Agricultural News
2011 Drought in Pictures- The Drought Monitor and More
Fri, 08 Jul 2011 06:08:17 CDT
Drought conditions continue to punish the Southern Plains and Oklahoma. Given the season, prospects for widespread relief are less than promising. The latest U.S.
Drought Monitor report released Thursday morning now has moderate drought covering most of eastern Oklahoma. Severe-to-extreme drought continues spreading east as well with most of western Oklahoma within the exceptional drought category.
Just over 60% of the state of Oklahoma now is in severe drought or worse. The picture above tells the tale of where the drought is to this point in the summer of 2011.
How bad is it? Pictures provided to us below give a good feel of that. The first is from Jeff Jaronek who is with the Oklahoma Beef Council- and he provides a shot from 8 miles east of Cordell. He writes "Calvary Creek 1 mile upstream from where it empties into the Washita River. My grandpa hasn't ever seen this creek dry up before and can't remember ever hearing about it drying up either."
The next 2 shots down are from Garvin County- east of Pauls Valley, where Brent Thompson says the burnt looking corn and the slightly greener corn are in adjacent fields- neither field will make a corn crop but they are trying to turn it into silage.
The final shot is courtesy of Vic Schoonover with NTOK. He writes "WHIRLWINDS are said to be another statement of Mother Nature about continued dry weather. Not wanting to be negative here in a time of drought, but this one was seen on HW283 south of Altus, Ok., Wednesday afternoon spinning around in a field west of the highway. What prompted taking a photograph of this particular one was it's size. In some places, it would be characterized as a small tornado. It's spinning action and column of dirt flying was at least 10 stories high and it was very dense at it's base. It lasted around 10 minutes or so with another smaller one farther west from it. Not a good sign, according to the old timers who have lived their lives in southerwest Oklahoma."
These pictures include locations near Cordell, Pauls Valley and Altus.
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