Hurricane Beryl is now a Tropical Storm as it moves northeast through the Midwest.
The storm has caused significant disruption in Texas, impacting over 2 million homes and businesses with power outages. According to officials, the storm’s torrential rains and high winds forced major port closures in Corpus Christi and Galveston. These closures affected crude oil exports, refinery operations, and global shipping lanes.
USDA Meteorologist Brad Rippey says this is what farmers can expect:
“Starting with east Texas, we do expect to see widespread 5-10 inch rainfall totals associated with the remnants of Beryl and some of those isolated totals could be in the one-foot to 15 inch range, likely causing extensive flash flooding. Houston, no stranger to hurricane-induced flooding— many areas in east Texas still seeing their flood of record from the remnants of Hurricane Harvey in 2017. This is not likely to be quite as bad as that, but because of some saturated soils across eastern Texas, we could see a multi-day flood event unfolding across east Texas.”
The National Weather Service has now issued flood warnings and watches from east Texas to as far as southern Indiana.
While many locations are likely to receive beneficial rainfall amounts, there is a chance for more than 3 inches in some areas, causing localized flooding.
In Southern Missouri, excessive runoff is possible, with soils already saturated. That could lead to flooding in several counties.
For some, these recent floods may be bringing up painful memories from the past.
More than 30 years ago, in 1993, farmers in the Western Corn Belt were shocked.
A journalist with AgWeek combed through articles she had written at the time, farmers shared with her then that too much rain is worse than not enough and if they got half a crop they would be good.
Anne Bailey concluded that a hopeful sentiment from farmers still remains today. They are resilient no matter how bad conditions get and most have faith it will get better.
