There has been historic rain fall amounts in Pennsylvania in the month April and it’s now there is looming floods and challenges for farmers.
Two of the wettest days in history according to the National Weather Service happened with a 14-day period. Due to the large amount of rain it has impacted farming schedules.
Guy Dobenspeck is with the Butler County Farm Bureau he is also a farmer himself and die to the large amounts of rain he’s about two weeks behind.
“We were fortunate back in March to get plowing done, but we pulled out of a field two weeks ago because it was too wet. Since that time, we’ve had seven inches of rain afterwards,” Dobenspeck said. “So we are, in our individual case, about 10 days behind in planting.”
According to Rich Redmond, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh, Butler County saw between four to six inches of rain throughout the county. County records according to Redmond say the record for April is seven inches of rain in 2016.
The soil moisture in Butler County in 80 percent of the county is 300 percent over the normal levels. This could be an issue all summer leading to more flooding according to Redmond.
“This is going to be an issue we’re going to deal with for most of the summer because the soil isn’t drying out and the streams and creeks can’t lower the flows that we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks,” Redmond said.
Redmond says it will take about two to three weeks of dry weather for the soil to dry complete.
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