01/05/06 Southern Plains wheat still suffering

01/05/06 Southern Plains wheat still suffering

Farm and Ranch January 5, 2005 USDA's weekly crop weather bulletin says the unrelenting Pacific storminess that brought heavy rainfall and major flooding in parts of California and western Oregon also brought precipitation easing long term drought across the interior Northwest. High elevation snow packs were boosted from the Cascades and Sierra Nevada eastward to the northern Rockies. Extremely dry conditions continue however across the south-central U.S. where warm windy conditions fostered numerous brush, grass and forest fires. And USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey says pastures and winter wheat in the southern Plains remain under severe stress. Rippey: "Winter wheat stands were very thin to begin with and now with excessive temperature swings, high winds sometimes in excess of 60 miles per hour, very low humidity, there is no moisture in the top soil, and the winter wheat crop is under severe stress as are pastures. And as these Pacific storms move inland they are staying generally north of the southern Plains. As a result we get all these weather extremes and no rainfall and it sets up the ideal conditions for wildfire activity." As for an El Nino or La Nina Rippey says; Rippey: "At this time there is no strong signal coming from the equatorial Pacific, the source region for our El Ninos and our La Ninas. There is some indication that we may be sliding into a weak La Nina pattern." But Rippey says that could take weeks or months to develop, if at all. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network
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