Tropical rains mostly beneficial
EDINBURG – Wrap-around rain bands from Tropical Storm Dolly dumped heavy rains on South Texas recently, which were mostly beneficial but interrupted the close of the area’s cotton harvest, according to a Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service expert.
Brad Cowan, an AgriLife Extension agent in Hidalgo County, said the Sept. 3 rains kept growers from harvesting about 5,000 of the 145,000 acres of cotton planted in the four-county area.
“A couple of days of hot, windy weather will dry up soggy fields enough to allow growers to go in there and harvest what’s left in the field, and to do the fieldwork mandated by state law,” he said.
After a dry spell of 30 to 45 days, the widespread rains were “a huge blessing” for agriculture, Cowan said.
“Everybody in the Lower Rio Grande Valley got some rain, some more than others,” he said. “Some areas got as much as 5 inches, others only 1 to 2 inches. It was a real benefit to crops that needed watering at this time of year, like citrus and sugarcane. It also helped the fallow ground that will be planted in the fall or next spring.”
Rain helps agriculture by leaching accumulated salts down past the root-growing zone of the soil profile, and replenishing soil moisture, Cowan said.
“It will also help cattle producers grow the grasses they so desperately need,” he said. “The downside is the cotton that had not yet been harvested. So those growers are anxious to get in there and finish up, which includes destroying stalks to remove them as overwintering sites for boll weevils, which was also interrupted by the rain.”
Any additional significant rainfall before growers get the opportunity to finish up could mean yield losses or fiber quality degradation, Cowan said.
Tropical Storm Dolly was the fourth named storm of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season, according to the Weather Channel’s Hurricane Central website. Its center moved ashore well south of Brownsville, between Tampico and Cabo Rojo, Mexico, in the early morning hours of Sept. 3.
As her low pressure center dissipated, it wrapped heavy rain into the Lower Grande Valley of Texas. It also brought high winds, rip currents and minor coastal flooding to parts of the Texas coast, the website noted.
“Tropical storms that come in south of us are usually beneficial for us,” Cowan said. “They usually send us widespread beneficial rains without the wind damage or flooding rain.”
Unfortunately, Dolly is not expected to drastically improve depleted reservoir levels behind Falcon and Amistad dams that provide water for agriculture, industry and municipalities in the Rio Grande Valley, Cowan said.
“Dolly missed the bull’s-eye,” he said. “She was just a little too far south to be of significance to our watershed. Levels should rise just a couple of percentage points, but every little bit helps.”
John Norman, a cotton and grain crop consultant and retired AgriLife Extension entomologist in Weslaco, said despite the late rains, the 2014 cotton season is moving along well.
“I don’t anticipate a lot of problems,” he said. “Anytime rain falls on open cotton bolls it can’t be good, but our harvest was almost over and there’s always some late cotton.”
Because of above-average yields this year, gins have a lot of bales to process, Norman said.
“But most of our cotton is either at the gin or harvested out in the fields under the protection of module coverings. Whether they be the rectangular bales or the yellow plastic-wrapped round bales, those covers provide a lot of protection.”