Drought in Texas, August 1 to 22, 1996

Toward the latter part of August plentiful rains were at last falling over all of the area. This pattern was started by the tropical plume that brought Hurricane Dolly westward through the Bay of Campeche to near Tampico, Mexico, across the Central America to where she dissipated in the eastern North Pacific. Although Dolly was over 1000 miles south of the area, this same plume of deep, tropical moisture locked over Southwest Texas and rained over much of the area on a daily basis through the end of the month.Since a drought is a very loosely defined phenomenon, there is no explicit beginning or end, but for the purposes of Storm Data there is no room for flexibility--only qualifications that can be made in this narrative. The effects in West Texas and Southeastern New Mexico were mainly in the form of crop damage due to the dry weather. Those farms that were able to plant crops late in the season were able to grow crops successfully. With the threat to crops ending in August and the Eastern Pacific cold phase waning, it was felt that a definite trend away from the drought had begun. Many people would argue that the drought lasted through the end of 1996 as four years of dry weather could not be corrected in one week, but from a meteorological standpoint as to precipitation patterns, significant changes had occurred during the 1996 Summer that were expected to continue indefinitely; therefore, the drought will be ended here.During the afternoon of August 23 showers and thunderstorms developed, thereby beginning the long journey toward a wetter regime over Southwest Texas and Southeastern New Mexico.During the drought, extreme failures of crops and pastureland were reported. Due to the lack of grasses for cattle about half of the cattle in the region had to be sold early. This flooding of the cattle market sent cattle prices plummeting. In a few locations, wells dried up making irrigation impossible.The commodity losses follow:Cotton $162,275,000Rangeland 24,744,000 Grain Sorghum 2,400,000Wheat 530,000Peanuts 59,300Rangeland/Pastureland losses were incurred as stunted grasses made ranchers slash the lease prices for their property grazing rights.The property damage was solely due to the cattle market. With the stunted grass growth, there was not enough food to feed cattle. About half of the cattle in the region (90,000) had to be auctioned due to this feed shortage. With this flood of the auction market the beef prices plummeted. The $12,600,000 figure was the estimated loss by ranchers having to sell their cattle in a deflated market. A county-by-county assessment was not available, so the total was entered in the first county that sustained losses. The greatest cattle losses were probably in the large counties west of the Pecos River, where almost all of the land is rangeland and there are very few farms.In the listing of crop damage, some of the counties were listed as $0.00 damage. This listing is because these counties were grouped with an adjacent county in the available reports. Loving County is listed with Reeves County, Terrell County with Brewster County, and Jeff Davis County with Presidio County.Two counties in the area, Lea, NM and Culberson, TX reported that there were no drought conditions in their counties.The grand total for damage to crops and property in 22 Texas counties and 1 New Mexico county stands at approximately $205 Million. Undoubtedly there are some other factors that have not been considered, but the most significant damages according to the agriculture experts are listed in this report.