Farmers need rain to save cotton

Area farmers are spending a lot of time monitoring weather forecasts, hoping to hear meteorologists tell them rain is on the way.

"If we don't get some rain in the next couple of days, a lot of our cotton is going to start shedding the new bolls," said Tim Reed, Franklin County coordinator for the Alabama Cooperative Extension System.

With each rainy day in July, Colbert County farmer Dallas Hollaway's hopes for a successful cotton crop were heightened. Now that the rain has tapered off, those hopes are beginning to wane.

"It looks a lot better now than it did the first of June, but if we don't get some more rain in the next day or two, it's going to start going downhill fast," Hollaway said. "Any rain we get is going to be too late to help my corn, but I've still got hope for the cotton if we can just get a little more rain."

Reed said some cornfields could benefit from rain this week as well. Cattle farmers need more rain on their pastures to keep the grass growing and ponds filled to provide water for their herd.

Weather forecasters are not providing much encouragement.

"Unfortunately, it doesn't look like we're going to have any widespread rain for at least the next five days," said Robert Boyd, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Huntsville.

A fairly frequent stretch of rainy days in July helped Lauderdale, Colbert and Franklin counties break out of an exceptional drought, the most severe category assigned by the U.S. Drought Monitor.

The westernmost portions of the three counties and all of Lawrence County are now in a severe drought, which is the third most severe of the five category listing. The central and eastern communities in those counties are in an extreme drought, the second most severe category.

Rainfall in the Shoals was 3.12 inches above normal in July. So far this month, rainfall is 1/2-inch below normal.

For the year, the rain deficit is almost 16 inches in the Shoals.

In spite of the grim outlook for more rain, Reed said area cotton farmers have not given up hope for making a good crop.

"Right now, our cotton crop looks better than it did at this time last year," he said. "If we can just get another inch or two of rain this week, another inch or so a couple of more times this month and maybe another good rain in early September, we could wind up with a good cotton crop."

The July rains boosted the expected corn harvest in

Franklin.

"At the end of June, we were looking at around 30-to-40 bushels per acre from our corn. Now we're looking at somewhere around 70 bushels per acre on average," Reed said. "The jury is still out on our cotton. How much our farmers make will depend on how much rain we get this month."

Randall Armstrong, extension coordinator for Lauderdale, said the July rains allowed some cattle farmers to harvest hay from their fields. Now that the rain has waned, some farmers are again beginning to worry they will not produce enough hay this summer to meet their winter needs.

Farmers are not alone in being worried about the lack of rain.

Coleen Vansant, public information manager for the Alabama Forestry Commission, said foresters are concerned about the possibility of a more active than usual fall fire season. "If it doesn't start raining, we're going to go into our wildfire season this fall in a drought. That will not be good at all," she said

She said the potential for catastrophic wildfires is already high.

July's rains allowed forestry commission officials to lift

some restrictions on outdoor burning.

The commission is issuing some permits for debris fires and other outdoor burning, but is highly selective about when they are issued.

Tennessee Valley Authority spokesman Gil Francis said the agency continues to struggle to keep its lakes along the Tennessee River filled. He said recent rains did little to raise lake levels. "As dry as it was, most of the rain that fell soaked into the ground. We had very little runoff into the reservoirs," Francis said. "We need about three Valley-wide rain events of about 2 inches each to give us the runoff we need to improve water flows and water quality, and boost hydroelectric generation."

Dennis Sherer can be reached at 740-5746 or dennis.sherer@timesdaily.com.