OUTAGAMIE COUNTY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Many people across Northeast Wisconsin have been enjoying the recent stretch of warm and dry weather.
The Wisconsin Timber Rattlers likely couldn’t have asked for a better day to finally debut the new slide at Fox Cities Stadium.
“It’s absolutely been perfect,” Timber Rattlers President/CEO Rob Zerjav said. “We were home for two straight weeks — gorgeous weather the entire time. Back home this week, and, again, the weather just looks amazing, so no complaints — just absolutely beautiful and a great time to be in Wisconsin.”
Baseball fans might love temperatures in the 80s, but it can create concerns for area farmers.
“We keep an eye on the weather all the time because so much of our livelihood depends on it,” said Mark Petersen, owner of Petersen’s Dairy Farm. “You want to see the trends and see if it’s going to start turning into a cooler pattern — weather pattern.”
Petersen said he’s not too concerned about the dry weather just yet. After months of heavy precipitation, this is exactly what farmers have been asking for.
“We’ve got to remember, a couple months ago, we were complaining that it’s very wet, and our rainfall’s still above normal,” Petersen said. “It’s kind of a blessing in my opinion that we’ve had the dry spell.”
The recent stretch of dry weather has been productive for farmers planting crops, but now they’re hoping for rain to start coming soon so that they can harvest it.
“If we’d go another couple weeks without anything,” Petersen said. “You can see the lawns are starting to get a little bit dry and stuff like that now. So, it’s not a crisis just yet.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s most recent crop progress report shows corn, soybeans and oats have all been planted at higher rates than the five-year average.
“They’re not using a lot of moisture at this point, but you want to have adequate moisture for them to germinate — that’s the key thing,” Petersen said. “So, you want to get them planted, if you get a soaking rain, get germination going on, it’s a good thing.”
If it stays dry for too long, plant growth could suffer.
But until then, Petersen will be joining Zerjav in appreciating the sun.
“Little wind, beautiful day and, yeah, great day to be at the ballpark — great day to go down the slide,” Zerjav said.
Spring tillage in Wisconsin was reported as 95% complete. That’s 10 days ahead of last year and nine days ahead of the five-year average.
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