Heavy snow targeting corn, wheat in Dakotas, canola in Canada

Oct 09, 2019

A large snowfall is set to sweep out of the Rocky Mountains later this week, bringing snow by the foot across the Dakotas, slowing wheat harvests and ending any chance for still-maturing corn crops to flourish.

A foot (30 centimeters) or more will fall from southwestern South Dakota across central North Dakota Thursday into Friday, said Don Keeney, a meteorologist with Maxar in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The storm will eventually push into southern Manitoba in Canada, where it could affect canola harvests.

“It will be a miserable day on Friday,” Keeney said. “A lot of the corn crop still hasn’t matured in the Dakotas so that is going to be the end of that.” Wheat harvests across the northern Plains and southern Prairies will also be affected, he said.

The storm follows a September squall that dropped as much as four feet of snow across northern Montana, spurring Governor Steve Bullock to declare an emergency for areas hit by the blizzard. Southern Canada saw close to a foot. That storm halted wheat, canola, durum and lentil harvesting, farmers said.

The latest storm will also spin up high winds in its wake, raising the fire threat across the western U.S., according to Paul Walker, a meteorologist with AccuWeather Inc. in State College, Pennsylvania. “All fronts are getting hit with this one” he said.

The U.S. National Weather Service has posted winter storm watches and warnings that stretch from Montana and Wyoming into the Dakotas, parts of Nebraska and Canada. The system is forecast to sweep east from late Tuesday into the weekend.

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Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.