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Missouri farmer gets unprecedented rainfall
A central Missouri farmer is now dealing with flooding from recent intense rainfall. Robert Alpers, who farms near Prairie Home, says they got eight inches of rain in less than a day causing creeks to overflow.
“I’m 63 and I’ve talked to people older than me even that said they’ve never seen… We’ve had some events of four, five and six (inches) but we’ve never had that eight inches and coming down in just a few hours.”
Their levees are holding but the rain was too much for the flat creek bottoms and has pooled up, taking out a couple hundred acres of corn and beans.
Alpers says this has been a spring of extremes from an extremely long cold spell to record high heat that left corn leaves curling and soybeans wilting, not knowing if they’d survive.
“Then, we got the perfect little rain of about a half an inch. Then they called for that next inch or two and instead of inch or two we got eight. And then we got another couple after that and it made a mess.”
He says it’s too late to replant corn – some of which had already been replanted. As for replanting beans, he says it just depends on the field.
Alpers calls this one of those “weather years” with Mother Nature always holding the first mortgage.
