As a row crop farmer in St. Joseph, Missouri, Joe Lau said he’s noticing more extreme weather these days.
Warmer seasons throughout the year. Quarter-inch predictions of rain stamped out by storms that bring 3 inches. Increased pressure from pests on his corn. He’s also noticed that spring is coming earlier.
The USA National Phenology Network shows that this year spring arrived three to five weeks earlier than the average between 1991 to 2020 in much of the central U.S. and two to three weeks earlier in southern Midwest states.
“I have allergies bad,” said Lau, who also grows soybeans. “And this year in particular, it’s hit me hard. It’s wild that we are talking about allergy issues in winter, but that’s technically the reality of it.”
Last month, Climate Central, a nonprofit specializing in communicating climate science, published an analysis that found that spring is trending to an earlier arrival from 1981 to 2025 in most of the United States.
