me on Godzilla El Nino.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, well, I gotta, I gotta see this.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Talk to me about the Super El Nino.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Start with what makes it a super El Nino.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a is there a number?
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a measure for that?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's a bit more anecdotal than it is hard, fast numbers.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so what we're referring to here is this really interesting phenomena that happens in the Earth climate system where occasionally it's not on like a regular interval.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_03: Boy, do I wish it was on a regular interval, then I could I'd be better at my job, but it's not.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_03: Where remember a moment ago at some of the trade winds, you know, coming out of the east and then the westerlies out of the west?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_03: So the whole earth, because it is round, as we were chatting about, and spinning, the atmosphere is trying to conserve its momentum with respect to the rotation of the earth.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: Now, that's the scientist in me telling you what this really means.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_03: Now, the consequence of that is the trade wind speed and the westerly wind speed are often balanced.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_03: They're trying to reach an equilibrium.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_03: What we generally see is if the trade winds go really fast, the westerlies back off.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_03: And if the trade winds go really slow, the westerlies pick up.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_03: Now, all of that is ultimately what is behind El Niño and La Niña.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_03: But that's of course not what anybody talks about.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_03: They talk about the ocean temperature changes because that's the after-effect of this.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_03: So here it is in a nutshell.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_03: Trade winds blow out of the east of the west.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_03: So think South America over toward Australia.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_03: When they do that, they push a bunch of warm water on the top of the ocean over toward Australia and leave cooler water off the coast of South America.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: By the way, there's really good fishing off the coast of South America because of that.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_03: When those trade winds stop or even reverse, all that warm water comes back and it repositions itself across five to eight thousand miles of open ocean.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_03: Now, the net effect of that is to redistribute the birthplace of all of our weather systems, which is the equator, which is the hot part on our round planet, right?
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's that's where all the heat is.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_03: And the heat's constantly trying to exhaust away from the equator.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_03: We're just changing where that's occurring from.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: The ocean temperatures are the last thing to change.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_03: The first thing to change is the winds.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: Now, you mentioned some names we give it.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_03: Well, strong, super, or Godzilla.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_03: And by the way, the Godzilla name is something only we here in the States call this thing.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_03: I actually contacted a colleague of mine over in uh in Japan.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_03: Even in Japan, the birthplace of Godzilla, they don't.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: You did not say Godzilla in Japan.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so it's uh they don't call it that.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_03: But anyway, what it means is is probably for the starting now, honestly, even though El Nia's been building since February, from now through about next March or April, the trade winds have lost it and the westerlees have picked it up, which tends to give us in the United States a wetter harvest.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_03: It tends to give us a much wetter and more mild winter overall.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_03: Doesn't mean you won't have cold shots, but it just tends to flood North America with Pacific Air.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: And it it it all El Nino does is it tilts the odds.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, I told a group last week, you know, I was I was sitting there thinking about when I was a kid collecting baseball cards.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_03: I always wanted Tony Gwynn.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_03: Tony Gwen was like the guy.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_03: He always got on base, he had an incredible lifetime batting average.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_03: I wanted his card.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, I have a 1985 Padres top.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_03: I remember the brand top, you know.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_03: That's the good stuff.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: It is, you know, and and so I had the that card.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_03: But Tony Gwynn, if you wanted to win a pennant, you put him on your team because the dude got on base.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_03: He tilted the odds more toward you scoring, didn't mean you're gonna win every time.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_03: Well, El Nino's like putting Tony Gwynn on your bench, you're gonna have a better chance of going a certain direction when he's around, and that's really the way to think about it.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: Doesn't guarantee anything, it just increases the probability of a few things to happen during fall, winter, and next spring.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: You you're clearly very well in touch with what goes on out on the farms in the Midwest and points south.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Given that, yeah, is is there anything that different that you would expect farmers might prepare for, might do differently this year?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Can we go down that road a little bit?
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, highly speculative, right?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah, yeah, highly speculative.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_03: But there are a few things that when I say tilt the odds in favor of that I think you can plan on.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: So the deeper we get into September, and then definitely into October, November, we tend to really tighten up harvest windows across the midsection of the country.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_03: Tends to get really wet out in California early, tends to shrink drought problems all across the country.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_03: And that's something we've not seen in a while in fall.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_03: Most of our last gosh, I think I can say six.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_03: Seven out of the last 10 fall time periods in North America have been very, very dry.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_03: Mississippi runs really low.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_03: All of our rivers are really in bad shape before winter gets here.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_03: Now that's not what typically happens when there's an El Nino.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_03: And by the way, the last time we had a big El Nino was 2015.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_03: So it's been a long time since we've seen one anywhere close to this strength.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_03: So we tend to tilt the odds more in favor of wetter.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_03: Now, when we think about, think about Kansas, right?
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_03: They're going to be doing some winter wheat planting the farther we get into October and November and some of the issues there, September and October really.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_03: We're going to be talking about maybe getting a little bit of too much rainfall at times.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_03: Late, late in November, excuse me, late into September and October.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_03: You get into winter, the storm track tends to shift south.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_03: So it tends to be like California to South Carolina versus like Oregon to Maine.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_03: It tends to come a little bit farther south.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_03: And as a result, we tend to be a little more mild across the northern interior of the U.S.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, during the winter, when farmers maybe want to take a break, I know many of them like to go snowmobiling.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: I got asked last week, like, hey, we're going to go up to northern Wisconsin to go snowmobiling.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think it's going to be?
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, maybe keep going up to Canada to ensure you've got really good snow.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: But the western mountains tend to load up with snow, which was critical for like the Arkansas River last year.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_03: The Arkansas River basin was incredibly low last year.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_03: So was the Platte River system.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_03: So was the gosh, the Colorado River, which I'm not sure if you heard this last week, but the Lake Powell is only like 27 feet away from being at such a low water level that they won't be able to supply power for five million people.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_03: That's 200 people are where it should be.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_03: El Nino tends to cure those problems.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: I saw I saw a thing where this is kind of creepy, a little macabre, if you like.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was Lake Tahoe, where they're starting to find like bones and bodies or stuff.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, I don't know.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's interesting you bring up snowmobiling.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: My guest tomorrow is an avid snowmobiler.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, I I was trying to get him booked for Friday this week, and he's like, no, no, no, I'll be up in Minnesota.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: I got a snowmobilers meeting up there.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: They're gonna be talking about El Nino, I guarantee it.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'll uh I'll make sure and tell him, you know, just uh aim a little further further north.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Concerns for dryness for the growing season next year already.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: If the if the northern tier of the nation doesn't get the sort of snow that it usually does, concerns for for dryness up there too soon?
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's too soon, but I'll I'll just make this comment.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_03: During El Nino years, the northern Rockies and Cascades tend to underperform.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_03: So then one of the big river systems you have to think about is the Missouri River.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_03: It starts up in Montana, you know, snakes all the way down to St.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_03: Louis.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_03: And along the way, that river system tends to not have the kind of snowpack you want in the middle of winter to kind of uh keep it going into spring and early summer with snowmelt.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_03: But that being said, those winters across much of that basin tend to be wet.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_03: So you tend to still have water, just not in the form of snow, which changes the way it's released into the ground, of course.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm not overly concerned about that at this point.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, I'll just give you a number to think about.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_03: Right now, across the lower 48, we have 75% of the land area covered in some stage of drought.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: Now, that includes the very first stage, which we call abnormally dry.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_03: We would anticipate that by the time we get to next April, we would see that number down well below 30% with our major drought areas primarily being in the northwestern United States and maybe pockets of the of the northern plains getting into the upper Midwest.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_03: But I think south of there, we're gonna have moisture coming across the country with California taking the brunt of it.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: From what I've seen, if we're talking the potential odds in favor of perhaps a drier northern tier, uh a stormier, more volatile southern tier, right?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of feel like we here in in the Missouri River basin, the nation's naval next door to nowhere in Kansas City, apparently.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't know what what to make of it.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: We last year we got like, I don't know, just a few inches of snow, just and it it wasn't enough for an Iowa boy, of course.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: But I I'm having a hard time getting my head around what to expect for this winter for Kansas City.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'll just tell you this.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_03: If I knew, right, we probably wouldn't be together on this podcast because billions of dollars somewhere, you know.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_03: But it's it's a point to make, right?
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: That our our ability to kind of predict those high impact events weeks or months in advance is nearly impossible.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, I mean, just like last year, remember, we had the big ice room from like Dallas to Nashville and then over to the you know, when did we really begin to see that that thing was gonna take shape?
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we started to see it two and a half weeks out, then you got about 10 days out, it started to become a little more clear.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_03: Then five days out, we could make a more accurate prediction.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_03: But no one was talking about, you know, back in mid-December that late January was gonna have a powerhouse of a winter storm that was gonna, you know, do what it did.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: But we do understand, again, that El Niños do tend to take that storm trek and shove it south.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_03: So that does bring more of the central and southern plains, the lower Mississippi River Valley, and the southeast into play during uh winter like this one for much more volatile and active winters.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I'll tell you this: when it's all said and done, you in Kansas City, you may be able to add up more days this winter that are a little bit warmer than average.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_03: But when it decides to turn cold this winter, it's gonna do so very sharply.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_03: It's very punctuated in the way the temperatures are gonna change.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_03: So be prepared, be on your uh toes because it is going to be a very volatile winter in terms of temperature pattern.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_03: But when we average it out on the whole, I would not be surprised that we had more days that were warmer than average than cooler.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_03: Just when it gets cold, man, is it gonna get cold in a sharp fashion?
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: We've seen some some tragic flooding in places like Texas this year when when we're talking about a storm track and greater volatility weather-wise moving southward.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: Is it is it weather that maybe that part of the nation isn't prepared for in a typical year?
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: Or if the same storms hit, for example, in central Illinois, would it still be perceived as, man, that was a real humdinger?
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know what I'm asking?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah, I do know what you're asking, and that's a great question.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_03: The reality is all of the weather factors we have are very geographically specific, right?
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, I was telling somebody the other day they were talking about heavy rains down in South America.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, you know that parts of central South America like Mato Grosso in January can get an average of 16 inches of rain in a month.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, if you took that rain and put it in Kansas City, we'd be rewriting Genesis chapter seven.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_03: Like that's you know, that's that's biblical style flooding.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_03: And this upcoming winter, I mean, some of the stuff we'll be talking about is California, mudslides, incredibly wet conditions, but that's all topography induced.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_03: That's all due to the geography, the landforms, the basins that they have there.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_03: So it's very, very much regionally specific.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_03: You know, if you're east of the, you know, the Rocky Mountains, which of course we are here now talking, a lot of our most extreme precipitation events do happen in the middle of summer when it's thunderstorm time period, when everything can get hyperlocal and focused in one spot.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_03: In winter, they tend to be drawn out more across broader fronts.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_03: And so a much different way by which to distribute the moisture in the atmosphere.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_03: Thunderstorm, hyperlocal, big front in winter, big long stretched-out features.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_03: So, but you're right, geography is important.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: Let me drag you down a weird random rabbit trail really quick.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: You you can blow this one off, you can answer or not if you like.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then I then I do want to ask, you know, clearly there will be some impact from El Nino on North America, and I want to get into South America, but first uh again you can very easily decline to answer this.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Are you a man-made global warming guy?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's that's a good question.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_03: Let me let me ask, can I rephrase your question?
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_03: The one I get in front of a crowd a lot.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_03: Please.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_03: So, a lot of times what happens when I'm up in front of a crowd and talking about weather.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, this just happened last week in Morris, Illinois.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_03: I get a question that may come in the form of, do I believe in it?
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_03: Like, do you believe in do you believe in it?
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_03: And I always stop, folks, and I say, look, I who who cares what I believe in?
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_03: I might believe in fairies.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_03: Like you don't care what anybody believes in.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_03: You want to know if there's evidence for things.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_03: And so let me give you let me give you an answer to this.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_03: I love it.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_03: So is there evidence that humans influence climate?
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, are you kidding me?
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_03: Why not?
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, if you look at there's 8.5 billion of us, we have taken this planet and turned it into this place that allows us to thrive.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, where you are in Kansas, right?
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_03: Look, look at the crops that we're growing in Kansas.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_03: Technically, you know, if you look at the middle part of the country, it's a vast inland, dry, semi-arid, almost desert-like area.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_03: But yet we've been able to, through management of water resources, grow some of the best crops in the face of the earth.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, where I live in Illinois, this used to be a swamp, and now it's just flat, black, and fertile ground, and we grow create amazing crops here.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, we have an influence on our landforms and on our climate system.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_03: I think the the reason I often get the question is that people would like to take their current understanding of what's going on in climate, which for most folks is limited.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_03: It should be because you don't study atmospheric sciences every day.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_03: But I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't walk into your house and tell you that I know what the heck is going on in the markets.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_03: Are you kidding me?
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_03: Like we all keep our separate expertise, you know, it's it's not like that.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_03: So so I think often though the question comes down to folks wanting to know one, is it going to be a problem?
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_03: Is it a problem now?
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_03: And two, if it's a problem, what do our brains naturally want to do?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, ever since we were little children, what do we do?
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_03: We try to find whose fault it is.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_03: And the reality is that's maybe the wrong question to ask.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_03: So let me give it to you just perfectly straight.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_03: Can man influence climate?
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, and we have, and we've measured it.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_03: There's evidence for it.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_03: Is it outside of like our historical?
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_03: I'm talking Earth's historical range.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: Uh no.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_03: But is it is it changing maybe more quickly than the the natural variability would be?
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we think it is.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_03: For some places, it's not, it's not a problem at all.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, in the Midwestern United States, which I'm going to put you in the Midwest now, okay, David.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_03: So in the Midwestern United States, let me tell you what climate change looks like.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_03: Average daytime high temperatures almost completely flat.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it was much hotter in the 1930s, but since the 1950s, we have been really flat.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_03: Now there's variability every year, but the trend is flat.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_03: Overnight low temperatures up on average about two, two and a half degrees.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_03: So we're warming overnight, warmer, or we're raising the floor of these overnight low temperatures.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_03: Why?
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_03: Because at that same time period, we've seen an increase in total precipitable water.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_03: That's how much juice is in the amateur that could get rained out.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's up about 15 or 1.5%.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_03: Total precipitation, my home state of Illinois, we're up on average throughout the growing season, three inches.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_03: Kansas is up about an inch and a half.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so the net effect is where we are thinking about climate change often as a massive problem.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's been very beneficial in the midsection of the country to growing crops.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_03: Now, that's a positive side story, right?
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_03: I could, you know, we could look at other places and talk about other things where it's not such a positive thing.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_03: What I do want to tell you though is, you know, folks are like, well, can we can we attribute this to is this big oil's fault?
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, that again is not the right question.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_03: Because the best thing that ever happened to humans in our development is the fact that we found coal, oil, and natural gas.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_03: Triple the life expectancy, modern medicine, modern infrastructure, we're living the best life we could ever possibly live because we have modern agriculture.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's right.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's all there.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_03: So what often happens is the stories are conflated, they're confused, and no one's asking the right question, which is hey, if the system is changing, what do I do to continue to be profitable in it?
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_03: And what do I continue to do to make sure that I can give this land to my future ancestors, the kids, the grandkids?
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_03: Instead, we we kind of fight about it.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: And boy, I'll tell you, the worst place for public discourse on topic of climate change is called TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, where all you're getting is just everybody's crazy conspiracy theory thoughts on it.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_03: No one's asking the right questions.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_03: So we could go, just so you know, I taught a whole graduate level class on this for 16 weeks.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm gonna stop there so that we don't go any further on this, uh, just because it it'll take you down a another another hole, uh, hopefully more scientific than one that we just chase rabbits down, though.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I really appreciate that answer.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_03: I uh yeah, that was and it's apolitical.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_03: Like, don't don't yeah, don't clump me into a because we got weirdos on that side and weirdos on that side.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_03: There's a bunch of weirdos in the middle, too, and so it's a crazy thing to to talk about.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I appreciate that too.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a difficult world when so much gets uh unnecessarily aligned with a political side or politicized in in some way.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: We'll leave that at that.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go to South America.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe maybe I don't understand things correctly.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: I I've always sort of viewed the United States and North America and South America, let's put it there, north of the equator, south of the equator, as sort of opposites sometimes.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're talking about a system, this El Nino, right, that that's coming out of the the equator, the equatorial zones, does does that mean it sort of radiates in a circle and that South America will also be impacted by some of the same things that that we are here up north?
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it does.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_03: And kind of like you described, the difference is the geography of South America, having a massive rainforest in the north, a big mountain chain down the west, and then this area where we directly compete with, which is what we call the Cerrado, the Brazil.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_03: And then there's southern Brazil and Argentina, don't forget as well.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_03: So it has a major effect.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_03: And historically, El Niños tend to create September, October, November, which is their spring, tends to create drier conditions coming out of the Amazon, and it tends to create very wet conditions from northern Argentina to southern Brazil.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_03: And we've seen some of that, okay?
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: So in the last couple of weeks, we've seen southern Brazil go extremely wet, which is a problem because we're forecasting them to stay very wet, not just now, but all the way through the next maybe 90 days.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_03: They're gonna prep prefer the wetter pattern, which means they're gonna have delays in planting down there.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's gonna be too wet.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_03: Into Argentina, we typically expect them to have a wetter spring.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_03: But you know what's going on right now?
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's not wet at all.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_03: They've had cold weather, but they've not been wet.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_03: And then the real thing that I think we're gonna all have to wonder and watch, because it's it's September the 8th.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, they've some places in the Cerrado, that center west area, has been able to start planting seven days ago.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_03: Most of them begin planting on the 12th.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_03: And what's gonna be watched is how quickly they plant because they have two crops, a back-to-back crop.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_03: Usually the majority of the first crop is soybeans, the second crop is corn.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_03: And what's most important to Brazil is their planting pace and how easily they stay on top of their typical crop calendar.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_03: So here it is in a nutshell.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of us in the States are watching them, knowing two things.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_03: One, interest rates are very high in Brazil right now.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_03: This is cutting margins back in a huge way.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's changing land ownership, it's changing crop mix, it's changing how much people are investing in crop down there.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_03: The second thing is for most of the last 15, 20 years, we've seen a pretty steady increase in total acreage to the tune of three to four percent every year increased.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_03: This year, that's not expected to happen.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_03: And so if you add that to the El Nino issue, which could really bring in the monsoon and fits and starts not consistently, we're concerned that they're gonna get off on a bad foot.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't mean a disastrous crop.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_03: It just means that the crop's not gonna go in as easy as it typically does.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_03: And therefore, they could be seeing, you know, kind of a misstep in their crop counter overall.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_03: And the net effect of that is that US markets are gonna watch this carefully and they're kind of springloaded.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you showed the prices before we started talking.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_03: They're springloaded to move on any sort of news, be it geopolitical, be it harvest progress in the United States, be it South American planting progress.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_03: And so I'm not trying to say that to be bullish in the namesake of your podcast here, but it's it's something I think that we need to watch very carefully.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_03: And having talked to two different groups of Brazilian growers this summer, there's a bit of anxiety down there that El Nino is going to be more of a problem than a benefit.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_03: So that's that's it in a nutshell.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, very good.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: Let's uh before time gets away from us, let's let's make it super practical.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: And we may be backtracking over some some ground here, but I want to make sure that that we get this out.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm hearing you in the gut slot of U.S.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: crop country, yeah, the name of the game three, four weeks from now, harvest-ish, is gonna be Make Hay While the Sun Shines.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you've got a window, best get after it.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: Am I hearing you right?
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'll even give you a number to put on it.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_03: So typically in the Midwest, we find that it's about 40 days from when you start harvesting corn or beans.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_03: I'll talk about corn and beans for a second.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_03: Start talking harvesting corn and beans, like in the United States, you got 40 days, 40 good workable field days.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_03: That's typical.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_03: But before the conditions get too bad, you're after Thanksgiving, you just can't get anything done.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_03: El Ninos tend to shrink that by 20%.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_03: So on average, you got 32 days.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_03: So I just been telling folks, hey, if the moisture's right and you can get out and get going, you know, have you know, mom or your wife, whoever, whoever makes your food while you're out there running around, just make a few extra sandwiches because you're going to be in the combine for a while.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_03: And just have everybody keyed up and ready to go.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_03: Because the last thing I want is to miss the window, harvest under bad conditions, get tractors and trucks stuck, really slow the whole thing down and pull the crop out while you're, you know, kind of messing with the combine a little bit.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_03: I will say this this should be a harvest time frame where we do see reduced fire risk.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_03: That's usually a problem.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_03: We get in there.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: I like that.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_03: Back on the wheat side of it, we're going to want to plant some wheat.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_03: I always folks always tell me they love to plant in the dust.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_03: I said, I don't know that that's going to happen this year.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_03: I think you're going to have quite a bit of moisture this year going into this.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_03: And we're going to be wanting that moisture next year in April to make sure we make these yields.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_03: I would just say be ready for tighter windows.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's not now, but it's it's coming.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's at the end of the month, getting into October, November, that that really begins to kick off.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: Very good.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for that.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's practical.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I I know that that we're we're helping somebody out here.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: I see that hand.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: I know we're helping somebody in in the back for sure.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you you touched on something that's that's a cherished childhood memory, you know, one of those memories that you can sort of see, hear, and taste and smell.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's those sandwiches.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing like the roast beef sandwich wrapped in foil in the cab of a combine.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_03: There's two of them, right?
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_03: At least two of them.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, you gotta have two.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta have two.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: Gotta have two.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: Really quick.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: Having said all of that, and then you know, I've been accused of of of of inflicting a Minnesota goodbye on my guests.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm gonna call this Minnesota goodbye phase one.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I do have another question for you.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: I I was in radio and moved over to online only.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: And for a long time in my mind, the only way to do a show like this would have been on the radio.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up listening to the radio, AM especially.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I have my old my old radio heroes and stuff, and clearly there's still a place for that, but I'm beginning to see some changes in media and in and people's preferences and how they choose to take content in.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: You give super engaging uh presentations, can confirm.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: You're a decent looking fella, you know.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate that.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: Any TV station would be lucky to have a guy like you, and yet you you chose a different path.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: Would you would you mind just helping us talk about what drew you to a less forward-facing pursuit here and and why serving agriculture the way that you do is important to you?
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because clearly you've you've thought through it and you've thought through the the plight of the farmer, and you know, you want to give information that's that's helpful and useful and easy to understand, and you do such a great job of it.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_03: What what gives?
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: Why aren't you on TV, dude?
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_03: Well, when you get on TV, your audience changes, right?
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_03: So now all of a sudden I've got guys that want to know the you know what the golf forecast is, and I have someone that's trying to plan an event that weekend, they just want to know you know highs and lows and whatnot.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_03: And the reality is I'm not interested in that.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_03: The thing, the thing that media, excuse me, the television really pins you down to is a very short time slot.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, you know, you and I can talk for 40 minutes, we can dig deep, and I can help teach and explain.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_03: You lose that opportunity.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_03: So I wasn't interested in doing that.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_03: So I instead just took a different route.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_03: I started off teaching, that helped a lot.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_03: And then I found that I mean, this was a I started back in 2013 doing YouTube videos about the weather, but I found that people like to consume their content more a la carte now than anything.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_03: So they like the social media approach, they like the YouTube approach.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_03: I can go watch this when I'm ready to watch this and see all the content that I want.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_03: I can stop and start whenever I feel like it.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_03: And so we we hit up those channels and we get tens of thousands of views every day of that content and hundreds of millions of hours of added added up over the year of what people are watching.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_03: We also, you know, find folks want to get answers themselves.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_03: And so instead of me just telling you the weather, I maintain a website called agweather.com and also do just a tremendous amount of outreach through Nutri.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_03: My employer, just talking to folks, doing interviews like this, and uh making sure that folks can get access to content when they need it.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_03: So the world has changed, and it's changed kind of in a big way overall with the way that we we access and get that information.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_03: And it's on demand now, and that's why you're probably finding a lot more success with this.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_03: While unfortunately, those big, you know, five state broadcasts on the AM, which used to be the way we got it, right?
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_03: Now changes to being able to access information the way you're presenting it today.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: Do you watch the weather on your local news?
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: Or are you just like enough already with the weather?
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: I have to mute this.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: I have to mute this.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: I've been thinking about this all day.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: I have to mute it.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I don't actually.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_03: I I haven't watched the weather on T when I grew up.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_03: I watched the Weather Channel, right?
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it was it was a big day when I was nine years old, and my dad got one of those.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_03: He got the cable box, which gave us channel 32, which for us was the weather channel.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that was like 1988, you know, when I started watching that.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, speaking of the weather channel, the vast majority of their viewership and their revenue is not the weather channel.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_03: It's weather.com and it's their app.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_03: I think that right now there is a couple guys out there on YouTube that are generating more viewers every day, just doing a broadcast like I do than the weather channel does all day.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_03: And that's just it's just the changing nature of the media.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_03: And and weather channel knows it, but they've continued to to strive to do great things.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_03: But uh, that's why weather.com is the kind of the bulwark of their you know revenue generation.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: Agweather.com.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm glad that you mentioned that.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody check it out, Agweather.com.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's Eric Snodgrass from Nutrion and Agweather.com.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: Can I get you to just look out your window there?
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: Pretend like you don't know anything about the weather at all.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: What's uh what kind of it looks sunny today over there where you're at?
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's not too bad out here today, but we have a nice little front coming through.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's going to Iowa, parts of Wisconsin.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_03: It may clip you and Kansas as it drives south, bring a little bit of rain.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_03: But uh the temperatures are gonna spike back up.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_03: Don't, don't, don't sit on it.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_03: They're gonna they're gonna shoot back up.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, I'm hoping that after mid-month we finally get some cooler weather that'll be in place a little bit better, and we'll start to feel a bit more like fall as these, you know, these weekend football games pick up and we start to do more fall-like things.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: Excellent.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, usually there's a time like right now when I'll read the National Weather Service short-term forecast.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not even gonna do it.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not doing it.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: The big uh well, big hurricane, hurricane Lowell.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, out in out in Hawaii.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: Man, quite the hurricane setups we've got going going out there.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: Would you care to comment quickly on that?
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, this comes back to your El Nino question, okay?
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_03: The East Pacific is double their typical activity, double the strength, double the everything, double.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_03: The Atlantic, which gets shut down during El Nino's, is under 10% of normal at this point and is not expect the peak of the hurricane season this week, and there's not a single thing going on there, not a single hurricane yet this year, as of the time we're talking, which is very, very late.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_03: We may go through all of summer, all the way to September 21st without a single hurricane.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_03: We've had named tropical cyclones like Dali and Ward, but we did not get a hurricane yet.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_03: So crazy year.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's uh let's move on, and then uh I'm gonna cut you loose.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is phase two of the Minnesota Goodbye, okay from Kansas City here.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: I've got some items of mild interest from today in history, if you're if you're up for it real quick.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, in it's September 8th in 1504.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my the year 1504, Michelangelo's David was unveiled in Piazza della Signoria in Florence in uh 1922.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think Roberto has a slide for this one.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: Sid Caesar, American comedic actor well before my time, was born, 1922, and in 1930, 3M began marketing Scotch transparent tape.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: And and I didn't really prepare you for this, and it's completely unfair, but it's today's Egg Bowl Injustice.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is the part of the show where I ask my very generous, kind, learned guest a completely unfair question that I would not have been able to answer myself, and that's what makes it such an injustice.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's the eggbull injustice I just mentioned in 1930.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: 3M, you might know this one.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: 3M began marketing Scotch transparent tape.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: What do the 3Ms in 3M stand for?
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_03: Can I go to my other screen to Google?
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_03: I'm afraid not.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_03: I'm afraid not, sir.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_03: I do not know.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_03: I do not know.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_03: Tell me, please tell me.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of those science stories, and I think I actually have seen like something on the History Channel on it or something like that.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's I know what WD40 is.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_03: Would you like to give us that?
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_00: We could do that instead.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, water displacement 40th try.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_03: I learned that story a long time ago.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's a good one.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_03: Tell me 3M.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_03: Tell me the thing.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: 3M is Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: From the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: They had a scientist working for them that was like, I've got this formula for an adhesive.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: You're not going to believe it.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: And they're all like, You're nuts.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: Who cares about adhesive?
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: What uh uh and it turned out that what he delivered was scotch tape.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, where would we have Christmas if it weren't for this?
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: The Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's some you didn't need to know, but uh, you know, we like to throw an ad an injustice at our guests.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_00: Eric Snodgrass from Nutrient and Agweather.com.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: I've written that in great big letters in my notes here.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: Eric Snodgrass, thank you so much.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I really enjoy your take, your passion for farm country and for communicating weather to the realm of agriculture.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: We really appreciate you being on AgSquawk today, brother.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great day.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you too.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: Let me be on.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: That was Eric Snodgrass.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: Agweather.com, agweather.com, or check him out over at the Nutrient site as well.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: May I also direct you to Agbull.com once again, where you can dig deeper with Ag Bull Intel.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: Take your marketing by the horns with Agbull.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: Visit Agbol.com or call 855737FA, followed by R and an M, 855-737-FarmAgbull.com.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_00: Jed Sidwell will have the morning calls bright and early tomorrow at all catch an early morning flight to Music City, Nashville, Tennessee, tomorrow morning.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: And barring some uh travel snag, I'll talk with Greg Mulheron from Newell Machinery.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: Y'all come back now.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: You hear?