Saturation

SNOW in May??????????????  Yep twice the most recent on May 22 just a skiff but...............snow this late?

Last post I was worried we would not have enough moisture to really bring the grass up.  Now we are considering building an ark.   We have had rain almost every day for the past two weeks.  The ground is now saturated and flood warnings are out for this afternoon.  And it's still raining.  And the grass is knee deep to a tall cowboy - which is great!

Spring in Wyoming is not typical this year at all.  Usually we have snow in March and April.  This year nothing.  It was so dry.  And the grass was not coming up well even though the temperatures were quite warm.

Then in May it became cold.  We have not had a 70 degree day yet  here North of Nowhere and it's almost JUNE!  And the rain started and has continued.  Also not typical.

Livestock is miserable.  They have shed a lot and now they are wet and stay wet.  We had horses in the corral to feed them so they did not get so fat on the new grass but it was so muddy, we turned them out.  I felt sorry for them standing in all the mud in the corral.

The Bull has not been so fortunate.  He has to stay in until it's breeding season.  And the butcher steer is in with him and we are waiting for nice weather to get him in the freezer.

I wonder if this is what global warming will look like?   I suspect we will alternating between very rainy cool years like this year, and very dry severe droughts (not looking forward to those at all!)

Just some thoughts from Muddy Wyoming!

Be Careful of what You Wish For!

I haven't had much time to post recently.  I came back from vacation in May to a job where my boss had left the company and much more responsibility -- ie MORE work.  So I've been busy.

The weather in Wyoming (and most of the northern Rocky Mountain Region) has been so cold and wet.  They say it's due to a La Nina which takes moisture from the southwest and sweeps it up to the north; leaving the southwest in a terrible drought!!  La Nina is when the equatorial Pacific is cooler and El Nino is when it's warmer (we usually have a drought in a El Nino year). They say in Texas right now, it is the worst in 100 years.  I can sympathize with them.

 

Photo taken in June in midst of the drought years in 2004.  Notice the lack of green grass and how short it is.  We were definitely very short of feed that year!  Often we had to begin feeding hay in late September to the middle of May.

October, 2007

After going through a decade of drought (late 1999 to 2008/2009) I know how that wears you out.  You are always struggling to get feed/water or whatever to your livestock and paying for it.  Or you really bite the bullet and sell them not knowing how you are going to replace or WHEN.

This year places in Wyoming have had almost 200% of the normal precipitation.  We are at about 150% over normal here Sixty Miles north of Nowhere.  Welcome indeed .......

Tall Grass is Welcome

 

But it did not come from all this white stuff; we did not get our normal amount of snow.

In stead we got rain; almost every day from early April until late July!!!  And that for Wyoming IS definitely not normal.

So with all this rain, you would think there would be a BUMPER CROP of hay, right?

Nope, it was so cool the hay did not grow a lot.    Our hay grower told us he is short of hay this year and we won't get our normal 30 tons.  The GOOD news is we won't need it.  We probably won't have to start feeding until after January first, 2012.

Certainly makes me wonder what Wyoming will look like after the climate changes in about 2050 or 2100.  Makes me frightened for my grandchildren and I think I will be glad I won't be here to see our place which is near and dear to my heart.  Nope I'll be pushin' up daisies by then, hopefully over on what we call sheep hill where you can see our entire 160 acres and beyond.