Hail, wind and drought form a devastating blend for Nebraska farmers

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – Recent severe storms have brought much-needed moisture, but the hail and damaging winds are just another obstacle for farmers.

In Nebraska, slow rains typically fall in the early spring months, and thunderstorms more often come in the summer.

But the past few years, eastern Nebraska in particular has struggled to get those early rains.

This year, Lincoln recorded its second-driest May on record, with less than ½ an inch of precipitation.

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“Our drought conditions really took off,” said Curtis Riganti, a climatologist with the National Drought Mitigation Center. “And that has been improving recently as we’ve started to get those more typical, mid-part of the summer thunderstorm complexes that come through midafternoon, evening and overnight.”

He said we’ve seen fewer of those summertime thunderstorms as well, although the recent couple of weeks have helped.

But when the ground is dry from a lack of springtime rainfall, the hard and fast rain from these systems doesn’t sink in properly.

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“We want to see any precipitation we can get when we’re experiencing drought,” Riganti said. “When you’re trying to replenish soil moisture, you really want to see those more light-to-moderate, long-term rains that will help with that. Obviously, the large hail and damaging winds that we’ve been seeing from storms the last couple of weeks in parts of the state, those can damage crops.”

The combination of that with the drought can be devastating to farmers.

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Riganti said Nebraska is getting closer to the end of the severe weather season, but there’s a good chance we’ll see a few more storms come through.

Unfortunately, he said without slower rainfall, the drought will stick around for a while longer.

“It’s going to take quite a bit more systems like that throughout the summer, maybe into the fall, to help out with conditions.” Riganti said.

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