Ukraine experienced dry, hot weather with an excess of average daily air temperatures on the warmest days by 6-8 °С during the second ten days of September.
The average regional air temperature for a ten-day period in the Luhansk, Sumy and Chernihiv regions turned out to be 1.6-1.9 °C, in the rest of the territory of Ukraine it was 2.1-4.0 °C above the norm and ranged from 14.5 °C in the north up to 20.0 °C in the south of the country. The maximum air temperature increased to 27-32 °С. Only in the last days of the ten-day period with the movement of the cold atmospheric front through the territory of Ukraine, there was a sharp decrease in air temperature.
In most regions, there was no precipitation at all or its amount did not exceed 25% of the ten-day norm (1-2 mm).
The absence of rains and the prevalence of very warm, on some days hot for September weather caused further intensification and spread of air-soil drought. The cumulative amount of precipitation for the period from August 1 to September 20 (the period of accumulation and formation of soil moisture reserves for sowing winter crops) in most of the country did not exceed 10-30% of the norm, less than during the drought of 2015. In September (with the exception of the western regions and some areas of the northern regions, where precipitation was also less than normal), there was no effective rain at all in the country. The duration of the period without rain reached 50-60 days in most regions.
The rains that passed at the end of the ten-day period in the Chernihiv, Sumy, and eastern districts of the Kyiv region somewhat softened the arid phenomena, but their number was insufficient to improve the situation in these regions.
According to expert estimates, on 60-70% of the areas intended for sowing winter crops, moisture in the upper soil layers (0-10 cm and 0-20 cm) was almost absent or absent at all, only on 10-15% of the areas in the western regions moisture reserves were assessed as sufficient for sowing, grain germination and seedling formation. Weather conditions were favorable for drying the seeds of corn grain, soybeans, and harvesting late crops.
The sowing of winter crops continued, and grain germination was observed in the previously sown areas. As of September 20, the reserves of productive moisture in the topsoil under winter crops and in the areas designated for their sowing were unsatisfactory in most areas. In the Luhansk, Donetsk, in many areas of the southern, central, Kharkiv, and some areas of the Kyiv regions 0-20 cm soil layer was completely dry. The soil drought continued and deepened.