Montana Spring Wheat Rating Still in Decline

Jun 17, 2025

The US spring wheat crop has rebounded from its second worst start to the growing season on record, but things are still going downhill in Montana.

Monday’s USDA crop progress report pegged the Montana spring wheat crop at just 16% good to excellent as of Sunday, down from 25% the previous week and now 20 points below the season’s first condition rating on May 26. As shown on the graphic below, it is the worst start for the spring wheat crop in the state since 2022, when an overly wet and late start to the growing season meant only 15% of the Montana crop was rated good to excellent in the first spring wheat condition report on June 12.

This year, it is the exact opposite problem for the Montana spring wheat crop, which is struggling amid dryness and drought. According to the latest US drought monitor, more than half of Montana (59%) was being impacted by some form of drought as of June 10, the highest since November 2024.

(In 2021, the Montana spring wheat crop started better but gradually deteriorated throughout the growing season due to unrelenting drought that walloped production across much of the US northern Plains and the Canadian Prairies).

The continued decline in this year’s Montana spring wheat crop rating stands in contrast to the improvement seen in other states, including the No. 1 producer, North Dakota. The North Dakota crop was rated 66% good to excellent as of Sunday, up 9 points from a week earlier and now 29 points better than the initial state rating of just 37% back in late May. The condition of the South Dakota crop has improved 15 points from late May to 70% good to excellent, while the Minnesota crop is now 7 points higher at 89%.

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Video: Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Northeast Wisconsin is a small corner of the world, but our weather is still affected by what happens across the globe.

That includes in the equatorial Pacific, where changes between El Niño and La Niña play a role in the weather here -- and boy, have there been some abrupt changes as of late.

El Niño and La Niña are the two phases of what is collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. These are the swings back and forth from unusually warm to unusually cold sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Since this past September, we have been in a weak La Niña, which means water temperatures near the Eastern Pacific equator have been cooler than usual. That's where we're at right now.

Even last fall, the long-term outlook suggested a return to neutral conditions by spring and potentially El Niño conditions by summer.

But there are some signs this may be happening faster than usual, which could accelerate the onset of El Niño.

Over the last few weeks, unusually strong bursts of westerly winds farther west in the Pacific -- where sea surface temperatures are warmer than average -- have been observed. There is a chance that this could accelerate the warming of those eastern Pacific waters and potentially push us into El Niño sooner than usual.

If we do enter El Nino by spring -- which we'll define as the period of March, April and May -- there are some long-term correlations with our weather here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Looking at a map of anomalously warm weather, most of the upper Great Lakes doesn't show a strong correlation, but in general, the northern tiers of the United States do tend to lean to that direction.

The stronger correlation is with precipitation. El Niño conditions in spring have historically come with a higher risk of very dry weather over that time frame, so this will definitely be a transition we'll have to watch closely as we move out of winter.