***Official 2023 Weather Thread***
- Thread starter wxman1
- Start date
You can thank me. I fired up the grill a half hour ago.
Got home from work and central Ames was getting hammered again. Only mustered a dozen or so drops at my place.
I think it was a good spring for peaches. Ours are chock full as well.
Hoping we keep getting some timely rains and get out of this drought that has lasted about 3 years now. Have in-laws that farm in NW Iowa that are getting frustrated with it as they seem to have had the worst of it along with the western part of the state. My folks run a small herd of cattle in west central part of IA and the past few summers really have stretched their pasture thin by end of summer as they haven't got much rain on pastures they rotate off and usually get some regrowth they can rotate back to them later in the summer and have not been able to do that sometimes. They have 1 field they usually mow 1 cutting of hay off part of then usually it grows back where the grass is ready to graze in late summer. It's been so dry after they cut it if they don't get some rains shortly after it barely grows back enough to graze unfortunately. It's a bad situation because they need to stock the hay for the winter and usually can count on that field to grow back to graze later and if there isn't much regrowth then shorts them on pasture. Also becomes an issue with creek water too as if a creek dries up due to lack of precip and ground moisture that feeds some of the tiles and springs they either have to haul water to them or open up some fields they don't want them on at that time so they have access to another water source so that messes up the pasture rotation too.
I will have to check ours, haven't looked in a while.
2 years ago, we got one peach the size of a cantaloupe and it was terrible. Last year, we got like 20 lbs of beauties off of it. Delicious.
My Twin Cities metro area is back on the drought map I think the map understates the impact of a third year of this. Bone dry here and it's deep dry. Yesterday I dug down maybe 10"-12" to plant a small shrub and thought I'd hit rock or something. Got out the pick and found it was hardpan dry clay. Like rock hard. Damn, no wonder everything looks somewhat stunted so far this summer. Watered like mad last night, was already seeing ferns dying in my garden.
