How dry is it?

According to the Alabama Office of the State Climatologist, our "Palmer Drought Index" is listed as a -3 'severe drought', and we would need 10.9 inches of rain to break the drought. Dr. Christy was quoted as saying, "This is the driest period from January to now in Alabama in 114 years."

The US Drought Monitor says that we're under a D3 "Extreme" drought, and we're only a few miles away from being in the D4 "Exceptional" range.

According to NOAA's US Seasonal Drought Outlook, the drought should persist through July.

The USGS reports that the Buttahatchie River a few miles to our north is flowing with a discharge of 51 cubic feet per second. The 36 year median flow for this time of year is 267 cfs, meaning that its flowing roughly at 20% OF NORMAL.

This drought has been devastating to agriculture in Alabama, and is now starting to really effect a lot more people in the central third of the state as many cities are starting to issue water usage limitations. With no real relief in sight on the weather forecast, we definitely covet your prayers for rain.

No Relief in Sight

This past weekend was our best chance for rain for a while, and we did get a trace amount. But that was nowhere near substantial enough to salvage our "hill" corn or spur any growth in our hayfields. At this point, we're looking at the grim reality of having even less of a corn silage crop than last year and not much hay. The good news is that, provided it starts raining within the next month, we can replant our corn fields in sorghum or sorghum-sudangrass and still put up silage this fall. We were already planning on planting these crops on about a third of our normal corn acreage. It won't have quite the yield or quality that corn would, but it would definitely be better than nothing! Also, the hayfields and pastures should come around if we get the moisture.

I guess the biggest difference between having an early summer drought like this year and a mid-to-late summer drought like last year is that you still have time for contingencies provided the drought does break. All we can really do in the meantime though is keep praying and have faith that at some point we'll get some real relief.

Praying for Rain

We're now a week and a half removed from the last quarter-inch (at best) of rain that fell on the farm, and two things about the 10-day forecast stand out: 1) the high temperature for eight of the next ten days will break 90, and 2) the best chance of rain is only 20%.

We had gotten enough rain over the last few weeks to get our corn up out of the ground. And though we definitely could have used more rain, the crop was looking pretty good. Some spots have now started to fire up, and another ten days without rain could stunt it so bad that it won't recover.

This doesn't bode well for our hay crop either. Our bermudagrass has virtually stopped growing and I'm sure we'll have at least one less cutting this season than what we had hoped for.

Oh, yeah, and our milk herd's lactation curve is extending on out and is causing (coupled with the heat) a reduction in milk. We've been steadily declining in production over the last two weeks, and hope that we've now at least stabilized at 58 pounds/cow/day. Time will tell.

All we can do right now is just pray for rain and that we'll make good management decisions in the meantime, and have faith that in the end everything will work out.