By GAYLE WEBER

gweber@dailynews.net

Farmers could be pulling a check out of the mailbox instead of their combine out of the shed for the upcoming wheat harvest.

Hail, tornadoes and flooding have affected many rural areas in northwest Kansas, but it's still too soon to tell how much damage there really is.

"We may pay the hail claim today, but we won't know actually how big of a loss it is until later," said Richard Wheeler, a Farm Bureau Financial Services agent in Quinter. "There's not very many of them to the point that they won't go to harvest."

With wheat at nearly $8 per bushel, Wheeler said farmers with both crop hail and multi-peril insurance should come close to recovering their losses.

"Most of our wheat's still in good shape," Wheeler said. "Only the places that have had major tornado damage are suffering."

The same holds true in the WaKeeney area, where hail has been the biggest problem.

WaKeeney Farm Bureau agent Jerry Kobler said the corn planted could make it through any damage, depending on the plant date. However, one of his adjusters has told him there are fields of wheat that "look pretty tough."

"It's more likely to be the people who received hail damage in a localized area. They're going to have some pretty substantial losses," Kobler said.

In the Hays area, there only have been sporadic reports of crop damage.

"Our adjusters haven't been out because the fields have been so muddy," a spokesperson for Farm Bureau in Hays said. "They haven't been able to get out and get the count they need."

Ellis County Extension agent Stacy Campbell said he's heard of spotty reports of hail damage across the county, with just one significant report.

"There was a pretty good swath of hail south of Victoria between Big Creek and the Smoky Hill (River)," Campbell said. "It looks like somebody took a shredder in there. It got several hundred acres, maybe even a few thousand."

The only thing Kobler and Wheeler are hoping for in the weeks leading up to harvest is good weather.

"We hope we get through this and we can still cut a 40-bushel average and get a decent price," Wheeler said.