Deflection

By looking around, fall has started, with the vegetation looking weathered. The grass, brush, trees, and crops look weathered after a summer of winds, rains, thunderstorms, and hot weather. There are already crops starting to ripen, and the crops in sandy soil is starting to turn yellow. However, with the rains last month, it is not a normal fall.

The Bark River is out of its bank, and the Rock River is running bank full. There are fields that still have ponded water in them, with the crops destroyed. One field on the west side of County Highway N south of County Highway M is flooded. Most of the crops in this field are gone. The strange part is that glacier lake area (the whole area was a glacier lake, except for the drumlins) is that the soil is higher than Highway N. But, with the shallow ditches of Highway N, the field cannot be tiled and drained to the ditch. Also, regarding the glacier lake bottom soil, it is impervious to water, so the water has to evaporate from the ponds. In this part of the county, the evaporation is a slow process. In many of these field in the lake bed of the glacier, they will not be combined this fall. since the ground will never dry out.

This is not normal for this time of year. I do not ever remember ponding in fields going into the fall, but I also was in Iowa for 37 years; I do remember flooding in the spring with farmers not getting their crops planted.

Since this is the start of fall, it will be interesting to see the rest of the fall/winter/spring.

Roger