INDIANAPOLIS | Indiana's second-driest May on record has left fields dusty across the state, raising fears that a drought could ruin farmers' hopes of capitalizing on high corn prices driven by the booming ethanol industry.

Although it's early in the season and forecasts call for above-normal precipitation during the next two weeks, it hasn't calmed farmers' worries, said Chris Hurt, an agricultural economist at Purdue University.

He expects farmers and the markets to remain skittish about the summer's shifting weather because demand remains high for corn to fuel ethanol plants. Strong demand for the grain is already pushing up food costs.

"Even a hiccup in the weather is going to have the ag markets and even the food sector really nervous. I think the word for it is hypersensitive," he said. "The Chicago Board of Trade is on top of the weather forecast minute by minute."

Based on records going back 112 years, this has been Indiana's driest May since 1934 -- in the midst of the Dust Bowl days -- when an average of 1.12 inches of rain fell across the state, said Dev Niyogi, the state's climatologist.

With a week remaining in May, an average of 1.18 inches of rain has fallen across Indiana based on measurements taken at several weather stations, he said. May's normal average precipitation in Indiana is 4.46 inches, said Niyogi, an assistant professor of agronomy and earth and atmospheric sciences at Purdue University.

Over the past month, precipitation maps prepared by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that the most parched piece of Indiana is in the Terre Haute area, part of a dry patch that extends west to Danville, Ill.

Since late April, Hurt said that area has had as little as 25 percent of the normal precipitation. Indiana's driest region is near Covington in Fountain County, where rainfall is more than 2.6 inches below normal for the month.

Western Indiana farmer Matt Martin, who raises corn and soybeans near the Fountain County town of Kingman, said weeks of scant rainfall have left his fields dry and dusty and his lawn brown. He said that at first, he welcomed the dry weather, which arrived after a wet April.

"It was extremely wet and then it just shut off, immediately," he said.

Martin has planted about 10 percent more corn than normal in hopes of capitalizing on the high prices. Many of his neighbors have also planted far more corn than normal, he said.

While most of his crop looks good and April's rains left adequate subsoil moisture, Martin said about 5 percent of his land is so dry it's threatening newly germinated corn seedlings.

"I'm anxious. I definitely want it to rain, but up to this point this time, I wouldn't say we're hurting. Talk to me this time next week and if we've missed all these other chances of rain, I won't be happy," he said.

"We've had big chances of rain and they haven't materialized. We need a rain dance."

A low pressure system over the Plains is expected to bring a chance of thunderstorms to Indiana by Friday and through the Memorial Day weekend.

Niyogi said NOAA's Climate Prediction Center calls for an equal chance of either above normal or below normal precipitation in June. But the forecast beyond that is unclear, he said, because the tropical Pacific Ocean is apparently in a transition between an El Nino -- a warming of its waters -- and a cooling of those same waters called La Nina.

Past La Ninas have caused droughts but they can also spark severe thunderstorms, he said.

"It's going to be much more uncertain than in the previous years because we are in this transition. We're going to see a large degree of variability," Niyogi said.