How's the mid west drought at this point

[bacpacker]

After keeping an eye on the weather this winter and seeing the various storms and fronts that have moved across the country, I thought a discussion on how things are progressing everywhere might be worthwhile.

From what I have noticed, Texas, eastern Teaxs in particular seems to be getting fairly regular storms moving thru. I really haven't saw much about western Texas. The storm that's moving across the country looks like it's going to dump on Ok, Kansas, Arkansas, and Mo so it will help out, but how has the rest of the season went. What about farther north, Nebraska and the Dakotas, Wisconson, Ill, In, Mi.

The drought has effected food prices and will be hitting availability before long. Cattle have been sold in huge numbers, along with hogs. Feed has went up drastically as well as any product that uses the grains. The Mississippi river is running very low and is effecting barge traffic to the point sections have been shut down at times.

What's everyone seeing right now?

[Sniper-T]

I was just down in NDak on the weekend, and they have a goodly amount of snow, and winter ain't over yet. depending on the thaw, they may have some flooding down there, and again, depending on the thaw... that might translate into some nasty flooding up here again too!

fingers crossed for a nice slow melt!

[Grumpy Old Man]

Rained down here a couple of times this week around mid-week. Maybe got an inch total, but that was very welcome. West Texas not so much so. We need Helo and AK to report in and let us know what's going on over there. I was at one of our plants in Willow Park and they had gotten 1/2" that morning.

[Possom]

Western arkansas has gotten a fair amount of precipitation this winter but all in all our water table is still lower then it should be. The spring rains will really tale the tale of hay production this year. With hay prices already out of sight if you can find it at all our part of the country really can't take another drought year. A lot of the large ranchers here have already been forced to sell out or greatly reduce their cattle herds due to a lack of hay and sky rocketing grain prices.

Cattle inventory numbers nation wide are already at the 1951 low level. Even if we get a good year this year you can still expect a backlash in cattle prices while people attempt to slowly rebuild their herds.