Mother Nature pounds county with rain and hail

By Cherry Sokoloski
North Forty News

Enough already. While most everyone, including farmers, greeted the June rains with enthusiasm, there can be too much of a good thing.

Welcome rain often came hand in hand with destructive hail, damaging crops from Fort Collins to Wellington.

There were a few glimpses of sunshine during the month, but not enough to cut and bale the bumper crops of hay.

Precipitation so far this year, largely due to June rains, is about 150 percent of average. As of June 29, the Colorado State University weather station had recorded 13.07 inches of moisture so far this year, compared to an average of 8.5 inches. June produced 5.03 inches of rain.

Jack Sipes, who farms in the Waverly area and does custom haying on small acreages, said haying this year has been "a nightmare." He needs a week to cut, bale and stack hay.

"We haven't had that much time," he said. "Somewhere in the process it's always getting rained on."

Heavy rain can ruin good hay once it's cut and baled. The best quality hay is used for horses and is bringing about $6.50 per bale this year, Sipes said. If hay gets moldy it can be sold for cow or sheep feed, but the price drops 75 percent or more.

"A lot of people are losing money on hay this year," Sipes said, despite the fact that yields are double what an average year produces. He would normally be about done with the first cutting by now, but he's only halfway finished because of the bumper crop. The high yield will compensate some for the low price, he noted.

"Hopefully the second cutting will be better," Sipes said. Ironically, he added, the drought years were great for putting up perfect hay.

LaPorte got the biggest share of rain from the June 22 storm, when 3.9 inches fell on the community along with half-inch hail. A small farming operation there, Colona Community Farm, sustained big damage from hail.

"We've lost more than half our crop," said Nick Theisen, who runs the Community Supported Agriculture operation with his partner, Sarah Rushlow.

The first hailstorm earlier in June hurt some of the crops, and they had just started to recover when the huge storm hit on June 22. That one "destroyed many crops for good," Theisen said, including tomatoes, peppers, onions, beets and greens.

"We won't be able to go to market for some time," Theisen noted. Share distributions have been cancelled for a few weeks, and Theisen is busy planting a lot of short-season, cold-hardy crops to fill the fields. He said share owners have been very supportive during the bad weather.

Some of the large farms sustained heavy damage, too. Dale Sipes south of Wellington woke up June 23 to fields of shredded sugar beets and corn. The largest hail, 1 inch in diameter, was recorded near his place.

Grant Family Farms was relatively lucky in the big storm, with only one field of lettuce damaged by hail.

The good news about all the precipitation is that homeowners have not had to water their lawns, and the area's reservoirs are nearly full.

Small local reservoirs and the Colorado-Big Thompson Project are looking the best they have in years. C-BT has three reservoirs, Lake Granby, Carter Lake and Horsetooth Reservoir. "We're at storage levels we haven't seen in a decade," said Brian Werner of the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District. "It takes a long time to dig out of a hole like the drought of 2002-'03."

This year, the C-BT reservoirs are 84 percent full, compared to 61 percent full at this time last year. Horsetooth Reservoir is at 85 percent of capacity. Lake Granby, the largest reservoir in the system with a capacity of 540,000 acre-feet, is 100,000 acre-feet ahead of last year.

At the local level, most of the reservoirs owned by the North Poudre Irrigation Co. are full, for the first time in 11 or 12 years.

"We've had very few calls for irrigation water," said manager Steve Smith.

The snowpack came out of the mountains slowly this year, he noted, and that helped ditch companies move the water into storage.