Light to moderate layers of snow covering much of the area helped to shield winter wheat amid subzero temperatures across three days a week ago, likely sparing crops from harm.

Jim Shroyer, extension agronomist at Kansas State University, this past week said snow on top of wheat acts as an insulator against frigid air that could severely drop ground temperatures and damage a crop, particularly if there is at least a couple of inches of snow.

“It’d be just like an electric blanket, those plants will just be smiling,” Shroyer said, but not without the caveat of moisture being present in the key first two inches of soil because dry ground cools much more drastically.

Northeast Kansas snowfall totals on Jan. 4 and 5 ranged from an inch to 4 inches — fortunate for winter wheat as bands of snow shuffled out and arctic air blasted in, plummeting mercury readings that night in Topeka to negative 1 degree. Jan. 6 bottomed out even lower at negative 8. Jan. 7 recorded a low of 1 below.

Leroy Russell, an agricultural agent with the K-State Research and Extension office in Shawnee County, ranks this year’s crop in northeast Kansas thus far as being in “pretty good shape” — a seven or eight on a scale of 10.

“Here in our area we probably have very little damage from (the subzero temperatures),” Russell said.

He noted the recent snow was a dry one, not offering a lot of moisture but enough as it melts that it will marginally aid subsoil that hasn’t seen much precipitation in two months.

“It’s not suffering horribly, but it was borderline of being too dry,” Russell said.

Winter wheat was planted on schedule this fall because of ample rain through September, which Russell said allowed the plants to sprout. The wheat is semi-dormant at the moment, he said, meaning it isn’t growing so much as maintaining itself until temperatures warm.

“If we can just keep cover when it gets cold, and keep it going, it should be a decent crop,” he said.

Shroyer said soil temperatures at the two-inch level in the Manhattan area were in the mid- to upper-20s during the arctic blast. However, a recording station at Scandia in Republic County in north-central Kansas reported soil readings at that depth near 9 degrees.

Shroyer begins worrying if those soil temperatures plunge into the 10- to 12-degree range. Once into single digits, he said more than likely there will be some kind of damage to crops. It won’t necessarily be widespread, he said, or perhaps the first visible damage will be confined to terrace tops and north-facing slopes.

Recording sites in western Kansas didn’t return ground temperatures as cold as what was measured in central portions of the state, Shroyer said. He said he had heard concerns from farmers in the Wichita area in south-central Kansas that high winds blew snow off fields, exposing the ground and crops to the frigid air.

“It’s too early to tell,” he said of placing an estimate on any potential crop damage in Kansas. “We won’t know until late January or February when wheat starts to wake up and starts to green up.”

Two types of damage to wheat from wintry conditions — outright and prolonged death — can result from harsh conditions, Shroyer said. Many times areas of a field don’t turn green at all or become green for some time and then die off. The latter happens when wheat becomes wounded, Shroyer said, and then becomes worse as micro-organisms invade the crown region until the plant is killed.

A non-winter weather concern Shroyer said farmers in western Kansas continue to combat is drought. Western Kansas remains in a severe drought, with portions in the northwest and southwest facing extreme conditions, according to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor index.

The eastern part of the state is fairing much better, listed only as abnormally dry except for extreme southeastern Kansas, which has no drought conditions.

Shroyer said precipitation will be needed as winter turns to spring, especially further west. And as far as that goes, moisture right now would be a welcome sight, too.

“We’re not out of the woods as far as the drought goes,” he said.

Source - http://cjonline.com/