Dryer weather good for sugar cane harvest

Mostly dry weather has been good for the area’s sugar cane harvest, despite recent rain. And the Tri-City area should see a fairly dry, warm beginning to the new year, forecasters say.
Sugar cane farmer, Mike Accardo of Patterson, said he’s finishing his sugar cane harvest and plans to finish by Thursday or Friday. He started harvesting Oct. 7 and farms about 3,000 acres in the Patterson area with his cousin, Mike Cremaldi.
Weather conditions have been fairly conducive harvesting the crop with not too much rain within the past few weeks. Accardo was expecting some rain around New Year’s Eve, but “overall, it’s been a dry harvest,” he said.
Sugar content in the cane is above average this harvest season, though the tonnage of the crop is less than last year’s crop. Accardo takes his harvested cane to Sterling Sugars in Franklin to be processed.
National Weather Service Meteorologist Roger Erickson said the new year was projected to start with a wet weekend, possibly 1 to 2 inches of rain, as part of the region’s typical winter weather cycles of changing temperatures and precipitation.
The area should start drying out after that, though, sort of the same way December began with some rain followed by dryer weather for the rest of the month, he said. The region is currently in a La Niña weather cycle, which usually brings warm and dry weather.
“You can have days and weeks where it’s one extreme and then flip to the other extreme,” Erickson said.
It’s common during south Louisiana winters to have periods of warm weather right next to periods of much cooler temperatures.
Cold fronts can cause “big temperature swings,” going from the 70s to the 40s or 30s within a couple of days, Erickson said.
Forecasters predict above average temperatures and below normal precipitation for January, Erickson said.
“But because it’s winter time, we know that there’s going to be periods of rain in there. And there’s going to be periods of cooler temperatures,” he said.
Erickson expects maybe five days in January will be “pretty cold.” Normal high temperatures for this time of year are in the low 60s, but the high temperatures could get down into the 40s for a few days this month.