Rain Rain Go Away

Weather Guesser says maybe a tenth of an inch overnite WRONG AGAIN Wife woke me up about 1AM told me the car dealer next door was moving his cars to higher ground. I looked out the back door and the river between the house and garage is over 2 feet deep.So I go out to move our vehicles to hlgh ground that VW Beetle is real low to the ground I got the truck and trailer moved out probably won't go to the tractor show anyway. Equinox is standing by next door for a quick getaway when the house starts to float away. The gravel driveway will need a couple of more loads of gravel when its over. 3:30 am and radar shows the backside of the storm about 75 miles west of here. Sandbags at outside cellar door are working quite well it's only 3 to 4 ft.deep in the cellar now. Amazing how that 40 yr old water heater can keep going after these 100 yr floods, this is the 5th one since 2006 June 28th is the same day as that one. The fella next door has left already,
Went over to the church after I got this place sand bagged; they needed a boss for a little while I just called and it seems to be under control. Tomorrow there will be canoeing down main street again.
Did I mention that those GFI circuit breakers will be gone next week they don't seem to work well with sump pumps. I already eliminated the ones at church and all the pumps are working, Why would anyone put them in a circuit with a freezer or sump pump?
I'll try to post an update and pictures tomorrow.

This rain sure has made a mess of things, I checked a bunch of hay fields yesterday, more recent plantings, crop looks good, but you'll never get any of it in, I'm talking rolling hills and sloped fields, better than a drought, but enough already. I see this one came straight up, moving fast, cleared us rapidly, but the bands of rain further west looked intense, wind was howling at 530am, finally toppled an old dead elm in the field near the house. Forgot to mention the 90% humidity, walked and sprayed liquid fence on the lower garden, I can't figure it out, age or just what, immediately start to sweat, if this does not change, there won't be much good hay around here, that is for sure.

Send it to Texas. We need all the rain we can get.Grass is brown and tanks are low.

(quoted from post at 07:24:24 06/28/13) Send it to Texas. We need all the rain we can get.Grass is brown and tanks are low.

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I agree. Feeding hay every Summer is getting OLD and expensive.

yup - same here in mass.

We cut some hay extra early and glad we did. But wish we did more.

Getting to that time where we need to just cut what's left (a lot) and push it into the woods and hope for a decent second cutting.

Guess that balances things out - last year the weather was so good we got a rare third cutting.

I'll agree also. Just moved my cattle to another pasture, they walked around for about 10 min then came back to the bale feeder and started on the hay. Just hope the idiots don't start on the fireworks for the 4th or there is gonna be some bad fires.

I feel for you guys getting too much rain. There area areas not ten miles form me that got WAY too much rain just here in the last few days. Lots of flooding going.

I about have the gravel worn out in the drive way dragging it back UP hill. Just graded the lane Sunday and Tuesday it washed it out worse than it was before. Small/low cars would have had trouble getting it.

I do have a question for guys living where their basements and all flood regularly. WHY???? After the FIRST time I would have moved to higher ground. A home that has been flooded will always have a smell to it on hot humid days.

Why would you push hay into the woods? surely it is worth mowing baling and wrapping?. If we did not have balers and wrappers in Ireland then our cattle would starve!. Even if you chop the grass and put it in a neat pile with some polythene sheeting over it it will make nice silage....no matter how wet.
Sam

Same in the Mohawk Valley just to my north. Mant roads washed out. Fort Plain ES using boats to rescue people, and to top it off CSX had two freight trains derail and the whole E-W coridor is closed down indeinatly. Amtrack is bussing pasingers, but a portion of the thruway - I90,has also been closed due to flooding.
Loren

I got that tenth of an inch. Trouble is,I have 40 acres of hay on the ground,planned to start raking it this morning but now it's soaked all the way through and the clouds are hanging right on.

We are having the first nice day in two weeks in Eastern Iowa. There is a 60% chance of rain tomorrow, I am getting lawn mowed today. We have only had one stretch of 4 days without rain, and got the hay done then.

Mine has been down for about 10 days with 5 days of rain on it and the bottom is starting to turn dark.

I finally cut my first hay of the year yesterday, tires wet even on the side hills yet. Back to back storms last Thurs. and Fri left about 7 inches on top of all the wet all spring. Still cleaning up the down trees and mess and getting lawns mowed. I have standing water all over, field road under water, every thing washed out and dirt washed all over, over my driveway and down the waterways etc. Everbody is working hard to save what's left. I'm just thankfull that after that one last Friday night that the buildings were still standing, I don't ever want to see wind like that again. It did tweak the old dairy barn at my sons so the doors don't fit, but she's still standing.

More houses than cows in JR's (and mine) neck of the woods. Unless its your own farm and youre feeding cows, not worth the effort.

Don't know if it's the same weather pattern but we had a real big one blow through SE Michigan yesterday afternoon around 5:00 PM. Some areas got 4-5" of rain. Pretty spotty but some people had 50-60 mph winds. Bad flooding, 100k were w/o power for awhile. Ground is pretty saturated now, any more rain (which is in the forecast) and flooding will happen pretty quickly.

There was a window with perfect weather for hay, and some got it in, but here it was stunted, there was not much, but I do believe in getting it off the field, then you have another chance at it. We were bone dry in the end of April, early May, low humidity, sunny and clear, California weather, thats we needed the rain, followed by the clear weather, would have been a good time to cut and bale, the only thing you could do now is as Sam says, sileage bales or sileage, unfortunately, all the ground my farmer friend has, is all in hay, which he round bales and is all sold in advance, I am not sure if if that large dairy would need or take sileage bales, as they have giant bunkers and a lot of ground in corn and alfalfa, they take the hay and mix it with the feed. He did get one field baled, and we used to put it in the barns immediately to keep the value up, but that one field a much older planting, bales are still there, I can see why, that field the weeds were more prevalent, next cut would usually be mostly grass when that happens, however the remaining majority of his fields were all real nice stands, many recently planted, but you can't get in there without making a real mess, ruts and all that on the low areas, I've worked most of the fields, however if the weather does change and I think it will, it can turn around quickly and he could still get a nice 2nd cut given the moisture.

Last hay I baled was last Friday-Saturday when we had a 4 day stretch of decent weather. My farm's rain gauge,(I'm located in the Mohawk Valley of New York State), has accumulated just shy of 16 inches since May 22, with more forecasted during the next 5-7 days. I know some folks to the west of us have had more than we have had. Quite a contrast from last year when it was a bit too dry during June. Dry hay quality is not looking too good at this juncture. My rotationally grazed pastures look good, but the quality is down... too rank. Cattle are consuming quite a bit of mineral mix and salt.

PLEASE sent the rain my way . Haven't had measurable moisture in two months. Drier than last year. Western NE

Many years they promise an inch of rain and if any get 1/10th. This year they promise a 1/10th and we two inches. Here in Lansing area of Mi they say we are just a few inches from our annual rainfall and it isn't even July yet.

Finally checked the rain gauge, we got 4 1/2", Five miles north in Earlville they got 6 1/4". Spent the day hosing the mud out of the garage and putting some of the gravel back in the holes.