Frigid Weather Likely Damaged U.S. Winter Wheat Crop, Meteorologist Says

By Julie Ingwersen

CHICAGO, Jan 24 (Reuters) – Frigid temperatures this week likely killed as much as 15% of the winter wheat crop in parts of the U.S. Plains and Midwest, the Commodity Weather Group said on Friday, in an ominous sign for U.S. wheat production.

A blast of Arctic air covered much of the United States earlier this week, sending temperatures plunging across key wheat areas that have seen limited snowfall this winter.

Without that protective layer of snow, winter wheat was vulnerable to freeze damage or “winterkill” as temperatures fell to or below minus 5 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 21 Celsius), said Joe Woznicki, an agricultural meteorologist with the Commodity Weather Group.

Those conditions impacted about 65% of the nation’s total hard red winter wheat belt on Tuesday from Montana down through northern Texas, including parts of top producer Kansas.

This week’s polar vortex may also have affected about 35% of the soft red winter wheat belt, including Illinois, Indiana, southern Michigan and Ohio.

Hard red winter wheat is grown in the Plains and used to make bread. Soft red winter wheat is produced in the Midwest and used in cookies and snack foods.

“If all the wheat was well-established, you would expect losses of about 10% in spots that saw winterkill,” Woznicki said, cautioning that “these are very rough estimates.”

Losses might be closer to 15% in areas where wheat crops were poorly established or where dry soils left plants more vulnerable to the cold, he said.

How much crop ultimately will be lost is not yet known. Freeze injury to winter wheat is notoriously difficult to assess until dormant crops resume growth in the spring.

But using last year’s production figures for wheat harvested in 2024 as an estimate, a 10% loss on 65% of the hard red winter acreage works out to 52 million bushels, or 6.7% of the crop, CWG said.

A 10% loss on 35% of the soft red wheat acreage would be 12 million bushels, or 3.5% of production.

U.S. farmers planted 34.1 million acres of winter wheat for harvest in 2025, up 2% from the prior year. The United States is the world’s No. 5 wheat exporter.

(Reporting by Julie Ingwersen; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)