LUBBOCK, TX (KCBD) -
A Saturday drenched in rain showers across the South Plains. We know farmers are certainly happy about our rain fall but what, if anything, has the moisture done for area land? Thanks to the rain and snow we've seen today and this past week, what used to be loose, dry, top soil is now packed down with moisture.
This is good news for farmers. There's still time until planting season, which is in May for cotton farmers, to wait around for more rain. Now that we've had a little of it, it will give farmers a little something to do.
"Our top soil had gotten so powder dry that there was really nothing they could do whenever the winds got up around 35 miles per hour or more then the sand started blowing so now with this moisture, they'll be able to go in and do some cultivation and do some tillage work hopefully that'll greatly reduce the amount of soil blowing," Mark Brown of Agri-Life Extension says.
Brown says, ideally, the top 3 feet of soil should be moist before planting season. So more rain is needed, but every drop helps! The more pre-season rain we get, the less farmers will have to pump irrigation water. We are still in an extreme drought, but Brown hopes with the La Niña winter coming to an end, more rain will be on the way. Brown says that it's all about timing. Cotton is a drought-tolerant crop and the amount of rainfall isn't always as important as when the rain actually falls.
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