U. S. Drought Monitor Maps June 23, 2009

14 years ago

Linked below you will find this week's U. S Drought Monitor maps and date.

If you look at them, you'll note several things.

Maybe it is just me, but it seems like the areas in Oklahoma that are classified as 'abnormally dry' and 'moderate drought' are enlarging.

Also, the map is "upside down" this year compared to last year.....last year the worst parts were down south and the wetter parts were up north in the state.

I also didn't realize Louisiana was having drought issues until I looked at the U.S. map that says "How much rain do we need?"

Parts of Texas still look horrible.

The Keetch-Byram Drought Index maps are great for helping us understand our soil moisture levels via their color coding. The easy way to read this map? Green is good, and the farther away on the color scale, the worse it gets. Anything over 500 before fall is troubling. Anything over 600 before winter is a near-disaster in the making.

Tune in next week to see if we're getting drier or wetter, although I suspect we all know which one it will be.

And, in case you're wondering how we can go from "too wet" to "too dry" so quickly.....it has to do with our soils and their ability (or, maybe, their inability) to hold moisture. After roughly three calendar weeks with very little to no rain, we can find find ourselves falling into a drought classification.

One thing that worries me about a bunch of y'all who aren't in drought yet is that you're slip-sliding into it, and I'm talking about people like Dorothy and Scott and George who generally don't have a lack of rainfall in their area.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: This Week's U. S. Drought Monitor

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Comments (4)

gamebird
14 years ago
At least I don't live in south-central Texas!
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
14 years ago
Game bird,

One of the local citizens who lives here (a Love County native and rancher herself) has family in south-central Texas. Those family members also are ranchers, and they are in desperate shape. Down there in south Texas, in some places there's as much cactus as there is prairie grass and mesquite trees. Since January, they've been burning the spines off the cactus and feeding them to te cattle. The cactus are sort of a "last resort" for cattle feed. There's no grass growing. There's no hay left. They also have been "importing" hay from other states that are having more normal conditions. The south Texas ranchers are buying so much hay they risk going broke. It is a horrible situation and I feel for them.

As we all know from seeing it happen here in recent years, the next step is a very bitter pill for ranchers to swallow.....having to sell off their herds once they no longer can afford to feed them. I don't know how the ranchers and farmers are hanging in there as long as they have thus far. I think you have to be very tough to ranch in the Great Plains where the weather can be so fickle and cruel.

Thinking about the folks down there makes me feel like we are a lot better off in most parts of OK than we think we are. At least we've mostly had decent rainfall in the last several months.

Also, I think it is easy for us to forget that much of Oklahoma was in the worst drought stage (D-4, Exceptional Drought), back in the 2005-2006 time frame too. Even worse? We're probably only six rain-free months from being there again. Luckily, we seldom go an entire six months without rain.....it only seems like we do!

Dawn
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Sherri, I wasn't keeping an eye on Harper County last summer, or really on anyone else because I was at fires, often multiple fires, daily, or sometimes all night long. Last July and August are just one big blur in my mind. Without knowing how dry y'all got specifically, I'd bet you were in the upper 700s there, and very close to 800. Both the Altus area and the Durant area were the two areas I noted that were the driest on the KBDI, and they both actually exceeded 800 (which I thought was impossible) by 10 or 12 points. The driest our county got was about 770 or 780, and we had been in D4 well before we hit that point. How dry is that compared to previous droughts? The worst previous drought we'd had in our county since I learned about the KBDI was in 2005-2006, and my county topped out around 680 in that one. We never dreamed, never, ever in our wildest imaginings, we'd ever get 100 points drier than that in some future year. On our worst, hottest day, we were at a fire just on the edge of I-35 in 115 degree weather. Firefighters were dropping like flies and I was really concerned about them. A big storm was moving our way. We could tell it was going to rain. We cleared from that fire just as the storm rolled over our part of the area. We had lots of wind and lightning, and enough rain to drop our KBDI maybe 50 to 70 points the next day. That was the beginning of a downward trend in the KBDI for us. But what "gift" did the thunderstorm bring us? Lightning started fires across the river in Texas and we were called for assistance with those wildfires. lol Sometimes the thunderstorms are more harmful than helpful at times like that. I'll link today's map, and we can see what a change a couple of rainy days can make. I know that in my county we were getting close to 500 and now we're down around 100 after the rain last week and this week. That is such a relief, but we're still having grass fires. They're just slow-moving ones now and there's not many of them the last few days. In my own yard, it becomes hard to keep plants happy after we hit 500. By then our clay is hard like concrete and water just ponds on top of the ground and rolls downhill instead of soaking into the ground. It depends on the time of year, though. A KBDI of 500 in August bothers me more than a KBDI of 600 in December. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Today's KBDI Map--Lots of Improvement
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Gamebird, That's a lot of rain. You're so lucky! Of course, it is not the best timing for your melons, but there's really nothing you can do about that. We had 0.7" overnight, which wasn't much but is, of course, better than nothing. I hope the melons are OK. Maybe they weren't close enough to ripening to burst, but then again, 3.5" is an awful lot of rain. Dawn
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Paula, We have a resident deer herd here that were living deep in the woods when we bought the property. We've done our best to peacefully coexist with them. Of course, we've had to fence the veggie garden to keep them out, and we do feed them in the winter. Last July, during horrible drought, one of the does begin bringing her twin fawns to the yard to look for food while they were tiny. I started putting out deer corn for the three of them, and other things...like melons, okra and fresh corn as well. They always 'scavenged' around the back compost pile for kitchen scraps, so I just started putting the kitchen scraps on the ground beside the compost pile. Watching the twin fawns grow up has been twice as fun as watching a lone fawn grow. We saw them almost daily, and sometimes twice a day, all winter and in early spring. They still come check out the compost pile for yummy goodies once or twice a week. Until about a month ago, the doe kept coming back with them, but I havn't seen her lately. We aren't getting the rounds of rain y'all are getting, so we're having the opposite problems....hot, dry issues like hordes of grasshoppers, spider mites, stink bugs, sunscald, dry cracking clay ground, etc. Still, we have better mid-level soil moisture levels now than we normally do in August, and we had dew a couple of days earlier in the week, but now it is apparently too dry here for that. I have begun seriously yanking out declining spring/summer plants and replacing them with fall garden plants this last week or two. It was almost a relief to take out the old, tired squash, zucchini, watermelom and muskmelon vines. I already had new muskmelon vines in the ground for fall since sometime in late June or early July so pulling out the old melon vines wasn't that hard. I should have ripe fall muskmelons by late August. The new squash, zucchini and cucumber plants should be producing before the end of September. I took out a lot of tired tomato plants, kept some of the old ones as is and pruned back others pretty hard to stimulate new growth. I don't blame the spring plants for being tired and worn out, diseased and pest-infested. It's been a long summer and they've used up a lot of energy. I love the healthy green appearance of the fall plants too. At least we're getting a break from the hot August temperatures. Even though our Heat Index was 103, our high temp was only about 92 or so, and for August that's fairly mild. I have to admit I'm looking forward to September. Most years, my pest and disease issues just go away in September. Dawn
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Bumping this down the page.
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slowpoke_gardener
14 years ago
Dawn,

I live on part of the old home place, I grew up here and have seen good and bad years. This has been one ot the better years for hay. My Stepdad leases out all but 63 acres, and runs about 20 head of yearlings just to give him something to do.

We had good hay this year and like to never found anyone to bail it. My dad said that I could just brush hog it down and let it compost on the pasture. A fellow finialy came in and bailed the hay and paid a little for it.
By running so few head, and having winter pasture my dad needs very little hay.

Its strange how some parts or the country can be so dry for so long and others not that far away do much better.

I do believe the water table is droping. In about 1954 we had a very dry year, and had to have a well drilled. The man that drilled the well said he would not be suprised if he hit an artesian well at about 60 ft., well he hit one at 57 ft. He said it was running about 100 gal. per min. Now that well may be running about 1 gal. per min. Of course I have not tried to measure it, but it is nothing like it was 55 years ago.

I guess the most true statement we can ever make is, " And this to will change".

Larry
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
14 years ago
Larry,

We've had a great hay year here so far too. Some people are just now baling and hauling their second cutting.

Those poor people in Texas. They are so dry in south Texas that I don't know how their grasslands ever will recover.

I do think the water table is dropping. A lot of people here, including us, have seen the springs that once fed their ponds (often for decades) dry up in the last few years. Often, even after rain has returned, the springs have not started running again.

Two years ago, some friends of ours who lived in town bought some acreage about a half-mile up the road from us and built a home there. Numerous attempts to drill a well failed. That property was known to have lots of active running springs, but the droughts we've had the last 5 or 6 years have wiped them out. People here had their spring-fed ponds dry up this past winter for the first time in at least 50 or 60 years. You have to believe the water table has dropped and it has dropped a lot.

Dawn

U. S. Drought Monitor Maps June 23, 2009

Comments (4)

gamebird

Okiedawn OK Zone 7
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U. S. Drought Monitor Maps June 23, 2009

Comments (4)

gamebird

Okiedawn OK Zone 7Original Author

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slowpoke_gardener

Okiedawn OK Zone 7Original Author

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Okiedawn OK Zone 7
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