The Web today has numerous sources of weather statistics, forecasts and information. Here is a list of several that may be of interest to farmers:
http://www.geography.ohio-state.edu/faculty/rogers/statclim.html : The State Climatology Office for Ohio strives to acquire, archive, process and disseminate all climate and weather information that is of value to public officials and organizations, corporations, research scientists, and private citizens of the state. The fact that there is a state climatology office is not widely known around Ohio and many of the requests are either from central Ohio or they are from other states, from persons that know of climate services in their home state.
http://sisyphus.sws.uiuc.edu/index.html : The Midwestern Regional Climate Center (MRCC) is a cooperative program of the Illinois State Water Survey and the National Climatic Data Center (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S, Department of Commerce).
http://www.extension.iastate.edu/notes/display.aspx?catID=102Weather : Weather and Crop Comments by Elwynn Taylor, Iowa State University Extension climatologist. According to Elwynn, on 4/27/05, “As of late April 2005 the Leading Crop Weather Indicators point to an above trend U.S. corn crop. The risk factors considered were: subsoil moisture(favorable or above usual moisture for the Corn Belt), ocean conditions north of Hawaii(PDO)(slightly unfavorable for the Mountain West and the western Corn Belt), El Niño (weak but still slightly favorable), Bermuda High Pressure(favorable), Benner 19-year Cycle (unfavorable), and the National Weather Service forecast for May-June-July (favorable). With no strong trends in place, yields for 2005 are expected to exceed the trend by 2-5% (nationally about 42 Bu./a for Soybean and 145-150 Bu./a for Corn). No assessment of potential loss to Asian Soybean Rust was made.” http://mrcc.sws.uiuc.edu/Watch/watch.htm : Climate maps are available and are up-to-date through the previous day midnight using data received by 11:00 am Central Time each day.
http://twister.sbs.ohio-state.edu/ : Ohio State University weather information site with lots of links.