Dr. Ron Heiniger is a professor at NC State and corn specialist with the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service.

“We’re seeing this corn crop try to recover a little bit, now that we’ve got a little bit of rain in the last week across the coastal plain and and Tidewater area, some corn that certainly was unrecoverable as far as damage, but there are some fields that are perked up, and we’re just now trying to evaluate how good a pollination we got on those fields. So it’s still a matter of seeing what can be salvaged is really where we’re at.”

While observers were saying as much as 80% of the corn looked lost earlier this month, now Heiniger says the outlook is much better, though not a complete recovery.

“Well, I think we still have probably 60, maybe 65% of the crop that can be salvaged, where we were able to keep a little bit of green on the leaves and get it pollinated, I think we’ll get some yield out of it. It’s certainly affected our yield potential, even on that that can be salvaged, but I think 60 to 65% can be salvaged.”

Eastern North Carolina has gotten the lion’s share of the recent summer storms, while to the west and in South Carolina, it’s been much spottier.

“We got a lot of farmers, particularly in the Piedmont, who are looking at chopping silage or trying to use hay or do something with that crop, because it just will not make corn.”

Heiniger adds, it’s too late to consider replanting at this point, so farmers have to play the hand they’ve been dealt.

“By the time it gets in the grain fill, you’ve got cool days, it’s going to take a long time to try to fill that grain, and it’s going to get some frost damage and harvest difficulties that make it almost impossible, really, to grow a corn crop this late.”

Heiniger says the flash drought has been called a once-in-a-lifetime event, and they certainly hope that is the case.