70 MPH Winds and High Heat: Tuesday's Wicked Weather May Be the Final Nail in the Coffin for Texas' Winter Wheat

The aftermath of Tuesday's winds were evident, with drifts of dirt piled up in ditches.
The aftermath of Tuesday's winds were evident, with drifts of dirt piled up in ditches.
(Matt Moorman )

70  MPH winds swarmed West Texas and the Texas Panhandle on Tuesday, and that may be the final nail for even irrigated winter wheat, a crop that was already barely hanging on. 

The aftermath of Tuesday's winds were evident, with dirt drifts piled up in ditches. Farmers have battled multiple wind events already this year, along with intensifying drought. The situation has hammered the crop planted last fall, with the majority of the dryland winter wheat crop across the Panhandle and southern Plains already zeroed out by crop adjusters. 

The wheat under irrigation was still hanging on, until this week’s weather hit.  

Jesse Wieners farms in Groom, Texas, where it hasn’t rained in 144 days.

“The wheat crop that was out there was just living off of the little bit of moisture that was in the ground, and we haven't had any moisture to help with that at all,” he says. “Now we're at that stage where the little bit of wheat that was there has blown out and is pretty much non- existent. We've been seeing zero-bushel yield across the farm on a lot of stuff.  It just is not looking good right now.”

Jesse Winter Wheat
Wieners and other Texas farmers were already faced with a wheat crop barely hanging on before this week's 70 mph winds. This is no-till winter wheat, that may not survive after this week's wind and dirt. 

Wieners says conditions were already bad, but with high winds and temperatures hitting 90 degrees Tuesday, the weather is proving to be a lethal combo, even for this farmer who is mostly no-till. 

  “For our farm, there won't be anything harvested dryland wise,” says Wieners. “On irrigated ground, we've still got a few circles that we’re watering. After today, I guess we'll kind of see what’s left out there. But I know that we're already starting to blow across it and already starting to see some sand burn on that.”

 The Texas farmer says it’ll take about a week to know how much of the crop survived. As of Monday, USDA said none of the Texas winter wheat was considered excellent. Only 7 percent is fair. 

79 percent is already rated poor to very poor. 

Typically, Wieners sticks to a rotation of wheat, cotton, grain sorghum, and then fallow ground after he harvests winter wheat. This year, “normal” isn’t in the cards. If he can catch rains yet this spring on the winter wheat ground that’s already been written off as a disaster, he plans to possibly plant sorghum this year. And those acres won’t have crop insurance.

“For the irrigated part of it, if we were to lose that wheat crop, we would probably end up going to cotton,” says Wieners. “We have cotton already, but we’d probably be planting some more cotton on there.”

At this point, he and other area farmers are praying for significant rains in order to restore the soil moisture profile. Without it, the spring-planted crops will struggle to produce much this year. For farmers in the Panhandle and West Texas, it’s a reminder of the last severe drought year more than a decade ago.

“I almost hate to go back to 2011, because that was one of the worst droughts that we ever had, but it’s definitely kind of setting up in the same scenario,” he says. “We had a really good fall crop that we harvested that year, the rain shut off in the fall, and it didn't rain again. I hate to say it, but we're kind of in that same situation again. I sure hope things turn around and we start to see some moisture. In 2011, it stopped raining and then we started to get a lot of 100 -degree-plus days, and it just really hurt everything.”

Forecasts don’t look promising in the near-term. USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey says La Nina continues to be the dominating factor. So, areas of the Southern Pains and West that are desperately searching for rain, may continue to be left high and dry.

“The outlooks do not look good, because we are facing the La-Nina-driven storm track that takes the storms to the north of this region,” says Rippey. “That leaves the area with just a lot of wind and only scattered rain showers or snow showers, not much in the way of precipitation.”

As the drought continues, it's taking a toll on farmers, as many say they are both mentally and emotionally exhausted, and the outlook for spring planted crops is also weighing on farmers across Texas and the rest of the Plains. 

 

 

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