In the midst of extreme weather including snowstorms, tornado warnings, flood watches and fires, Boone County and the surrounding areas have been in an abnormally dry drought.
The Missouri Department of Natural Resources defines a drought as a period of drier-than-normal conditions that results in water-related problems, according to the DNR website. The department’s Drought Assessment Committee regularly monitors conditions throughout the state.
“Right now we are going into the growing season, and we still have about 50% of the state that is at least abnormally dry, we even have some moderate and severe drought across the state, and we could be looking at a fourth year of drought,” state climatologist Zack Leasor said.
Weather patterns can significantly affect the 90,000 farms located in Missouri. Paula Thies owns and operates The Veggie Patch in Boonville with her husband, Jim.
“We were noting that today when we had to go pick up our onions and seeing where grass fires have started along I-70 and said well, it's still dry,” Paula Thies said. “It looks green, but the moisture down in the ground is not there.”
The Thieses have been running The Veggie Patch since 1995 and grow around 90 varieties of vegetables annually.
“It doesn't just matter in the spring or the summer. It's in the winter months, too, because you want hard freezes, you want some cold weather in the winter months because that destroys the bug population,” Paula Thies said.
While droughts during an already warm season can be detrimental, winter droughts can have unintentional consequences. Paula Thies said deer feast on farmers' plants during winter droughts because there is less food in the forests.
Last October, former Gov. Mike Parson signed an executive order declaring a drought alert in Missouri effective until March 31.
Scott Kaden, groundwater section chief for the Missouri Geological Survey Water Resources Center, said the drought may not have been visible because of the winter’s already dry conditions.
“It's easier to see the effects of drought during the summertime when things are supposed to be growing,” Kaden said.
While the annual amount of precipitation has not changed in Missouri in recent decades, Leasor said there has been an increased development of flash droughts — rapid and intense drought conditions occurring over short periods of time.
“I would expect a lot more discussion on these flash droughts because if you're getting these extreme precipitation events, but then extreme breaks in between, it's these fluctuations between wet and dry that can be damaging," he said.
During the winter, the groundwater level is closer to the surface because snowmelt and lower temperatures lead to increased water infiltration in the ground. In addition, there are several other factors that can impact soil infiltration.
“Think back to the past couple of rain events we've gotten in Columbia. We got a half inch on (March 14) and then a quarter inch on (March 19) but it was extremely windy, wind-driven rain," Leasor said. "So how much of that water is getting into the soil, it's hard to tell. It might not be the most effective rainfall."
Leasor said increasing temperatures are increasing the atmospheric demand and therefore the evapotranspiration, which means there is more water being held in the air instead of in the soil.
“Let's say we take the same three weeks during summer and there's no rainfall. It's always gonna be impactful, you'll see the soil dry up, maybe the plants start to brown,” he said. "But now imagine that in a warmer climate with more evapotranspiration, you would see a rapid drying out, but that also has feedback. So once your soils dry out and your plants start to brown up, you really lose some of the atmospheric humidity, and it can get even warmer."
For farmers like Paula and Jim Thies, any form of imperfect weather conditions can have an adverse effect on growing vegetables.
“You can raise more quantity during a wet year, but dry year means less quantity and a lot of times higher quality,” Jim Thies said.
As the weather gets more extreme, professionals are faced with even more uncertainty.
“It's not only the extremes, but the difficulty in predicting them," Leasor said. "It makes for an unpredictable growing season, and so there's always a lot of not just economic impacts from when we actually see a farm get hurt by drought or maybe a hail storm comes through, but there's also just this yearly uncertainty."
For Jim Thies, the yearly uncertainty is not just the weather, but also how it’ll impact the yields and growth of his farm's plants.
“(Weather conditions) don't really change what we plant. It may change the quantities that we might plant of some things. Keeps me awake at night sometimes,” he said.
