Ranchers in Divide County, North Dakota, rely on the rain. Last year the rains failed, and the temperature shot up. ‘The crops just didn’t come out of the ground.’
Drought is an especially wily adversary. As an officer of the North Dakota Department of Emergency Services told me recently, "You can't put up a sandbag wall to stop a drought."
In Divide County, agricultural producers are especially vulnerable to the effects of drought, since they depend on dryland methods. Dryland farmers use no irrigation. Instead, they rely wholly on rain: to initiate the lush growth of little bluestem and other pastureland grasses that will sustain their herds through the summer, and to secure the hay harvest that will get the herd through the winter. Not to mention the rain they need for their wheat, barley and pea cash crops.
In 2017, ranchers were optimistic when they put their cattle out to graze in late spring. There'd been record snowfall over the winter, and regional forecasts weren't calling for any drought conditions in their northwest region of the Great Plains. By May, though, concerns were rising. Rain failed to come, and the good winter moisture evaporated into a cloudless sky. By July, two-thirds of the pastureland in the Dakotas was in poor condition, and across the High Plains, from Kansas up to Canada, temperatures were above normal while precipitation was low—perfect conditions for what's known as a "flash drought," sudden and severe.
By the first of August, the USDA reported that nearly three-quarters of North Dakota's topsoil was desperately bereft of moisture. Part of Divide County was at the most severe drought level, and 60 percent of the state was facing some level of drought. It was the state's fourth-driest summer since record-keeping started in 1895. Ranchers hauled water to their herds and vied for hay donations that flowed in from other regions after the state opened a hay lottery. Anything to supplement the feed of the hungry cattle.
What happened? How had it happened so fast? And would it happen again? ...
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