The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Alabama Field Office, Montgomery, released their weekly Crop and Weather Report this afternoon, including Crop Progress and Condition. Some numbers from that report:
* 52% of Alabama is now under an Exceptional Drought (the highest designation)
* 19% is the increase from one week ago
* 0% of the state was under an Exceptional Drought one year ago at this time.
* 93% of Alabama topsoil moisture is very short or short
* 7% is all that is adequate
* 67% of the state’s pasture and range land is in very poor or poor condition. Only 26% is fair
* 78% of the corn crop is in very poor or poor condition
* 54% of the cotton crop crop is very poor to poor
* 67% of soybeans very poor or poor
* 34 is the number of weather stations that the USDA looks at each week
* 33 of the 34 stations has temperatures 100 or higher during the week
* 7 is how many days in a row the Birmingham temperature has been 100 or higher as of today
* 8 is the number of such days at Montgomery, an all time record
* 20.34 inches if the 2007 rain deficiency for Birmingham as of today
* 23.28 inches if the Tuscaloosa shortfall
* 4.88 inches for Geneva. They are in the best shape, rainwise, in the state
* 102 was the official temperature at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport at 4 this afternoon. They recorded their first 100-degree heat over the weekend.
ADDITIONAL NOTES FROM THE USDA REPORT
* Cotton and peanut fields in Henry County, Southeast Alabama, in desparate need of rain
* Pasture conditions worsened over the entire state during the past week
* In NE Alabama, Donald Mann, Jackson County, reported that livestock water supplies have dried up
