Sunday, Dec 2, 2012
Garza County News

TGP

Around The County

Published July 12, 2012 @ 6 a.m.

According to most U.S. climatologists, La Nina weather patterns dissipated around April of this year. To the relief of most of the United States, La Nina has been fading since around February. La Nina is abnormal cooling of waters in the equatorial Pacific which can last for years and cause major drought conditions in parts of the United States and Asia. Its counterpart, El Nino, is the heating of those waters which often causes droughts in Southeast Asia and Australia and can lead to floods in South America.

As for most of Texas, this weather change came none too soon for Post and most of Garza County, which received around 6 inches of rainfall in 2011. It was the worst single year on record for precipitation received and made even worse with periods of extremely high temperatures and numerous wildfires. To date, according to weather stations around the county, Post has received 8.52 inches of rainfall in 2012, Lake Alan Henry 11.53 inches and White River Lake area 12.82 inches. This has most things looking much better than we have in a while. But, we are not totally out of the drought yet. A drought is defined as a prolonged weather pattern when precipitation is less than 75% of the long-term average. But, we are in much better shape and conditions remain favorable to continue improvement.

Cotton conditions are a mixed bag of fair to excellent. We lost a few hundred acres a few weeks ago due to hail and some was damaged, but it looks to be recovering. Irrigation continues where available on an estimated 11,000 acres but will need some help from Mother Nature to continue to improve. Dry land cotton acres are holding on but could use some rainfall soon. Range land pastures were improving since the lack of rainfall in the past 12-18 months but additional rainfall will be needed in order to handle much grazing pressure.

Hopefully with rain in the forecast over the next couple of days we will be blessed with much needed rains across the county and South Plains.

 

 
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