Bracing for Heat, Winds
By Howard Yune, Appeal-Democrat, Marysville, Calif.
May 14–Mid-Valley farmers have witnessed a January windstorm topple orchards, and then a spring freeze that strangled much of the fruit and nut harvest. How will growers cope with nature’s third curveball this year — stiff winds and triple-digit temperatures forecast for this weekend?
That prospect is producing resignation for many farm producers, and added worry for some who wonder how much more the area’s groves and fields can endure.
“It’s very confusing for a tree as much as for a human,” said Raj Kumar Sharma, whose Yuba-Sutter lands include 1,500 acres of walnuts and 350 of peaches. “One day it’s winter and another day it’s summer. If we don’t like it, I don’t think the trees do either.”
Gusts from the northwest will be first to buffet the region today, according to Cynthia Holmes, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Sacramento.
Wind speeds will range from 20 to 30 mph today, at the same time the mercury is slated to reach the lower 90s in Linda. While winds are expected to slow to the 10-20 mph range later this week, high temperatures are forecast to climb toward 100 on Saturday and Sunday.
Walnut groves will be among the Mid-Valley’s most vulnerable plants during this spate of July-in-May weather. The maturing nuts are more susceptible to heat damage than in most other varieties, and many trees are lacking the leaf cover that normally shades the walnuts — a casualty of subfreezing temperatures in the Mid-Valley April 21.
Growers can parry the worst of the heat by watering groves in advance and applying a light-colored, heat-reflecting “whitewash” substance to trees. But winds accompanying the heat could greatly slow down efforts to apply the whitewash by air, according to Sharma, whose nut-farm holdings extend south to Solano County.
While a weekend’s worth of extreme heat may not dent some crops, the winds preceding it may threaten to tear limbs from almonds trees becoming heavy with their nuts, said Larry Rominger, whose family farms 3,000 acres of almonds in the Arbuckle area. Almond groves in western Colusa County already have suffered damage from the massive Jan. 4 windstorm, which uprooted trees from soil already softened by winter rains.
Rice growers expect little immediate harm from the heat, but are concerned a prolonged stretch of high temperatures could speed water evaporation from the fields — driving up water use in a year when tight supplies already are causing many farmers to make do with half or less their normal allotments.
“The next few days it’s going to be hot and we’ll be scrambling for water, and even if there’s enough we may not all be able to get it at the same time,” said Joe Carrancho, manager of some 2,000 rice-growing acres in Maxwell — the last of which were planted early this week.
April’s freeze already has damaged at least $58 million in Mid-Valley crops. Even if 100-degree afternoons prove gentler to local farms, this spring’s erratic weather and scant rainfall will keep growers on edge.
“When it rains, it pours,” Sharma said.
Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Howard Yune at 749-4708 or hyune@appealdemocrat.com.
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Copyright (c) 2008, Appeal-Democrat, Marysville, Calif.
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