I didn’t mind the heat all that much, though. Apparently, since I grew up in that climate, I still retain the ability to adjust to it with relative ease.I had no idea his memories stretched back that far. ;)
The only thing keeping me from being completely miserable, other than central air, is that I grew up in Atlanta, and what Indianapolis calls a 'record heat wave', we called 'July'.
On the other hand, the drought is epic. En route to the fun show yesterday, Bobbi noted that you could probably wade across the White River just east of the College Avenue bridge. According to Farmer Frank, the corn crop up in his neck of the woods is pretty much done for, whether it starts raining now or not...
19 comments:
Same here in SW Ohio. Corn "went to tassel" over a month early and started drying from the roots up shortly after...something it shouldn't start doing until August. At first everyone was saying yields would be 50% of normal. Now...not even near that...
Lots of family farms in the Great Miami Valley...they can't take much of this kind of disaster on the 'ole family farm.
On a related note; having been born and bred in California, I do a mental double-take everytime I read something like "We're in a drought. It hasn't rained in three weeks!"
This is not meant to diminish the severity of the drought over there, but to simply point out that to a guy raised where no-rain for ten months is called "normal weather", I never truly grokked just how much rain really does fall on the rest of the world.
Saw Indiana last week and your corn looks worse than Iowa. A friend ruined a farmer's yeild by pulling one ear to look at it when we happened to be sitting next to a field. fully formed but small ear with decent kernels on about half, the others were teeny tiny. Farmer here says if we don't get rain in the next week it's done.
Stock the heck up on meat -- assuming you have a backup generator for the freezer -- when it gets cheap because it looks like producers are sending an excess to market to save on feed costs.
It looks like food in general, and HFCS and gasoline additives in particular, are going to expensive.
What are we up to now? Like a quadruple dip recession or something?
-SM
Yeah, they keep talking about a 'double-dip', and I keep wondering when we came out of the first one?
And you'd think, if they actually gave a crap about food prices, the clowns in Sodom-on-the-Potomac would cut the demands for ethanol from corn, but noooo....
Dry as bleep here in OK, too. I don't handle this heat as well as I used to; on the other hand, since I don't keep the a/c down very low(I love a/c, hate the bill when it's this hot), it bothers me a lot less than it does a lot of other people.
Y'know, if Bill Quick told me it was hot out, I'd go fetch a sweater.
Most years, we don't get hardly any precipitation in Salt Lake between late May and October. I've seen years of no rain from May until November. If a farmer around here doesn't irrigate, he's in trouble.
The drought is no joke, and is probably a disaster for the people involved.
But it's almost certainly not record heat, just about anywhere. The reason is that most temperature readings are taken at airports, and that's where all the records are being set. Here in ATL all the weather bunnies talked about "the temperature at Hartsfield airport".
The problem is that in the 1930s (when it was probably hotter than today) there was only one runway there and it may have been turf, not concrete. Now there are acres of pavement and thousands of jet engines belching exhaust.
We're not measuring the same environment that we were back then.
Rain, that's a different story, one that we're almost certainly measuring the same way. It's a much cleaner apples to apples comparison.
The drought in the midwest is a HUGE problem, coming to grocery stores near you in about 3 months... Re the heat, try growing up in Louisiana, where it is NOT a dry heat! :-)
As annoying as I used to think it was when my farmer uncles complained about too much or too little rain, I get the feeling that people from California, where they import tap water from hundreds of miles away, or Utah where they irrigate hay fields, don't fully grasp the connection between rain and corn.
Borepatch,
"The reason is that most temperature readings are taken at airports..."
The National Weather Service station in Indy is indeed referred to as "at the airport".
Google up "6900 West Hanna Ave., 46241" and tell me how much you think the concrete runways are affecting temps.
(In Atlanta, you can get your temps from ATL, FTY, PDK, LZU, or the NWS office in P'tree City.)
In fighting monsters, it is important that one does not become a monster. ;)
(BTW: Interesting site for the ATL here. The map is clickable for current WX from pretty much any station in N. GA.)
"I grew up in Atlanta, and what Indianapolis calls a 'record heat wave', we called 'July'."
Huh. In teh FLA it's 'normal'.
Heh. Grew up in Valdosta Georgia (very south...if you farted, they'd smell it in Florida). Heat and humidity got so bad there was no difference between shade and sunlight. Never much cared for the heat. I do enjoy the rain, though.
It gets so hot and humud in Florida, that John Gorrie invented "air conditioning" in the mid 1800s in Apalachicola.
I don't use air conditioning in the summer as I'm used to this, and I use 2 fans in each room. I'm cheap.
Drove across the Connecticut River this morning, and say half acre patches of dry land where I've fished for years. The tree line usually overhangs the water on both sides, and now there's a beach 30 yards wide on each side.
Not as hot as the 30's, fer sure, or even the '60's. But seriously dry.
The unofficial inside line I'm getting from the agricultural crop insurance people I have access to is this drought is actually WORSE than anything seen since the dustbowl days and now the real concern is whether or not the crop insurance providers purchaed 're-insurance' after signing all those contracts with grain farmers.
If they didn't, then google up Chub Insurance in the 1980's, because that's what is facing many operators and they won't survive the aftermath.
White County, Indiana (my home county) is one of those listed as the worst affected in Indiana. We even had an under-sectetary of agriculture helicopter in last week for a MSM dog and pony show in a parched cornfield near Idaville. (I was in Oregon.) So obviously IT'S BAD! (Give me a frickin' break!)
If you got the money, buy beef when it is on sale over the next 60 to 90 days at your local big box grocery when it is on sale and freeze for it for the next year or so because 6 months from now it will be 20% highter, if not mroe. Same with pork. Dairy products will be the first to show food price inflation so act accordingly.
Don't let anyone tell you otherwise but this drought is worse than anything seen in the 1980's and that one was so bad it got me to become a gunwriter.
Now that's desperate!...
All The Best,
Frank W. James
I spent six Augusts in Hotlanta, and it's nasty. But then, in Hotlanta you know some nice weather is coming. In Northwest Indiana, you have nasty Augusts, but in not too many months you'll be shovelling drifts large enough to conceal cars.
I'm beginning to like Winter better. You can dress against cold, but all you can do in heat is wear black and hope for a breeze.
In summer of 200 I moved to Austin, Texas.
Anyway, that summer was hot and dry, with about 90 days over 100F and no rain at all, that I recall. On the Sunday of Labor Day weekend the temperature got to 112F.
Let me know when it gets uncomfortably warm up north, mmmkay?
Post a Comment