Rains well timed for spring planting

Recent rains are coming just in time for spring crops.

Brad Cowan, county extension agent/agriculture for Hidalgo County, said farmers will soon begin planting grain sorghum, cotton, and corn, among other crops.

While Hidalgo County, he said, didn’t get as much rain as Cameron County, most of the weekend storms appeared to have drenched area near the boundaries of the two counties. Still, any extra rain will help.

"The timing’s good," he said. "We’re already starting to see some planting activity for the early planted crops, primarily corn and sunflowers are starting to see some signs of early planting."

Sugar cane, he said, won’t be significantly affected because it is grown on irrigated land. But the rains may delay harvesting of the crops, but there’s also an upside.

"It’d be nice because the rainfall doesn’t have the salts that irrigation water has," Cowan said. "Salt is one of the limiting factors to the yield in sugar cane for this area. If we didn’t have salt in the irrigation water, we could produce a higher tonnage of sugar cane."

The rains began Saturday and, as of Sunday morning, Brownsville had received 1.95 inches of rain and Harlingen 1.73, Barry Goldsmith, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Brownsville, said.

He speculated that by Saturday, the Valley may have received up to 5 inches.

The amounts received this early in the month, he said, are quite significant.

"It just shows you it doesn’t take much," he said. "A thunderstorm hits you just right in February, you can practically max out the rainfall for the month, because February tends to be a drier month than others."

Goldsmith attributed the recent wet weather to a "vigorouse upper level disturbance moving into northern and central Mexico over the next three to five days," adding, "And ahead of that it’s bringing up quite a bit of deep moisture in the atmosphere."

With more rain forecast this week will definitely put a dent in the drought, but won’t end it, he said.

The weather service forecast shows a 60-70 percent chance rain on Wednesday and Thursday.

"We could very well see our drought conditions improve one or two categories," he said, "which would still be considered severe, but you can’t get rid of a drought in a day or a week."