Word: droughts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Much of the Midwest is reeling from days of persistent rain and flooding. But there's at least one silver lining - or, perhaps, a golden one: For many on the storm's fringes, even a slight dose of rain is offering relief from the summer's drought...
...much of the summer, Art Bunting says "it was getting dry" near his corn and soybean farm in Dwight, Ill., about 80 miles southeast of Chicago. Between the drought and rising demand for corn to produce ethanol, "some people were worried we weren't going to grow enough corn," he says. Now, however, it's a different story. During next month's harvest, Bunting says he expects a higher yield of corn - partly because he increased the amount of acres he's devoted to the crop, but also because the recent "good weather" has helped kernels of corn get plumper...
...Sladek, who grows soybeans and corn on his farm in Iowa City, where scattered showers and thunderstorms are forecast through the weekend. Driving back from meetings in Missouri earlier this week, Sladek recalls looking out at corn and soybean fields that "were in horrible condition" because of the drought. "You come up to our area," he says, "and we're having one of the best crops ever. The rain definitely helped. But," he adds with a reference to news of the rain's onslaught, "it's a year of real extremes...
...South Dakota and Wisconsin have declared states of emergency for parts of their states. Yet, the Midwestern storm's impact remains uneven: Nearly one-quarter of Minnesota's counties, most in the north and central part of the state, have been designated federal agricultural disaster areas mainly because of drought conditions...
Meanwhile, Dan Luna, a meteorologist and hydrologist in the National Weather Service's Chanhassen, Minn., office, says up to 7 inches of rain may fall in parts of the region this weekend. That puts some farmers in a tenuous position. First, Keith Sexton feared the summer drought would reduce his corn crops at his farm near Fort Dodge, Iowa, in the north-central part of the state. So far, the rains have been a blessing: He's expecting to yield about 165 bushels of corn per acre, and about 50 bushels of soybeans per acre - average to above-average...