Your back may thank you for not having to move lots of snow so far this winter, but we’re back in a drought, and that’s not necessarily a good thing. So just how dry is it?
According to Mike Ballweg, U.W. Extension Crops and Soils Agent for Sheboygan County, “This past January, 2022, was the third driest January in the last 128 years for Sheboygan County. So it’s…you know, the data supports what everybody knows, that it’s been very dry…very little snowfall.”
Sheboygan County is in a “moderate drought” according to the National Weather Service, a situation we’ve rarely escaped since last April. Since then, our part of Wisconsin is between 8 and 13 inches short on precipitation, and that has implications not just for snow lovers, but for farming as well.”
It’s one of Ballweg’s jobs to help farmers and others figure out how to manage seasonal changes. Ballweg says that he and other ag agents aren’t too concerned right now. He says that on a scale of concern from zero to ten, “At this point in the season, I would say a two or a three. And hopeful that by time we get into mid-April and into May we’re getting some precipitation. So we’re concerned, we’re not panicked, and we’re monitoring the situation and we’re hopeful that we’ll get back into some more normal precipitation patterns here in the next several months.”
There may be some relief on the horizon. Forecasters at the Climate prediction Center see March as having better-than-average odds of above normal precipitation based upon the La Nina conditions now in place, but they advise that the correlation is weak, and the only area favored for above normal precipitation during the March-May months is the far southeast corner of the state where they really do need it, as they’ve been in a sustained severe drought.
Around here, Ballweg said that although it would be good to restore some of the deep soil moisture reserves, when it comes to growing crops it’s not so much about how much rain we get, but when. He says that in a perfect world, it would be drier in April and May for planting, and wetter in late July and August when most crops mature.
But as for the crop prospects this year, he said, “I’m pretty confident that if we do have normal precipitation through this growing season we oughta be in pretty good condition.”
