Tropical Storm Debby has now made its way out of the Carolinas and moved on. But what kind of impact did we see from that? I’m talking now with South Carolina Commissioner of Agriculture Hugh Weathers. Commissioner, what did you see across South Carolina in the remnants of Tropical Storm Debby?
“Well, it was as predicted. She came to town and didn’t want to leave! So finally has but again, as we were expecting quite a bit of rainfall the closer to the coast and up in the PD, corner of the state, the numbers were, the higher you go in that part of the state. I mean, at home, I got eight and a half, 8.7 inches. But I’m told, up just north of Charleston, and then moving up that way, 13, 14, one report of 15 inches. The question is, you know, what type of wind damage did we get? And the reason I mentioned that for crop insurance policies, 40 mile, 30, technically 39 mile an hour winds is a benchmark, along with six inches of rain. So I think that part we easily exceed. But I just don’t know where we are on the official wind numbers yet, so we’ll have to give it a few days to get some of that information.”
Any idea, with the amount of rain that came down, how that affected the crops, particularly those crops, such as peanuts and other crops growing underground, any idea just yet on what kind of impact we’ll see there?
“Well, we had some dry soil to begin with, so that may have been a blessing with those crops like peanuts underground or even soybeans cotton. The thing is, when will we be able to get back to the fields for the next round of inputs? And with peanuts is pretty time critical on a lot of these applications. So I would suppose with 12 and 13 inches of rain, we’re talking a couple of 10 days, a couple of weeks, to get back in. You know, corn had some farmers actually started with corn harvest on the dry land acreage and but the moisture of the grain needs to come on down anyway. So now, again, being sort of kept out of the fields for better part of a week or longer, that grain moisture will come on down, and then, then we’ll get a real assessment, if you will, probably of the of the dry conditions, plus the delay from Hurricane Debby.”
Now through the next few days, one of the main concerns is going to be flooding. Any idea what that might look like?
“Don’t know yet. Obviously we were saying, Oh no, here we go again from Hurricane Joaquin of nine years ago. So I don’t think we’ll see any of that, if not her reports of that. I mean, I get the same pictures and videos that most everyone your listeners probably do, but to know specifically what the issues will be, I know farmers, as always, in anticipation, start working on drainage, clearing that out, just so that there’s no one thing that that gets in the way of of the infrastructure that they’ve got in place. You know, working the best it can.”
One thing that I heard early in the week was that we could be seeing in some spots, 20 inches, or even 24 inches of rain. So at least we didn’t see that kind of rainfall.
“That’s right, those are the numbers I’m referring to from nine years ago, just the timing and the amount of rain was just horrific for crops. So earlier helps, less rain helps, but the fact that it’s still early August hurricane season might be one with more storms, if it’s getting started this early, but that remains to be seen.”
Commissioner, anything you’d like to add?
“Well, just what you said earlier, I don’t think the rainfall and the wind was quite what it could have been. So we’re saying a little prayer, and thanks for that, and we’ll see how it dries out over the next week.”