Another spring of record rains soaks farmland
‘The ponds will need to be replanted,’ says Kendall-Grundy Farm Bureau President Scott Halpin
McHenry County farmer John Bartman looks out his windshield on Burma Road on the boundary between McHenry and Boone counties in a video he took, saying, “It’s almost like the ocean.” (FarmWeekNow.com)
By Ted Cox
A third straight year of record May rainfall had basement sump pumps operating around the clock in the Chicago area.
Now consider having to expand those sump-pump operations to a farm field.
Farmers across the northern part of the state found themselves not digging out but pumping out as best they could after a deluge this week. The Midwest Regional Climate Center reported that areas north of Interstate 80 received 400 to 750 percent of the average rainfall for mid-May, while the area between I-80 and Interstate 70 received three to four times what it usually does over the same weeklong time span.
“This is the worst we’ve had in quite some time,” Kendall-Grundy Farm Bureau President Scott Halpin told FarmWeekNow.com. “It’s not brutal, at least nobody was hurt. But it’s something we’re going to have to deal with.”
That comes after Illinois agriculture experts said a year ago they were in “unprecedented territory,” and never really recovered. This year appeared worse at this point for some farmers.
“They said this year would be better,” tweeted Kane County farmer Steve Pitstick, reporting on estimates that between 2.5 and 4.5 inches would fall on his region just last Thursday, before additional rains fell this week.
Halpin said he lost no livestock, as cattle moved to higher pasture ground, but it was a different story for the crops, and he estimated 80 percent of farmland in his area had already been planted with corn and soybeans.
“The ponds will need to be replanted,” he said. “It depends on how big the spots are if we’ll have to tear up whole fields or patch things in.”
Chicago reported its third straight — consider that, third straight — year of record rainfall for May, each year creeping higher about 8 inches, and that with 11 more days to go in the month.
McHenry County farmer John Bartman reported a relatively reasonable 3 inches of rain over 36 hours, but you wouldn’t know it from the fields after they’d already been saturated with previous rains. He took a video from Burma Road, on the border between McHenry and Boone counties, and shared it with FarmWeekNow’s CropWatchers 2.0 column.
“Is it Lake Michigan? No, it’s not,” he said, looking out on expanses of water on both sides of the road and estimating it covered as much as 300 acres. “Unbelieveable,” he added. “It’s almost like the ocean.”
Bartman told FarmWeekNow: “We are better than other areas of the state, but it's getting ugly here.”
According to the Illinois State Climatologist, for the month up to Tuesday the Chicago area got 8 inches of rain, the collar counties got 7, and a wide swath extending southwest across the state to Alton received 6 inches. The northeast corner of the state got between five and seven times the mean amount of rainfall over the last week, and that swath across the state running to Alton received four times the mean amount.
White County farmer Bryce Williams reported getting 3 inches of rain in a 30-minute downpour in the southeastern part of the state.
“We haven’t planted since sometime in April and it’ll be June before we get back in the field,” he said.