Too warm, too early. How this heat wave is affecting drought levels and farmers in Nebraska
The warmth in the air is causing come concerns for the Drought Monitor as the precipitation is not falling.
NORFOLK, Neb.— The warmth in the air is causing come concerns for the Drought Monitor as the precipitation is not falling.
“The big thing is we just aren’t getting precip, whether it’s just that snow that will be nice and melt,” Climatologist at the National Drought Mitigation Center and an author of the U.S. Drought Monitor Lindsay Johnson said.
The dry warm weather brings some concerns and benefits for farmers. On one hand they can do soil work earlier since the ground is not frozen.
Though it also brings the risk of fire, which can spread easily in these types of conditions and water is also limited during these times as well…
“When we get into these drier situations, you have to balance not only ag use, but municipal use as well. And so you'll see even like the city of Norfolk will put in watering restrictions.” University of Nebraska AG Extension for Madison County Educator Wayne Ohnesorg said.
Norfolk has seen a third of the normal precipitation in 2026, with only 13 days having precipitation this year so far.
The Drought Monitor has Madison County between unusually dry and moderate drought, Lindsay Johnson explains how that is calculated.
“What moderate drought means, so we use percentiles, which basically allows us to look at out of 100 years, how often do we see these kind of conditions or would we expect to see these kind of kind of conditions?” Johnson said. “And so for like moderate drought 10 to 20 times in a 100 year period is how often we would expect to see these kind of conditions. So it's not super common, but it's not the most rare.”
Though Madison County hasn’t had a day not freeze, there is a risk of farmers planting too early when the weather seems good.
“If they plant too early and the crop comes up too early and we do get those really cold conditions that could potentially pop in later, that's where the damage occurs, because those newly emerged crop seedlings are not as hearty to those cold conditions, Ohnesorg said.