drought devastation

[Blacksandfarmer]

I took this picture a couple miles from my home. This is becoming an unfortunately common sight here in southern Branch County, MI...and it's only getting worse by the day. The last significant widespread rainfall was in the 1st week of May.

[timetippingpt]

Sandman...a very good picture that captures the reality of the impact. I looked up the percent of normal rainfall for the last 60 days on the AHPS site. Having driven a big part of the red areas on that map, your photo comes from a red area (less than 25% normal rainfail). The areas in the same boat in Ind all look like that photo.

Here is the link, http://water.weather.gov/precip/

You can change the selection at the bottom of the map. We have had excellent results over the years monitoring % of normal rainfall for the prior 30 and 60 days. Especially in July for corn, and August for soybeans.

As the heat dome shifts north and west as is normal, the only good corn in America (meaning ND/SD/MN) might not yet escape mother nature's blow dryer set on high.

[sw363535]

Great analogy.

And both years the worst of the blow dryer effect started in june.

That picture looks like Se Colorado in August.

Thanks for the link.

[Mizzou_Tiger]

dont feel bad..........many share your pain...........

according to that link we have had 10 inches year to date.............7 of which came in one event, so as you can imagine mostly ran off in the ditch...........

will say we were lucky enough that corn shot an ear and pollinated..........and now its just dieing..........planted early April.........

wouldnt mind a rain to save the soya...........they were trying to hold on but are starting to melt...........mid-April planted and looked really good till recently............

anything planted after April 20th or so looks like hell, the big rain event came shortly after that and then it stopped raining..........so you can imagine.........

as for the dome of doom........posted about the new maps last night, the trend as been for it to maybe provide a bit of releif to those areas that needed it two weeks ago and is going to bury those trying to hang on..........

http://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=317288&mid=2471882#M2471882

also, just an FYI........but as of Friday Iowa has started the downhill march..........two more weeks of no rain will not be good........

http://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=317104&mid=2470127#M2470127

this year is a good reminder of why we should look at and start with averages (148) and not trendlines (164ish)...........

riddle me this.......

we sell something we don't have........and call it risk management..........seems odd

we punish over-production and reward failure..........all in the name of food............seems odd

[Farmerjoe79]

Mt it will be interesting if we end up with less than a 130 yield which I think we already are there. Do you think the USDA will come out with a above trend line next year or take a three year average an start from there. You would think that would be more of a trend to follow in stead of shooting for the moon.

[sw363535]

joe, 

Since they had to go back to pre-fertilizer, pre-irrigation, to build that line,  I would expect than we will have three more years of "anomaly" before we drop the term all together without admiting it is bad theory.  Just my opinion----------------shooting for the moon-----probably--------------and release it two months earlier so they can be right longer.     🙂

[sw363535]

MT,

A little "Big Bang Theory" in that post???      🙂

[timetippingpt]

MT...I was hoping you caught some of the many showers floating around Mizzou the last couple of days.

It did get cloudy here, dropped the temps too, down from 94 earlier to only 87. Sigh of relief. Like 87 is cool for a corn plant. 🙂

[nwobcw · Accepted solution]

  Bsand I thought for sure you would have gotten some of those rains that blew in from the northwest last week.  I know you can't always believe the radar as it has shown red and yellow over me and I don't get a drop and other times it shows green miles away and I get some showers.  We been getting 2 or 3 tenths at a time.  The last big rain was 1.2" June 18, which blew down from the north that wasn't even predicted for this area.

[Blacksandfarmer]

Nwobcw, we got 3 tenths last Sunday. Thursday of last week we missed a 1.5" rain to our east....... The heartbreaker was this morning. We missed a nice 1" rain by about 4 miles to my north. Oh well, Im in good company this year. Our county average corn yield is around 130 bu.... I doubt the corn in this picture makes anything.. along with many other fields in this area. I don't like to take and post pictures of other peoples misery but showing corn of mine that is on some of the heaviest clay ground in my area doesn't tell the whole story of this drought either. I have started asking around to see if anybody would be interested in harvesting my corn for silage. I don't know how that would work with my crop insurance. If my corn is zeroed out but I collect some money on silage I wonder if they would consider that as income and deduct that from my payment? That and many other questions to be answered soon. My corn is at full tassel now and Im just waiting a week or so before I call the insurance adjuster.