By Elizabeth Rembert
Around the end of June, Ryan Krenk didn’t want to even look at his corn fields.
Deep dryness had scorched the crop in southeast Nebraska. The plants had a grayish hue instead of the usual vibrant green and were just touching his calf or even ankle when they should have been above his head.
“All I really wanted to do was just go home and not look at it,” Krenk said. “Because it was sickening, just absolutely sickening. I didn’t want the memory.”
As the weeks ticked by without any rainfall, Krenk was sure the corn would die.
“It looked like death,” he said. “And I said ‘I don’t think it’s going to see tomorrow.’ And it’s still somehow here, several tomorrows later.”
Early July rains provided a lifeline to many crops in the Midwest and Great Plains. Now Krenk’s corn is taller and greener.
“The turnaround is magical,” he said. “But we need more rain, that's for sure. We are by far not out of the woods. Another dry week and we’re right back where we were.”
It will take consistent precipitation to nourish crops and improve the drought, which has been baking soil and plants for years in portions of the Midwest and Great Plains.
The region went into this summer with a lack of soil moisture that Jenny Rees, an extension educator with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said was unlike anything she’d witnessed.
“I’ve never seen a year where we started the season with no subsoil moisture,” she said. “Even in the 2012 drought we had a bit of a head start with some subsoil moisture. This year is at a whole other level because we didn't have that.”
Then Mother Nature dealt an incredibly dry May and June — the time when many states can get up to 60% of their annual precipitation.
“When you miss precipitation during those two months, you know there’s going to be trouble,” said Doug Kluck, a climatologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“We didn’t have that moisture to bank for later in the summer when things typically get even drier.”
At this point, parts of the Midwest and Great Plains are dealing with drought that’s similar to a chronic cold. Dryness has been lurking for years and nagging at farmers as they’ve raised their crops and livestock.
Dry weather quickly became drought, and now it will take a lot of rain to ease symptoms.
“Yes, we’re having some rains,” Kluck said. “But gosh, give it a week. And what we see is pretty much going to be gone. A lot of it’s going to get used by the plants and everything growing right now.”
John Ackerman said he always feels blessed to farm, but it’s been a challenging year near the central Illinois city of Morton.
As the drought spread east from Kansas and Nebraska, Ackerman’s fields went 50 days without measurable rain. He looked at the forecast every single day, worried that the soil might be too dry to plant his pumpkins.
Ackerman ended up planting the seeds much deeper in the soil, to help them find moisture. That makes it harder for the plant to grow up through the dirt, but luckily the recent rains have helped the plants poke through the ground.
“Part of the improvement is also my mood,” he said. “My wife says I’m slightly less grumpy than I’ve been over the last month, so that’s a win.”
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