Snow dampens drought

By Steve Miller, Journal Staff Writer | Tuesday, March 14, 2006

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Sunday’s heavy snowfall provided welcome drought relief for West River ranchers and farmers — even those with cows giving birth to calves in the storm.

The 8.1 inches that fell in Rapid City was the most the city has received since April 22, 2001, when 18 inches fell, according to the National Weather Service.

The storm dumped its biggest snow in the southwest quarter of the state, according to NWS records. Snowfalls included 24 inches northwest of Buffalo Gap, 20 inches south of Kadoka, 17 inches a mile west of Hermosa, 17 inches in Kyle, 15 inches northeast of Oral, 14 inches in Johnson Siding west of Rapid City, 12 inches in Edgemont and 4 inches in Sturgis.

Ranchers in the middle of calving were quite willing to put up with challenges from the snowstorm in exchange for the biggest batch of moisture in months.

Steve and Pam Clements had a few newborn calves Monday morning warming up in their ranch house northwest of Philip, but the hassle was worth the 6 inches of snow they received, Pam Clements said. “We needed it. We’re glad to see it,” she said in a phone interview.

Had the storm lasted several days, it could have posed a bigger problem for calving, Clements said. But like most ranchers, they had moved their cows close to shelter as they neared calving time.

Rancher Jim Lintz of Hermosa, a state legislator, said wet snow can sometimes be a problem for newborn calves. “As long as a guy gets them out of that snow, they’ll be all right,” he said.

Besides, Lintz said, it was better to be calving in snow than in dust, which can cause dust pneumonia in the newborns. Before the snow fell, parched pastures were full of dust.

Even though some ranchers now will have to feed hay to cattle that can’t get to the grass, the snow will go a long way toward improving range conditions, Lintz said. “We were just so dry that the cows weren’t going to have anything to eat this spring, anyway,” he said.

Many ranchers in the Philip area also are calving, according to Adele Gelvin, livestock educator for South Dakota State University Cooperative Extension Service. “That’s a big issue, making sure they get those cows into sheltered areas and get those calves out of the weather,” Gelvin said.

The Philip area got between 9 and 12 inches of snow, Gelvin said.

Areas to the south got more snow, making it more difficult for ranchers to get feed to their livestock, Gelvin said.

In those areas, including Fall River County, ranchers now must haul hay to their cattle because they can’t get through the foot or more of snow to the grass, according to Mark Fanning, Extension agronomy educator based in Hot Springs.

On the plus side, ranchers have plenty of hay from a bumper crop last year, Fanning said.

“This is not going to be anything but good for us,” Fanning said about the weekend snow. “The way temperatures are predicted, it’s going to go off slow, so it should soak in and do us a lot of good.”

Fanning said the moisture also should help crops in his area, including winter wheat and alfalfa. But winter wheat was running behind before the weekend snow. “The problem was it was so dry last fall when they put it in, our stands are really thin,” Fanning said.

Sunday’s snow was plenty wet, with Rapid City’s 8.1 inches yielding .41 inches of water, according to Melissa Smith, a hydrologist at the National Weather Service office in Rapid City. It was the largest amount of precipitation Rapid City had received since Oct. 4, 2005, when .96 fell in the form of rain and snow.

Smith said Rapid City has received 8 inches of snow or more only 34 times since records have been kept.

Meanwhile, another system is expected to hit the area Wednesday but with much less snow, Smith said. “It’s not looking like a real big storm.”

Contact Steve Miller at 394-8417 or steve.miller@rapidcityjournal.com