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Tuesday, February 9, 2010 |
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Officials say rainfall doesn’t end drought
Published March 15, 2007
GUADALUPE COUNTY — On Friday, Jackie Kraft just got his milo in the ground out near the New Braunfels Municipal Airport.
Melvin and Korvan Kreusler just got their corn in, again just ahead of the rain that fell for much of four straight days.
Good timing?
Yes and no. Or perhaps more accurately, yes and maybe.
But is the two-year drought over?
Could be, but don’t count on it. The farmers won’t.
“The rain was very, very, very nice,” said Korvan Kreusler, who picked up the phone at the family place just before dinnertime Wednesday because his father, Melvin, was working outside. “It came just at the right time, and I think the wheat ought to do really well this year.”
No question, Kraft’s wheat and corn benefitted from the rain.
He’d have just liked to have seen it spread out a little more.
“It was the perfect time, but it was quite a bit,” Kraft said Wednesday. “You don’t want to complain about rain, but it seems like it’s either feast or famine. Either it’s too much or it’s not enough.”
Kraft, like his friends, neighbors and partners, the Kreuslers, said his wheat needed the water.
“This rain will make the wheat,” Kraft said. “We won’t need another rain for that. It was perfect.”
But it came awfully hard.
“That first one Sunday night, it washed a lot of stuff out,” said Kraft, shaking his head. “I don’t know whether the milo will be coming up.
“We’ll have to wait it out and see. Tuesday was fine. It was slow and easy. If it had come like that, it would have been all right. But it was just a little bit too much.”
National Weather Service Meteorologist Marianne Sutton said regionwide, this storm event brought between 4 and 10 inches of rainfall.
“Here at the airport, we had over 5.5 inches. One of our local observers in Kingsbury had more than 8 inches. But out west, they hardly got anything with this system. They’re still hurting for rain.”
Sutton said rainfall so far this year, at 8.73 inches, is running more than double the average at 4.19 inches. By comparison, at this time last year, there had been less than an inch of rainfall here.
Sutton said you don’t break a two-year drought with one rain event or even with several.
“Even though right now, we’re sitting above normal values, we definitely aren’t going to start talking about the drought being over,” Sutton said.
After Wednesday, she said, the next appreciable rainfall doesn’t enter tthe forecast until a week from Friday, and that’s far from certain at this point.
“It looks like pretty much the next week or so will be dry,” Sutton said. “We have a front coming through Friday, but once it does, we’re looking at a really sunny weekend with highs in the 70s.”
A little dry, sunny weather won’t be a bad thing for the Krafts or Kreuslers. They could get back on their fields, which Wednesday were sodden and muddy — even if seeds and roots were soaking up all they could, while they could.
“The drought hasn’t left yet, I’m sure,” said Kreusler. “We’ll wait for it to dry up if we want to do field work. It’s just part of farming.”
Rainfall totals
Sunday-Wednesday:
5.5 inches as measured at the New Braunfels Municipal Airport
Year-to-date:
8.73 inches.
2006 year-to-date:
.97 inches
Average year-to-date:
4.19 inches
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