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The wind is here

F

feeder

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
950
Location
Iowa
It is blowing hard now. The wind came up around 11 am. I heard Nebraska had 84 mph wind earlier.
 
We are wet here after the weekend rains, but hope with this wind we can get out in the field by Friday.
 
Been nice and calm here for the first time this spring... I guess that means the gale force winds will hit later. We have gotten something like 9 inches of rain so far in March and April and yet our hills are already looking dry because of the hot winds we have had blowing much of the spring... Oh well, so far better than last year at least.
 
In a "normal" year we have close to 38 or so inches of precip. Mostly rain. I think an average year is 20 inches of snow but it generally doesn't stick around. On year we had 10 inches of rain over a week period in May... 5 inches in one storm..Well, as close to 5 inches as I can tell as the rain gauge overflowed on me. Drowned out a lot of corn that year, people had backhoes out in the fields creating temproty ditches to drain off the lakes.

Last year we had 18 inches of precip, with most fallin from Jan-March and than from October-December... The growing season was DRY for us... Everything was still green for most of the summer but inothing grew. At least I didn't have to mow the lawn more than once a moth, and even than all I was mowing was seed heads. Hay yields for second cutting were less than 1/2 a ton per acre when we usually get two tons an acre for that cutting. Oh well, such is life.
 
That is the kind of reaction I got when I lived in Montana and I mentioned the rain we get in Illinois... I looked at a place in another part of the state where they average 42 inches, they get the edge of the hurricans that hit the gulf coast... Different world over here..
 
All that rain is why we are so gosh darn humid. Come Juy when it is 95 out with 90% humidity just thank the lord you don't get all this rain, lol. Yeah, I wold imagine down near Cairo that the amount of rain must be something special... problem is all of our production is based on that much rain... Grass that is suited for 38-48 inches of precip in a 12 month period oesn't do so wel when we only get 18.... WE get real hammered here because a good portion of the place is sandhills.. And by sandhills I mean they used one of our pastures as a Sand quarry a few years back ad what they took might have been less sandy than what they left behind... Actually, this part of Illinois is about the driest you are going to find a the 38 inches.. I always thought it was 36 inches a year but found out last year it was suppossed to be 38.. ARound Chicago I beleive it is 40 inches...
 
Here in northern Montana we average 11-12 inches of moisture a year. We've alway felt that if we could get 15-16 inches we could grow tremendous crops. Yes I think we would drown out with 40 inches, or start growing dryland corn.
 
We really lucked out on the storm, just a nice 1" rain with only 20-30 mph winds, kind of nasty on the newborns but NOTHING compared to western SD the way it sounds. Hard to understand how a storm can crank up in intensity in only a few 100 miles away. We would have had huge calf losses if we had snow and winds like that as most of our pastures are pretty flat without much natural protection.
 
feeder said:
It is blowing hard now. The wind came up around 11 am. I heard Nebraska had 84 mph wind earlier.
Click to expand...

You heard right. They said the average was 74-78 with some gusts up to 84mph. They compared our winds to those of a hurricane.
 
Canada is letting some of their nasty stuff down again-- wind, rain, sleet and snow during the night and this morning- Only 40 degrees now with a nasty northwest wind -- Must have been a major barometric pressure change because out of the about 25 cows left to calve, I had 4 come between 8AM and Noon.......

Moisture appears to have quit now- got about .15 altogether-- but they say east of us is getting much more again......
 
Screamin' wind all night at 3 am it was clear and cold. By 6am it was pouring rain and by 11am a little snow. I checked the rain guage and it showed 45/100. I don't really think that is right cause it doesn't seem that wet.
 
Our normal here is 42, sounds like a lot , but we seem to need it. Last year we had 20 and had to haul in hay to make it through the winter. Two years ago we had 75. I couldn't believe it. Must have been a record, but I never could find one. Oh, well, we all tend to make due with what we get.
 

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