Tornado to Drought to Now Severe Flooding: Kentucky Farmers Face More Crop Losses from Weather Extremes

Mayfield, Kentucky has been in the bull’s-eye of Mother Nature’s wrath the past two years. Nineteen months after an EF4 tornado tore through the town, the deadliest in Kentucky’s history, the community was hit with massive flooding this week. Nearly 12" of rain fell in a 24-hour period, setting a new record.

The intense rain also came with hail and strong winds. The powerful storm caused life-threatening flooding that gaped open roads and suffocated crops, yet another natural disaster and blow to the western Kentucky community and surrounding land.

“This is my 50th crop that I’m putting out,” says Keith Lowry, a local farmer. “Never in my lifetime have I ever seen over 11" in a 24-hour period. And we just couldn’t handle it.”

Lowry says when he went to bed Tuesday night, they had just received over an inch of much needed rain. The sun had even popped out. The storm then hit in the middle of the night and parked over the area, generating massive amounts of rain.

“By the time I got into Mayfield on Tuesday morning, which is about 10 miles north of me, it had already rained up to six”, and Mayfield was flooded. “They wouldn’t let you through the streets, cars were drowned out.”

Lowry says the rain didn’t budge all day, and with trees covering roads, and flood waters rising, Lowry and other farmers brought their tractors to try to help clear roads the best they could.

“Up in our lower bottoms, we call it our creek bottoms, we had over 4' of water across the bridges,” says Lowry. “I could get across it on the tractor, but no cars were able to cross, and by dinner on Wednesday it finally quit raining. The water didn’t leave until later that night sometime.”

Severe Crop Damage

Lowry’s ground in the bottoms held the water for hours, and he’s now trying to assess the losses on his farms. Only about 10% of Lowry’s ground is located in the bottom area, but other farmers have more.

“The corn is going to be fine, the water was probably 6' up on some of my corn in the bottoms, but the water receded slowly on that, which is good. When it goes back in the creek fast, that pulls the corn with it, but it did not do that this time,” says Lowry. “Now the soybeans didn’t fair as good.

He says his soybean fields were covered in 4' of water, which was too much for the crop to handle.

“More than 12 hours of water standing is not good on soybeans, and then when the water did recede, the soybeans are probably knee high or waist high, and it just laid them down,” says Lowry.

The biggest blow came to the area’s tobacco crop. While Lowry doesn’t personally grow any tobacco it’s a staple crop for other farmers in the area.

“The tobacco did not fare well at all,” he says. “Tobacco in this area is dark air cured tobacco, and it needs a little bit of water, but it doesn’t need that much. It’s laid down, the hail beat it down and beat the leaves, and when this hot sun comes out in the next few days, it will wilt down and it will eventually die.”

‘Training Thunderstorms’ Produced Massive Rainfall Amounts

With significant crop damage now a reality for farmers in western Kentucky, it’s another weather phenomenon that’s leaving the area puzzled on what could generate so much rain. Eric Snodgrass, principal atmospheric scientist for Nutrien Ag Solutions, says it was caused by a training thunderstorms that just kept following one another.

“The thing that’s kept much of the Midwest cooler has been this big trough of low pressure, and we’ve seen colder air over Canada, but it’s been super hot in Texas,” says Snodgrass. “What’s happened is in the middle, that’s where the boundary is, and so the storms do what we call training, where they find the front and they run along the front. They don’t go away from it. They just stay on it.”

Snodgrass says the first storms started Monday night, but then on Tuesday, the rains didn’t quit.

“That’s when we saw the blowout of just tremendous amounts of rain, because the storms keep rolling over the same boundary. So that’s the thing, though, you go around that area, and there’s people not too far away who said I didn’t get anything,” he says.

According to Snodgrass it doesn’t matter if the soils were parched or saturated, that much rain in a short amount of time is going to cause flooding.

The Tornado That Tore Through Mayfield in December 2021

Meteorologists have zeroed in on Mayfield starting in December 2021. That’s when the EF4 tornado caused catastrophic damage, traveling 165.6 miles across the mid-south. Mayfield was in the direct line of the violent tornado, killing 57 people. The damage can still be seen in the town, with stoplights still not working, and flattened buildings not yet replaced.

On the one-year anniversary of the tornado, Case IH teamed up with Farm Journal to revisit the community and share stories of how the community came together to rebuild. You can view the stories the team shared through a “Christmas Comeback.”

“The December 10 tornado just took a toll on the area, especially Mayfield,” says Lowry. “And then this flooding came. I spoke to the mayor, and she just says that we cannot get a break.”

Nineteen months ago, the area experienced that horrific tornado. Last year, Lowry says farmers were hit hard by drought. This year, they’re dealing with flooding, as the extremes of Mother Nature hit the area with a third punch.

“I don’t know what it is, but we’re the farmers, and even the people of Mayfield and Graves County, the people here in western Kentucky are very resilient,” says Lowry. “It’s just another hurdle we have got to cross, and we will be fine. It’s going to take a little while to recover, though.”