Conditions during harvest in Brazil's main sugar-cane and coffee belt will stay dry until the end of August or early September, when the first rains in over a month will fall in the south-east growing region, local forecaster Somar said Tuesday. Somar meteorologist Marco Antonio dos Santos said dry weather will continue to favor harvesting operations through next week in nearly all of Brazil. Brazil's sugar cane and coffee crops are at the peak of harvest.
Brazil's southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul is seeing moderate rain currently, but its skies will clear by Thursday, giving way to dry weather until at least the end of August, Santos said. "The dry air mass is inhibiting cloud formation over most of Brazil," Santos said on a webcast posted Tuesday morning. "The dry weather ... has been marvelous for the coffee harvest, the cane harvest, the winter corn harvest, cotton and produce."
By the end of next week, however, Santos said that the dry air mass would start to lose force and open the window for cold fronts to move into the south-east region, including the states of Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais, and bring rains. The two states are the main cane and coffee producers, respectively. Santos said weather could return to wetter conditions in September due to the influences of El Nino, which is typically associated with warmer ocean surface temperatures off Peru and heavier rains in the center-south of Brazil.