\u201cI have allergies bad,\u201d said Lau, who also grows soybeans. \u201cAnd this year in particular, it\u2019s hit me hard. It\u2019s wild that we are talking about allergy issues in winter, but that\u2019s technically the reality of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last month, Climate Central, a nonprofit specializing in communicating climate science, published an analysis<\/a> that found that spring is trending to an earlier arrival from 1981 to 2025 in most of the United States.<\/p>\n On average, leaves now emerge six days earlier than they did in 1981 in 88 percent, or 212 out of 242, of major U.S. cities. For example, in Lau\u2019s city of St. Joseph, Missouri, the spring leaves tend to arrive two days earlier.\u00a0<\/p>\n An earlier spring could have consequences for the agriculture industry, ecology, and more.<\/p>\n Where are spring leaves arriving earlier?<\/p>\n Climate Central used open-access data that was collected by the USA National Phenology Network, a group of volunteers and researchers who study seasonal events \u2014 like when migratory birds arrive, leaves emerge, and fruit ripens \u2014\u00a0 among plants and animals to determine ecosystem health.\u00a0<\/p>\n The analysis is based on the NPN\u2019s first leaf index maps<\/a>, which use models to predict the start of spring. To work, the models are fed data like temperature and the start date of the annual \u201cleaf-out\u201d \u2014 when leaves first emerge \u2014\u00a0 for the early spring plants of lilacs and honeysuckle, which are found throughout the U.S.<\/p>\n \u201cThat very leading edge of spring is drifting earlier and has drifted, in some cases, a whole lot earlier in just that last few decades,\u201d said Theresa Crimmins, the NPN\u2019s director, in a briefing last month.<\/p>\n Climate Central\u2019s analysis found that many Mississippi River basin cities are seeing earlier spring, including Hazard, Kentucky, which is seeing leaves arrive 11 days earlier. Both Memphis, Tennessee, and St. Louis, Missouri, are leafing out seven days earlier. New Orleans, Louisiana, is two days earlier.<\/p>\n While most of the lower 48 states are experiencing an earlier spring, the report did find an exception in the Northern Rockies and Plains region. There, spring temperatures have either cooled or warmed \u201crelatively slowly\u201d since 1970, according to the report.<\/p>\n Kaitlyn Trudeau, a climatologist with Climate Central, said the differences in how much earlier spring is coming from place to place are likely due to what she calls \u201cclimate controls\u201d \u2014 such as latitude, elevation, wind patterns, proximity to bodies of water, ocean currents, and topography.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAll of those different factors really dictate what your local climate is like generally,\u201d Trudeau said.<\/p>\n What does early spring mean for agriculture and more?<\/p>\n The early arrival of spring can have widespread impacts, said Trudeau. People with seasonal allergies, like Lau, will be exposed to more pollen because plants get more time to produce and release it.<\/p>\n Warmer temperatures can also cause birds to migrate too soon. One of the busiest migratory routes, or flyways, in North America moves along the Mississippi River. Each year, about half of all migratory bird species on the continent follow it to get from as far north as Canada to Central and South America, and then back.<\/p>\n When birds migrate too soon, said Trudeau, they miss out on the peak abundance of food. They can fall out of sync with insects or the flowers they pollinate, which can affect other species, too.<\/p>\n Read Next<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Modern agriculture is collapsing under climate change. Indigenous farming has answers.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThat can cause this ecological mismatch,\u201d Trudeau said.<\/p>\n Earlier springs can also put the agriculture industry at financial risk, she said. Whether it\u2019s corn, soybeans, or specialty fruits, these crops can get hit with a hard freeze following an early leaf-out \u2014 also known as a false spring. It could lead to major economic damage in the agriculture industry, said Trudeau.<\/p>\n In 2017, a hard freeze in the southeastern U.S. destroyed fruit crops like peaches, pears, blueberries, strawberries, and even grass for livestock. It led to more than $1 billion dollars in losses for the agriculture industry, according to a report from NOAA<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are so dependent upon what happens in the natural environment,\u201d Trudeau said. \u201cAnd so when things start to shift and change, it\u2019s also going to cause pretty widespread impacts for our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n Growers of specialty crops \u2014 such as apricot trees or iris flowers \u2014 will be particularly vulnerable. Row crop farmers, like Lau, have more technology to aid them. He said seed treatments have allowed soybean farmers to plant earlier and grow longer, increasing their production.\u00a0<\/p>\n So the effects of an earlier spring have been \u201cminimal\u201d for him.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom purely a row-crop production standpoint, the springs have been very favorable for us,\u201d said Lau.<\/p>\n One thing that does have him worried is the bug activity out in his fields \u2014 they\u2019ve been plentiful with the warmer weather.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI raise all non-GMO corn and so I don\u2019t have the insect traits bred into the corn genetically modified, and so that does concern me that we\u2019re kind of relying on what nature hands us,\u201d Lau said.\u00a0<\/p>\n While farmers and communities are doing their part to innovate and adapt to continue producing, Trudeau said addressing the root of climate change is the most urgent need.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no substitute for dramatically reducing our carbon pollution,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk<\/a>, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri<\/a> in partnership with Report for America<\/a>, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a row crop farmer in St. Joseph, Missouri, Joe Lau said he\u2019s noticing more extreme weather these…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[2084,242,181156,85,46,141,104836],"class_list":{"0":"post-378090","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-climate","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-food-and-agriculture","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-syndicated"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2026EarlierSpring_national_en_title_lg.jpg\")
Climate Central<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/JoeLau.jpg\")
Farmer Joe Lau stands in front of his field of soybeans in St. Joseph, Missouri. Lau says earlier springs have not affected his production negatively, but he worries about pests on his crops.
H\u00e9ctor Alejandro Arzate<\/p>\n![\"Woman](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-1404579129_a21a80.jpg\")
<\/p>\n