Some Nebraska corn fields are so flooded that farmers are posting videos of themselves wakeboarding. The image is amusing, but the realities of the heavy spring downpours are pummeling U.S. grain farmers with soggy fields and threats of crop disease.

In the past 30 days, about 40 percent of the Midwest got twice the amount of normal rainfall, with soils saturated from Arkansas to Ohio, according to MDA Weather Services. While spring showers usually benefit crops, the precipitation has come fast enough to flood some corn and rice fields and trigger quality concerns about maturing wheat.

“I’ve never seen that much water on that field,” said Quentin Connealy, a Tekamah, Nebraska, farmer who posted a wakeboarding video on social media after 4.8 inches of rain (12 centimeters) fell from May 16 to May 20, creating ponds of standing water in the area. Planting at the farm had started about three weeks later than normal because of cool, wet weather, and now will be pushed back again. “We’re losing days, ” he said in a telephone interview.

Further east, Brandon Bowser, regional manager for Harvest Land Cooperative, which has 26 agronomy locations in Indiana and Ohio, said planting was off to a fast start in the second half of April, before 10 inches of May rainfall and lower temperatures erased early optimism. He estimates about a third of his region’s corn will be replanted, and surviving seedlings are at risk of blight.

“It’s the worst corn replant in our area I’ve ever seen in 28 years,” Bowser, 47, said. “ Bad conditions got worse with rain on Friday. There are lakes in some fields.”

The spring deluge is sparking a surprise grain rally amid the crop concerns. Corn and wheat are headed for monthly gains on the Chicago Board of Trade while rough-rice futures are headed for the biggest such advance in six years.

Flood Advisories

A storm system brought more than 2 inches of rain through the weekend to parts of Texas and eastward to Ohio and West Virginia, according to the Weather Prediction Center. Flood advisories have been posted along the Mississippi River and other waterways, many of which are still high after earlier downpours.

Two more storms are forecast for this week, keeping corn and soybean planters idled and increasing quality losses for U.S. winter wheat, Don Keeney, senior meteorologist at MDA in Gaithersburg, Maryland, said Monday. Temperatures will be as much as 2 degrees Fahrenheit below normal this week, slowing field drying and seed germination…..more here