VIDEO: Harvesting In The Heat

NOXUBEE CO., Miss. (WCBI) — With rain in the forecast, locals farmers need to pay extra attention to the weather as harvesting begins.

“The season for the most part has been a normal, really dry season”, said Noxubee County farmer Jack Huerkamp, “…not more than any other real bad year we’ve had, it hasn’t been exceptional, but it is an exceptional dry summer.”

Huerkamp said the last time a decent rain fell on his farm was back April.

The blazing heat plus the lack of rain are making fields brown and dusty, costing farmers a lot of green.

“We’ve pumped a lot of water on our irrigated corn this year to get by”, said Huerkamp, “…it’s money out of my pocket, and the lord’s rain is always better than irrigated water. We put out an inch and we get an inch rain, and inch rain is always so much better.”

“…an inch of irrigation water is better than nothing, by far.”

“The air is really tropical in nature with this system…something like two inches could occur in an hour or two”, said WCBI Meteorologist Isaac Williams, “and if that happens, the ground simply can’t absorb it that quickly so it becomes instant runoff.”

Heurkamp remembers when you could not get an up to the minute forecast in the field.  Now, he has that information at his fingertips.

“Being able to bring the radar up on your phone and go, ‘okay, there’s rain here that’s developing and its coming on and we’re off somewhere and we’re kinda tied up, we can say alright its coming…”, said Huerkamp.

“We can make a decision better than we used to…it used to be you stand here and look at the roof of the shop and watch the clouds and see you know its moving towards us so maybe not, so those apps are great.”

Williams said some areas could see around four to five inches of rainfall.

Williams also said the area will be under a rainy pattern for the next seven to ten days, “but after that, i don’t really expect any major rain producing situations anytime soon.”

Heurkamp says a big concern when farming corn are torrential downpours.

All of the water creates a mold and toxins that can kill the stalk.