Data: ERA5 Land reanalysis (ECMWF). Climatological normals from the 1991–2020 baseline (the standard WMO 30-year normal). Dekad = 10-day period; 3 dekads per month. Generated: 2026-09-11.

Geometry — read this before comparing to the Grains report. Each region here is a union of state boundaries, and every value is a harvested-acre weighted mean: each ERA5 cell is weighted by its county's crop acres per unit land area, from the 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture. Uncropped ground therefore does not vote. This matters most where a state is not uniformly farmed — for July 2025, Nebraska reads 83.1 mm of rain as a whole-state average against 96.0 mm weighted by corn and soybean acres, because the Sandhills are in the state but not in the crop. The global Grains report uses unweighted bounding boxes, so the two are not like-for-like.

CWSI Deviation — departure from dekadal climatological average. Positive = greater stress (water deficit); negative = less stress (surplus). Heat grid shows monthly mean. Soil Moisture — ERA5 Layer 2 (7–28 cm, m³/m³). Rainfall & Temperature — actual vs. normal. Snow Water Equivalent is shown only for the four northern regions; in the Delta, Southeast and Southern High Plains the climatological maximum is under 3.5 mm, which is not insulation and would render as a flat zero line.

Regions: Western Corn Belt (corn, soybeans) · Eastern Corn Belt (corn, soybeans, SRW wheat) · Northern Plains (spring wheat, durum, soybeans) · Central & Southern Plains (HRW wheat, sorghum) · Delta / Mid-South (soybeans, cotton, corn) · Southeast / Atlantic (cotton, corn, soybeans) · Southern High Plains (cotton)