Prairie View

Friday, May 08, 2009

Water Issues

In our part of the country, we make sure we pronounce the "kansas" when we use the full name of the Arkansas River, which comes here from Colorado and then threads its way into Oklahoma, through Arkansas, and empties eventually into the Mississippi.

Within the past decades Kansas and Colorado have been sparring in the courts over who has rights to the water in the "Ark." People in Kansas were indignant that the riverbed often had no water in it in the western part of the state, due to massive withdrawals for irrigation in the dry eastern plains of Colorado, where areas within the rain shadow of the Rockies receive as little as seven inches of rain a year. Kansas now has won rights to more of the river water than before.

When Shane and Dorcas were here last weekend, Shane reported that there's a lot of bitterness in Colorado, where they live, over the water that goes to Kansas in the Ark River. Their strategy is to harvest all they can before it reaches the Ark, and they lose their rights to it.

In Canon City, near where Shane and Dorcas live, water is distributed via irrigation ditches every 16 days. Everyone knows that you use up all the water in the ditches, whether you need it or not, because if you don't, once it gets to the Ark, "It's going to Kansas."

I'm not sure if we Kansans should feel guilty or not.

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This spring has been too wet most of the time to work in fields or gardens. A few of the drier times coincided with events that made it impossible to spend time in the garden--weddings and plant sales, etc. So yesterday we willfully ignored the still-too-wet conditions and staged a massive planting effort and got most of our veggie transplants in the ground--just in time for an overnight storm that dumped lots of rain and wind and large hail on everything. This was all accompanied by electrically charged pyrotechnics and thunderous drum rolls.

I really don't want to go look at the garden this morning, although I think we may have escaped some of the worst hail. Just before 4:00 when the fun began, I got up and checked the online weather report to learn that we had a severe thunderstorm warning and a flood warning, due to a line of severe storms that stretched from Partridge to four miles east of Hutchinson. It was moving southeast. At our house, we may have been on the edge of the worst of that activity.

Grant just now got an SOS call from Jared, his employer, who said the water is rising near his house and vehicle dealership just outside of Partridge. The siding on the house and dealership shop have hail dents. I can't imagine that the vehicles escaped damage.

Hiromi reports that it looks like we may have had several inches of rain, judging by the amount of water in the sheep's feed pan. We're not able to be very precise about this since Max uprooted and carried off our stake-type rain guage.

More rain is forecast for this morning. "Some of these storms may be severe." I'm so excited.

5 Comments:

  • oh, no. Is the wheat still standing?

    By Anonymous Cathy Miller, at 5/08/2009  

  • We had no more wind, rain, or hail this forenoon. The wheat is not headed out yet, so it's less susceptible to lodging than it would be in a few weeks. Right now, around us, the wheat looks fine. But I don't know how it is elsewhere, or how it would look for sure if you actually walked into the fields and saw it close up.

    By Blogger Mrs. I, at 5/08/2009  

  • Sat. morning: The wheat patch in front of my house has headed out in the last few days and it looks fine. Mom's flower gardens are full of lush growth, mostly green. Her and Lois' vegetable gardens both apparently escaped hail damage. We had some hail but it doesn't seem to have done much damage in Partridge. Streets were flooded for a short time. East of Arlington they had 4" of rain, where an unsealed pond was running over. -- Linda

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 5/09/2009  

  • I'm hearing that some local gardens didn't fare so well. And the Hutch News talks about shredded gardens south of Pleasantview.--Linda Rose

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 5/09/2009  

  • Me again. Some wheat is flooded out, though, looking yellow and sick.
    --Linda

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 5/14/2009  

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