Rippey: National Winter Wheat Crop Has Improved

As we take a look at the national winter wheat crop, USDA Meteorologist Brad Rippey says things have actually....improved.

"We actually see something that's fairly rare with Winter Wheat, and that is that the national condition improved appreciably during the winter," Rippey noted. "Typically you see weather systems, and cold waves, and drought taking a whack at winter wheat during the winter. It's not unusual at all in fact it's quite common to see lower conditions in the spring than we finished up with in the fall."

And how do the figures shake out?

"We ended up in November with 52% percent of the crop rating good to excellent. That number is now up to 62% up 10 percentage points," Rippey continued. "Meanwhile, the percentage of the crop rated very poor to poor is down to 9% from where we were at at 14% in late November."

Rippey added for the most part, the winter wheat crop is looking good, but there are a few exceptions, with declines reported in Montana, California and Colorado.

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