Wednesday, May 29, 1996

Weekend Storms Mixed Blessing For Cotton Growers

By MARK BABINECK
Associated Press

LUBBOCK - Farmers in the drought-ravaged High Plains couldn't even get through a desperately needed downpour without hardship.

The showers dumped up to 4 inches in some parts of northwest Texas last weekend, a welcome relief for cotton farmers anxiously awaiting some moisture to plant crops.

Then came the winds.

"Out here we probably lost about 80 to 90 percent of the cotton that was up," grower Don Langston said Tuesday.

Langston cultivates about 1,000 acres near Woodrow, eight miles south of Lubbock. About 500 acres were in the ground, he said, and now they're ruined.

The powerful deluge that fell from Friday through Sunday morning matted many farms down to a smooth mud cake. The gales that followed dried the soil and blew dust and sand across the fields in waves, burning up cotton plants in their paths.

"(The storms) probably did more damage than good," said grower Wayne Huffaker of Tahoka, south of Woodrow. "It rained too hard, then the 50 mph winds Sunday killed most of the irrigated cotton."

Elsewhere, hail and lightning-sparked fires further damaged a wheat harvest already plagued by the drought that is tormenting the southern Great Plains and southwestern United States.

The winds following the rain dried the top layer of soil, creating the blowing dust that gave much of the Lubbock area horizon a ruddy, bleak look afterward. Meanwhile, the soil was so wet underneath that it couldn't handle the weight of farm equipment.

"Everybody's been running (sand-fighting rigs) like crazy," said Huffaker, who added he's only seen one other storm followed by such high winds in his 35 years of cotton growing. "Tractors were getting stuck everywhere."

Sand fighting is unique to the sometimes dusty farms of northwest Texas. Growers pull large, spiked tills through the soil to roughen the terrain, blunting the effects of blowing sand and dust that collect on flat land.

The rains also will cause recently planted dryland cotton crops to sprout too early and die, victims of premature moisture above ground and not enough below to serve the plants' tap roots.
Dryland crops rely on rainfall for moisture.

Many growers south of Lubbock watched the clouds become an atmospheric Gatling gun, pelting fragile seedlings with hail. Even pea-sized stones can be a mortal blow to a cotton seedling.

"It would be like a 400- or 500-pound rock falling on your head," said Shawn Wade, spokesman for the Plains Cotton Growers group.

The storms benefited dryland farmers who hadn't planted yet. Dryland cottonseed must be in the ground by early to mid-June, and many farmers were holding out for one decent spring rain before planting.

"I've tried to wait and stay out of (dryland) and give it some time for the moisture to get into the ground," said Wilson farmer David Wied, who helplessly watched the wind wreck his irrigated cotton last weekend. "Some areas are going to be iffy because they've been so dry for so long."

Farmers say irrigated cotton, which develops more slowly than dryland plants, must be resown by Friday at the latest. Then they must hope for two or three gentle summer rain showers and a hot, dry September with no early cold spells.

"It's a big quandary, but we'll work out of it," Huffaker said.