Winter wheat drinks from El Niño. The Corn Belt watches what comes next.
Hard red winter wheat is sown in the fall across Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska and Colorado and lives on winter and spring moisture. A strong El Niño strengthens the subtropical jet over the southern Plains and has usually brought a wetter winter there. The Corn Belt's question comes a year later: will the summer of 2027 fall under a new La Niña? This route shows the climate odds for both. It does not forecast yields: that would need USDA NASS data behind an API key this site does not use, and yields depend on far more than one season's weather.
The hard red winter wheat belt
NCEI's Primary HRW Wheat Belt · 9 strong wintersEach of the 41 climate divisions in the five HRW states, by how many of the 9 strong seasons fell on its leaning side. Outlined divisions pass the Benjamini–Hochberg false-discovery test at q = 0.10.
For a wheat grower
Winter moisture helps stands and tillering, but the crop is made in April and May, and the spring after a strong El Niño has no reliable lean in the belt. Freeze timing, disease and the grain market are outside this page. Your county's full winter card is on Your county; the drought each county still carries from the La Niña years is on Drought and pluvial debt; the chance of La Niña dryness returning in 2027–28 is on Trajectory and The year after.
The Corn Belt summer after a strong El Niño
June–August of the decay year · weighted by productionTemperature vs the trend
Rain vs normal
State by state
Strong El Niño summers-after in each state's hot third (temperature) and dry third (rain), split by whether La Niña followed. Expect about 1 in 3 by chance.
Global crop regions, country by country, will join The world as those routes grow.
How these numbers are made
NOAA nClimDiv monthly temperature and precipitation for NCEI's own crop regions (the Primary Hard Red Winter Wheat Belt, area-weighted; the Corn and Soybean Belts, weighted by production) and for each state and climate division. Every season since 1950–51 has a straight-line trend removed, fitted on ENSO-neutral seasons; the detrended 1991–2020 seasons set the thirds; strong El Niño seasons are counted into them with Wilson 95% intervals and an exact binomial test, and the divisions are tested together with Benjamini–Hochberg. "La Niña followed" means the next ONI season was classed as La Niña. The literature rates the agriculture signal low to medium confidence: moisture helps southern Plains winter wheat, and corn and soybean links are real but explain little of the year-to-year change in yields.