It doesn't take much driving across Kansas to notice there is a serious drought in progress. I took a trip across the southern part of the state from Wichita to the Colorado border and back across the central part of the state on Kansas Hwy. 96 earlier this week. It’s incredibly dry everywhere. But the western third of the state is decimated. I love the “chance of showers” you see in four or five days out in the long-range forecast. The problem is, but the time that…

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Today was the spring South Central Kansas Residue Alliance workshop in Kingman with two great speakers, Dwayne Beck, Dakota Lakes Research Farm in Pierre, S.D. and James Hoorman, assistant professor at Ohio State University Extension. The topic was cover crops, which farmers agree, is still "more art that science," and how best to use them. Driving home, I couldn't help thinking what great people these farmers are, how dedicated they are to their land, their families and the future of…

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Gail Fuller farms near Emporia and like most of Kansas, was hit hard by severe heat and dry weather conditions last summer. At the end of the summer, he was more convinced that ever that continuous cover crops pay, even with no rain and temperatures over 100 degrees for weeks. Fuller told attendees at the annual No-Till on the Plains Conference in Salina that soil temperatures on acres with cover crops were as much as 30 degrees cooler than without them. His latest experiment: companion…

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TV weathermen are on a nightly rant about how "nice" the January weather is as temperatures in the 50s and 60s continue to dominate the scene, with more of the same in the forecast for the end of the month. As we move toward February, we're nearing the end of traditional winter and farmers are watching wheat fields with trepidation. Moisture loss at this time of year is critical to wheat farmers and it is occurring in a serious way. South Central Kansas has received no rain or snow for…

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What a difference a couple of days makes!! Less than a week ago, my petunias, snap dragons and sole surviving geranium were still blooming in my front garden. Now, the fountain sports icicles and the once-vivid flowers are more like puddles of color on the soil. It happens this way every year -- we get maybe one cold spell around Halloween and then a month of summer-ish November weather followed by a sudden chill down. You'd think I'd be used to it after almost 22 years in Kansas, but…

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Less of Kansas is in exceptional drought this week than last. That is the good news, thanks probably to the widespread rains that moved across the area about a week ago. But the bad news is still with us. The area of Kansas that is some kind of drought, abnormally dry to exceptional drought, is up. All but six counties now have some area in a drought designation. For south-central Kansas, where heavy rains a week ago were highly welcomed, the exceptional drought has backed off, leaving us…

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More than an inch of rain has fallen across parched south-central Kansas today in the first day of rain since we got about 3/4 of an inch on Oct. 8. It is a welcome soaking for the winter wheat crop and the native prairie and downpours have even generated some runoff that will help the pasture ponds. With temperatures at near-freezing overnight, there won't be much chance for anything to really get growing before the winter winds blow, but anything in the profile is better than nothing…

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The snow gates on I-70 in western Kansas were closed this week, diverting traffic off the busy Interstate and into rural motels and cafes. No, there's no time warp. It's not winter. And it wasn't snow that closed the highway.  It was the blowing dirt coming off the farm fields of eastern Colorado and western Kansas. Part of it was the result of desperate farmers "dusting in" wheat in the hopes that the widespread rain would come this weekend. But most of it was the result of dead…

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Shell Oil will spud its first well in the search for Mississippi Lime oil in south-central Kansas on Wednesday. It's the first time in almost 30 years that Shell has been active in Kansas. The new well is in the hottest thing going in oil exploration today, the Mississippi Lime, a formation in Kansas considered "tapped out" years ago for traditional, vertical wells. But new technology, horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, is promising huge reserves of oil in northern Oklahoma…

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From April to June, Kansans get used to terms to like "Mammatus" and "Cumulus" and "Towering Cumulus." And we tend to forget that the change of season between summer and fall can sometimes be as turbulent as that between spring and summer. Not usually -- as documented by the prime tornado season of April to June -- but frequently enough to remind us that we live under an unstable atmosphere. At about dusk, with a tornado watch in effect and warning boxes lighting up the weather map to…

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