Vernon County showers help wheat, pastures

The thunderstorm that doused bone dry Vernon County with two to five inches of rain Monday and Tuesday, delaying the nearly completed soybean harvest, was well-timed for some, replenishing ponds and boosting the recently planted winter wheat crop.

Noting the showers were most generous west of Nevada along U.S. 54 Highway near the Kansas border, University of Missouri Extension Agronomy Specialist Pat Miller said the steadily falling rain will also set up pastures for springtime livestock grazing.

"The pastures were not looking good," Miller said. "It's too late to get any grazing this year, but the rain will fill the ponds with some water.

"Hopefully this will soak in because we were really getting behind with the water in our soil profile. It will help the trees and shrubs go through the winter."

Miller said the heaviest wave descended from Pittsburg, Kan., to Butler and Rich Hill. She said 90 percent of the county's soybeans had been harvested when the showers came -- a postponement that National Weather Service meteorologist Ryan Kardell of Springfield predicted will not last long.

Reporting that 2.44 inches of Monday-Tuesday precipitation had been recorded at 7 a.m. Tuesday in Nevada, Kardell said that mark was bettered with 3.4 inches some 40 miles to the northeast at Appleton City in neighboring St. Clair County and with 2.7 inches 20 miles east at El Dorado Springs.

"A frontal battery set up with a persistent warm front that draped over the area for quite a while," Kardell said Tuesday. "The front got active over Kansas yesterday afternoon and spread into Missouri from the southwest.

"We may have some low cloud cover Wednesday, but we'll be generally done and should see conditions improve quite a bit for the next several days."

Kardell said Southwest Missouri's annual moisture is still about eight inches under par.

At Joplin, for example, where 1.89 inches were recorded at daybreak Tuesday, 2011's 34.11-inch total remained well below the normal of 41, the weatherman said.

Kardell said Joplin, 60 miles south of Nevada, set a record for Nov. 8 by beating the 1979 mark of 1.5.