Northwest Kansas counties get disaster declaration
Published on -11/11/2009, 12:05 PM
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By MIKE CORN
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has declared three Kansas counties -- two of them in northwest Kansas -- as primary natural disaster areas.
Cheyenne and Sherman counties Monday were declared disaster areas as a result of high winds and hail that swept through the area earlier this year. Farmers in Rawlins, Thomas, Logan and Wallace counties also qualify for disaster assistance because they are contiguous to the primary areas hit by adverse weather.
The third primary county listed as a disaster area was Rice County in central Kansas.
While a number of hail storms swept through both Cheyenne and Sherman counties, perhaps the most severe storm was July 20, when a storm formed just north of Cheyenne County in Nebraska and then barreled south, hammering houses and crops along the way before eventually dying out just north of Leoti in Wichita County.
The storm produced hail 3 to 4 inches in diameter, with winds of up to 80 mph. At least one small tornado was captured on video by law enforcement.
That storm cut through the eastern half of Goodland, resulting in new roofs for virtually everyone on that side of town, according to Dana Belshe, Extension agriculture agent for the Sunflower Extension District that covers Cheyenne, Sherman and Wallace counties.
In addition, it hammered crops.
All told, Belshe said, about 60 percent of the crops in Sherman County had damage to some extent, according to a survey he participated in to determine if the county was eligible for a disaster declaration.
A storm just two days earlier had formed in the northern part of Cheyenne County, sweeping through St. Francis and then into Sherman County.
"We've had quite a bit of hail," Belshe said of storms that have swept through far northwest Kansas.
That means a mixed bag for area farmers.
"The stuff that didn't get hailed is coming in pretty good," he said.
Grain sorghum is coming in with light test weights, mainly because it didn't have a chance to fully mature.
"Everything else varies from damaged to nothing there," Belshe said of the harvest. "Some of the early corn fields were worked up and planted back to something else.
"There's some good stuff out there. But the number of acres is down quite a bit."
