Winter Wheat
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Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is the Weather Notebook.

It's a common notion that farmers pray for rain during a drought. But some farmers pray just as much for snow in the winter, to keep a certain crop healthy. Correspondent Curt Nickisch has this story from South Dakota.

In the fall in America's heartland you'll see an army of combines in the fields harvesting crops, but at the same time you'll also see tractors planting seeds. The crop going in just before the snow flies is winter wheat. It grows a little bit before the first frost storing energy for the winter dormancy. Winter wheat expert, Mel Kloster:

"Of course our winters can be pretty tough around here, as you may know. The thing of it is, if you've got four inches of top growth and good snow cover, that winter wheat will take about forty below weather that we have, because the snow acts as an insulator".

Uncovered, it has a hard time. A few warm days could bring it out of dormancy too early, so farmers pray for snow, but not too much. This spring in South Dakota the huge snowpack melted slowly and covered some fields with a foot of ice killing eighty percent of the crop. Winter Wheat farmer, Nancy Zinc.

"It isn't easy, there's a lot of stress. We always say no one needs to go to the casino to gamble because the gamble's right here".

Sometimes, the gamble pays off. Winter Wheat grows again in the spring and capitalizes on April showers. It's harvested before other crops so it's less susceptible to a summer drought.

Curt Nickisch files his stories for the Weather Notebook from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory. It is underwritten in part by the National Science Foundation. Thanks today go to executive engineer Sean Doucette and assistant producer Doug Sanborn.