Lack of precipitation new record for the county

The Adams Conservation District (ACD) has been gathering precipitation data in the Adams County region since 1975.

There are seven locations where data is collected: Benge, Carico Hills, Lind, Marengo, Rattlesnake Flats, Ritzville and Schrag/Moody.

The Lind Experiment Station, operated by the Washington State University extension program, records rainfall for Lind, while farmers report for the other six locations.

The process of collecting this data is simply recording the rain gauge after each rainfall and then emptying it. The total from the entire month is reported to ACD.

A trend of one dry month has been reported in this area each year from all locations; normally this month is historically between June and October. This year all locations reported no measurable rainfall in the months of June and July. No measurable rainfall is defined as one-hundredth of an inch.

This lack of precipitation is paired with high temperatures, which has caused crops to be roughly two weeks ahead of schedule.

The two month dry spell is the first recorded in the 40 years since rainfall tracking began in Adams County. August was also a rather dry month measuring a total of .62 inches from the seven locations combined.

This rainfall was recorded on Aug. 9, which accounted for a range of .05 to .14 inches reported from the seven locations totaling in .62.

The Marengo station has the most accumulative rainfall this year with a total of 7.23 inches. The Schrag/Moody area has received only 4.07 total inches this year.

During the trackable years, 1995 record the highest total rainfall. In 1995, nine farms recorded for the county. Factoring out the two locations who are no longer active, the total rainfall in 1995 was 115.67 inches.

In September 1995, the area already had a total of 71.66 inches of rainfall. This is compared to the current total of 37.33 inches in the same locations. This is a little under twice as much rainfall that Adams County had already experienced by the end of August 20 years ago.

The same year the price of wheat per bushel was $4.83 averaged over the year. Calculating in an inflation rate of 56.4 percent, this would be roughly $7.55 per bushel this year.

Currently, the price of wheat per bushel has been on average, $5.62 and dipping as low as $4.69 in recent weeks. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has made an estimate of what they expect 2016 to hold for wheat prices, their prediction is between $4.40 and $5.40 per bushel.

The USDA had initially projected wheat prices for 2015 to be roughly $6 a bushel.

The prices this year began at about that price and have slowly dipped below the $5 mark.

According to Washington State University Extension Office, the Adams County region falls into the low-precipitation zone of the United States cropland. This zone is said to receive between six to 12 inches of rainfall annually.

Since 1983 the average rainfall in the area has been roughly 11.32 inches annually, according to the ACD. In 1995 specifically the average for the year was 16 inches, almost five inches over the average.

In low precipitation regions, dryland wheat farming is prominent, especially in east-central Washington and north-central Oregon. The region accounts for part of the 3.85-million cropland acres in the U.S.

While farmers in the area are economically dependent on rainfall, it is unknown what the future might hold for precipitation in the county.