Writer: Joe Bryant (806) 746-6101 j-bryant1@tamu.edu
Contact: Dr. Randy Boman (806) 746-6101
LUBBOCK–Spring showers have brought smiles and happy anticipation of planting season to crop producers across the Texas High Plains. Two days of thunderstorms that skipped across the region in early April gave the farmers more moisture than they’ve enjoyed at this time of the season in the last four years.
The amount of rain varied from county to county — and even from one part of Lubbock to another. Lamesa received only 0.02 inches, Brownfield 0.03 inches, Muleshoe 1.0 inches and Plainview 1.2 inches. In Lubbock, meanwhile, a city fire station in the southwest part of town recorded 3.0 inches. The National Weather Service recorded 2.18 inches at its Science Spectrum station on South Loop 289 and 1.87 inches at the Lubbock International Airport. In Clarendon, some 60 miles southeast of Amarillo, 7 inches of rain fell in two hours.
“It was pretty widespread all across the cotton-producing area,” said Dr. Randy Boman, cotton agronomist with the Texas Agricultural Extension Service at Lubbock. Cotton is the major crop on the South Plains, which annually produces some 3 million bales.
In terms of timeliness, the rain is especially valuable, Boman said. “It will enable (cotton producers) to get our herbicides activated and get us in the mode for planting.” Planting in the area usually begins in May.
“We’re in much better shape than last year,” said Mark Brown, Lubbock County extension agriculture agent . At the end of April last year, Lubbock had recorded rainfalls of only 0.37 inches. This year, prior to the April showers, Lubbock had 1.62 inches, some 17 percent below normal. The 1.87 inches recorded by the weather service boosts the 1997 total to 3.53 inches.
A recent study by the High Plains Underground Water District found that every inch of penetrated rainfall produces an $80 million to $90 million combined return to South Plains farms. In addition to cotton, the area produces peanuts, grain sorghum, vegetables, corn, wheat, grapes, soybeans and other crops.
-30-