I can buy a Farmer’s Almanac or listen to TV weathermen, but either way I am getting concerned about weather patterns. Have you noticed how every time since last spring when they talk about getting a soaking rain, we get two drops and some get nothing? That means all the signs were right for us to get rain in the usual pattern but it has not happened. I am not picking on meteorologist because they have a tough job. I did it for several years on the radio and TV, but weather predictions are like puzzles pieces, except some are not coming out like they should. Rain goes under, west or east of us.
That means one thing to me, that we are still in the dry patterns we have seen the past two years. The Pacific Ocean is cold and the Atlantic is warm – that has nothing to do with CO2. Scientist discovered the people keeping records were only using favorable temperatures. Secondly, the heating and cooling of the ocean creates many things that change weather. This was a for-profit scheme to make some folks richer and some of the “famous” investors sold out their part in it, indicating to me they knew it was a hoax. They wanted to set up selling carbon credits so they could make money on it and end up charging electric consumers for their get rich game, not helping out the consumer.
Some forecasts show the rain will start in March or April. That is easy to predict. Those months usually average 4 to 5 inches. But the situation is still tough. Beaver Lake looks like some desert water hole. One man told me about all the islands sticking up at the Highway 12 bridge. I can recall those islands; I fished around them way back in the 1960s when Beaver filled up. Everyone from Harrison to St Paul and Strickler, Ark., get their water from there. The Corp says they have plenty of water but another dry summer may make them wonder, like I do.
Last year was devastating to livestock producers indicated by the thousands of mother cows that flooded our sale barns. Many producers are considering reseeding grass. Others that replanted pasture last fall are wondering if their new seedlings will survive. Fields are costly to replant and to lose it would be another tough kick in the pants.
Who has a handle on it? Quite frankly, I can only observe how things are going. But it will take several years to get Beaver Lake back to the right level when it does rain. They say an inch of rain over the whole watershed can raise it one foot, but we’d need lots of them because the ground is so dry.
But like most farmers did before us, we will watch the clouds, pray a little because it can’t hurt, and hope we move back into a cycle where the rain falls. There was a story about a farmer talking to another about the drought. The one said. “The Good Lord will send us rain.” The second man (not to sound bad) said, “He may but I don’t think he knows much about farming.”
All we can do is talk about it. God Bless you, your family and America.
Western novelist Dusty Richards and his wife Pat live on Beaver Lake in northwest Arkansas. For more information about his books you can email Dusty by visiting ozarksfn.com and clicking on ‘Contact Us’ or call 1-866-532-1960.
