Central NE / Platte & Loup Rivers

**Central NE Tier A Justification** This is a dry-spell A-tier call—you've got the thermal window (75°F soil) and no active drought stress, but the 14-day precipitation barely scratches the surface while the last week delivered almost nothing. Oyster, Chicken of the Woods, and Dune Stinkhorn are all viable here because they tolerate marginal moisture and fruit on wood/sandy substrates that don't require soil saturation. The 0.05 VWC today is genuinely marginal, which caps production volume but doesn't kill fruiting outright—these species will still fruit, just more sparingly and concentrated around recently-logged deadfall and old snags where wood-moisture retention is better than exposed soil. Moisture is your hard limiter; watch for afternoon thunderstorm development over the next 5 days, which would push this into prime territory. If you see 0.5"+ in a 24-hour window, fungal response typically lags by 3–5 days. **Hot tip:** Scout your Chicken of the Woods sites *now*—they're already initiating on stressed cottonwoods and willows along the riparian corridor; a rain event in 48–72 hours will trigger a flush you'll want to catch before the beetles do.

Generated by Claude (Anthropic) from the structured weather, soil, and phenology data on this page. The LLM can misread edge cases — treat this as a starting hypothesis, not a guarantee. Always verify conditions on the ground before committing to a long drive.