A year ago, pastures, cropland, forests and home gardens were suffering as the Carroll County area experienced a string of days with temperatures more than 100 ° and no significant rainfall for nearly two months. This year has not yet been as extreme, but there are still concerns about wells going dry, farmers and ranchers not having enough water, and temperatures that are hard to bear.
It might be scant comfort that things are much worse in Texas, Florida and Arizona where some areas are seeing record-breaking temperatures of 110° day after day. On July 10, the National Weather Service reported numerous severe weather threats in the U.S.
Climate scientists have predicted more severe droughts, wildfires, flooding and extreme temperatures as a result of the increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the environment caused by burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. The changes are happening more rapidly than expected.
“The climate models have greatly underestimated the impact to our agricultural production in North America,” Katy Turnbaugh, a rancher and retired science educator, said. “What has happened in the climate modeling is that they didn’t take into effect compounding. They didn’t compound the drought with the high heat index. They didn’t compound flooding with delayed crop planting. They are still working out how big this will be when factoring in all the compounding.”
When farmers can’t produce as much, it results in high food prices. Turnbaugh said to be prepared for high food prices and be smarter about how you use food. The U.S. is the worst country in the world for wasting food.
“We need to consume what we cook,” she said. “Get used to leftovers. Be prepared for higher costs and the need for us to be smarter about how we utilize our food.”
Turnbaugh has a small farm south of Eureka Springs with about ten head of cattle, ten goats, ten pigs, 60 fowl, several horses and a garden. This time in 2022, she was having to drive to Eureka Springs to buy water for her heritage breed stock because her well was not producing much and her ponds had dried up. It caused her to get a lot more serious about collecting rainwater off the roofs of her barns and house.
“Is it better than last year? Yes, because I worked to make it better,” she said. “I did increase my water storage quite a bit from this time last year. I’m not having to haul water. Two ponds are gone but the third one is holding up. My grass is holding up. I have now for years been working on improving the quantity and quality of grass to be more resilient for drought. My pastures are okay, and the trees look okay. I have added quite a number of selected trees for silviculture. They are young and I’m having to water them. We still have a lot of summer to go and this next week it is supposed to get up to 95°. The production part of my garden is suffering. The insects seem to do really well under adverse conditions. It is not where I would like it to be. The drip irrigation is helping. Any kind of garden needs drip irrigation with the line being covered and shading the drip zone which will help to prevent water from evaporating out of the soil as quickly.”
While the area saw a little rain in early July, it wasn’t enough. And there is a vicious cycle. The less rain you get, the less plant growth occurs that helps capture carbon. Turnbaugh said sequestering carbon is the “one shot” humankind has at mitigating climate disasters; no other mitigations will do enough.
She recommended things people can do to help on a personal level such as not cutting grass as often, reducing the amount of grass and planting native plants that are more resilient than non-natives. You don’t have to sacrifice beauty.
“I have beautiful flowers coming on from the native flowers,” Turnbaugh said.
She particularly advocates rainwater collections and storage.
“We are depleting our aquifers quickly because we are not stewarding our land and water properly,” Turnbaugh said. “I’m using everything from a 1,500-gallon tank, which is expensive, to a $75 inflatable swimming pool to capture and store rainwater. My plan is to eventually have about 15,000 gallons of water storage to make it through the summer.”
It can be feast or famine. A storm that was supposed to bring rain to Northwest Arkansas this past week ended up stalling out here but flooding in Oklahoma. Turnbaugh’s son has a farm in Orange County, New York, where incredible rain and flooding have led to disaster declarations.
At Sycamore Bend Farm, three miles southeast of Eureka Springs, they received half an inch of rain in this last wet pattern. They also had two inches in early June.
“It’s quite dry, though not as dry as last summer,” Andrew Schwerin, co-owner of Sycamore Bend, said. “Even though we’ve had some hot days, it’s generally been cooler, and more clouds, than the summer of 2022. It generally felt like a near-ideal spring for the vegetable garden, though we’ve been quite dependent on the irrigation system. Interestingly, we usually have a plethora of beetles chewing up the garden throughout the spring and summer, but they have been quite mild this year. Cucumber beetles, squash bugs, flea beets, Colorado potato beetles, harlequin beetles and Japanese beetles have all been mild this year.”
Schwerin said with the current El Niño climate, he’s anticipating continued rain spells for the next month or more. He said as the pressure ridge of the Southwestern U.S. undulates, the flow of cool and moist air from the Northwest will occasionally or regularly sink down to Arkansas.
Pete Snyder, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, Tulsa, Okla., said while it is a little drier than normal, and drier than people would like, it is not yet even a moderate drought.
“Last month Fayetteville saw 4.36 inches and that was actually slightly above normal,” Snyder said. “It was a little drier than normal in May. This time of year, it can be very spotty with the rain. We have had some showers and thunderstorms that develop overnight and move into the area. They have not really made it into Arkansas as of late. July normally is a dry month.”
Some recent days it was overcast with a 90 percent chance of rain. That kept the temperatures lower but even high percentages don’t mean there will be significant rainfall.
“A lot of people think 90 percent chance means we will be inundated with rain,” Snyder said. “Not necessarily. It just means a 90 percent chance of one one-hundredth inch of rain. Unfortunately, with these kinds of hit-and-miss showers you can have one place with over an inch of rain, and several miles down the road they got hardly any rain at all. That is common this time of year.”