Heavy rain in southern Arkansas KO’s hay production, closes roads
“It was a mess up here. A lot of flooding.” — Jerri Dew
July 14, 2023
By Mary Hightower
U of A System Division of Agriculture
Fast facts:
- Highest estimated rainfall totals were 6-8 inches
- Arkansas 86 remained closed Thursday
(500 words)
Art of road crew; art of road damage.
LEWISVILLE, Ark. — Heavy rain in southwest Arkansas closed roads and brought hay production to a halt in Lafayette County, said Jerri Dew, the county’s extension staff chair, said on Thursday.
A stalled front enabled rain to continue falling over the same area starting overnight Tuesday into Wednesday morning. The National Weather Service at Shreveport, Louisiana, which covers parts of southwest Arkansas, issued a flash flood emergency for portions of Columbia, Hempstead, Lafayette and Nevada counties and warned of life-threatening flash flooding “particularly in the Stamps, Bucker, Lewisville and Patmos areas.”
According to the National Weather Service, northern Lafayette County saw the highest totals, estimated at 6-8 inches. A CoCoRaHs station — Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow network — recorded 7 inches in Hempstead County. El Dorado, in Union County, recorded 4 inches, which was a record total for July 12. The old record of 2.6 inches was set in 2002.
“The flooding yesterday was not as bad in most of the cropland — for once — as it was in the northeast corner of the county which is mostly timber, some hay,” Dew said. “It was a mess up here. A lot of flooding.”
Roads closed
“U.S. Highway 82 was even closed for a time due to complete flooding,” she said, adding
that she couldn’t remember that happening before.
According to the Arkansas Department of Transportation, both lanes of Arkansas 98 remained closed Thursday because of a washout. The department tweeted an image of damage to the highway.
“My neighbor keeps weather data for Lamartine and he had 12.77 inches of rain in his electronic rain gauge within a 12-hour span yesterday morning,” Dew said. “We have a lot of road damage over there.”
Crop damage
Dew that in visiting one of the farmers in the bottoms, he told her he didn’t get as much rain as the northern part of the county, but Wednesday’s rain added to the effects of previous events.
“They have had one storm after another come through for weeks now,” she said. “A lot of corn has been blown down, there has been a lot of hail damage and water is standing in the fields. Dew said that in driving through the area on Tuesday, she “observed a lot of yellowing corn. I am sure water is the majority of the problem.”
“Hay production has come to a standstill,” she said. “There are hayfields from one end of the county to the other that needed to be cut three weeks ago. Producers cannot catch a break to cut because we have showers almost daily.
“It is mid-July and some producers have not completed their second cutting yet. It is all adding up to make a short year on hay and a lot of it is not going to be good quality,” Dew said.
The Cooperative Extension Service is the outreach arm of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.
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visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on Twitter at @AgInArk.
About the Division of Agriculture
The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture’s mission is to strengthen
agriculture, communities, and families by connecting trusted research to the adoption
of best practices. The Division of Agriculture conducts research and extension work
within the nation’s historic land grant education system through the Agricultural
Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service.
The Division of Agriculture is one of 20 entities within the University of Arkansas
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Media contact: Mary Hightower,
mhightower@uada.edu