By BETTY RIDGE
Drivers along Oklahoma highways and area roads have noticed the vegetation along the roadside becoming increasingly brown and parched.
The fields aren’t far behind. And homeowners have had to pull out the hoses to keep their gardens and lawns watered, or allow them to succumb to the hot, dry weather.
For a while this spring, it seemed Mother Nature never was going to turn off the faucet. There were 19 straight days of rain, ending in May. Memorial Day campers found the water still a bit high on area lakes, but by July 4 they were glad to find a cool respite from the 100-degree heat.
Late Monday and early Tuesday, Cherokee County got some relief with about .8 inch of rain, with other areas around northeastern Oklahoma getting 1 to 2 inches or a little more.
This year follows an exceptionally wet one, said meteorologist Joe Sellers of the National Weather Service office in Tulsa. So the dry weather that began in June and continued in July, with a number of days recording 100-degree temperatures or higher, may seem even worse.
“As far as rainfall, right now for the year we’re actually slightly above the average,” Sellers said.
So far this year this area has received 24.14 inches of rain, or 1.91 inches above normal.
“This time last year we were sitting at 40.2 inches,” Sellers said.
Martin Webb Sr., who works at the Tahlequah Farmers Co-Op and cuts hay in the Welling and Tailholt areas, was grateful for this week’s rain.
“They’re happy it’s cool, very happy it rained. It might save a few hay bales,” he said of himself and the customers he talks with at the Co-Op. “This rain’s a godsend, and if we get some more the hay may come back.”
He received about 3/4 inch of rain on the fields he cuts.
“All the fields out there were burning up. I cut Saturday and that will be the last cutting this year if we don’t get more water,” Webb said. “Some of the ones in shady areas have a little better soil and they’ll come back. Some of the ones in sandy areas may not come back this year.”
Normally he gets two cuttings a year, with some fields producing three cuttings if the weather is favorable and they have an early first cutting. This year he expects many fields will get only one cutting.
The cooler temperatures are better for the fields, as well as providing better conditions for the people who have to work in them, he said.
Webb said about 90 percent of the people he has talked to report a smaller hay crop this year. Two of his fields produced more than last year, but they were well-fertilized.
But land that normally produces 33 to 35 round bales may be producing 15 or 16 bales this year. Webb said he had one field that produced 1,100 square bales last year, and only 800 this year.
And the 100-degree heat has taken its toll on gardens,
“They can’t keep enough water on their gardens,” Webb said. “We’ve had a lot of people coming in and saying that.”
Mike and Nancy James still are producing some of their crops on their garden west of Hulbert, but the summer dry weather and heat have done in others.
“The heat wave’s really got us good, and brought a lot of bugs in,” he said. “We did get our corn out before it got burned up. We’ve got a few cucumbers, we’re getting tomatoes and we have a few squash. Our herbs are doing a lot better because we water them frequently. They’re by the porch and they get some shade.”
They are producing sage, chocolate mint, rosemary, bee balm and fennel. Nancy uses some of the herbs in her soap making.
“Our blackberries did really well this year,” James said. They still had enough moisture from the spring rains to produce well.
James and his garden also welcomed this week’s rain.
“This little rain we had really revitalized everything. The grass is growing, and the garden looks refreshed. The cooler temperatures are helping, along with the dew,” he said.
Sellers said the National Weather Service predicts normal or better than normal temperatures for the remainder of July.
“The 100-degrees are over, it looks like,” he said. “But we’ll just have to see how August turns out.”
