AP and staff reports

Rain has become such a novelty in southern Louisiana that people looked out their windows to watch as once-routine showers swept through the area at the end of the week.

What preoccupies state climatologist Jay Grimes, however, is how much more rain some parts of the state still need just to approach recovery from the drought.

South Louisiana has had the driest six months since such weather data was first gathered more than 100 years ago.

”You have a lot of people out there who think the drought’s over and that’s ridiculous,” Grymes says. ”Maybe we’ve seen an end to dry weather patterns, but this drought will continue for weeks, if not months – even if the rains from last few days continue.”

Data collected at the Southern Regional Climate Center at Louisiana State University indicated that, as of Thursday, New Orleans had seen fewer than 7 inches of rain so far this year.

That is more than 20 inches below normal. Baton Rouge and New Iberia also were barely at or below 10 inches heading into the weekend, more than 17 inches short of normal levels.

”If anyone would have told me that we’d be halfway through June and still not have 10 inches of rain in parts of Southern Louisiana, I’d have said the data are wrong,” Grymes said. ”This is way off the scale and it’s not ever supposed to be this dry for this many months.”

Recent steady rains have helped Miss-Lou crops such as cotton, soybeans and milo but came too late to help corn yields in many cases, said Cecil Parker of Vidalia, a farming consultant who farms cotton and corn.

&uot;These rains have helped some crops, but we had a drier winter than in past years and we don’t have a lot of subsurface moisture,&uot; Parker said.

&uot;We need a one-and-a-half-inch rain every two weeks through September&uot; for crops to succeed,&uot; he added. &uot;If it gets hot and dry, (crops) will burn up.&uot;

Furthermore, the noticeable visible and economic effects of drought tend to take a while to become evident, even after the damage has been done, Grymes said.

Trees already have been damaged but have yet to show it, say experts at the LSU Ag Center. Farmers are still struggling to save as much of their crops as possible. But harvest season in southern cornfields, and the August planting season in sugar cane fields, are beginning to look grim, they say.

Rice farmers are among the worst hit already. In Vermillion Parish, rice farmers have planted only 60,000 acres, compared to 100,000 acres in a regular season. And even what has been planted is threatened as salt water from the Gulf of Mexico begins to intrude in canals and even wells, says Johnny Saichuk, a specialist with the LSU Ag Center extension service in Crowley.

”I had a rice farmer about an hour ago call me and say his well was pumping up salt water,” Saichuk said Friday. ”That’s the first time I have ever heard of that happening.”

Because recent showers across the south have not been sustained and have arrived on the heels of hot, dry weather, they hold the potential to do more harm than good.

”These little showers make conditions ideal for disease proliferation, so it could exacerbate disease and not really help the rice,” says Howard Cormier, a specialist with the Ag Center in Vermillion Parish.

Cormier, who visits farmers in the field, says sugar cane stalks have virtually stopped growing.

”They’re turning red and starting to wilt,” he says.

Meanwhile, farmers who plant corn in five south-central parishes — Point Coupee, Avoyelles, St. Landry, Rapides and Evangeline — are in trouble, says Walter Morrison, an agronomy specialist with LSU Ag Center in Baton Rouge.

”It’s real easy to see the crop is stressed. It’s stunted and extremely wilted. The ears are small. It catches your eye right away,” Morrison says.

Ag center economist Al Ortego says exact monetary losses have yet to be calculated, but he expects them to be significant.

”Even the forest that was replanted in dry areas, that will all have to be done again,” he said.

Insects also seem to be flourishing. For example, recent showers have allowed mosquitos to breed, but many of the birds that prey on them have gone elsewhere in search of water and aren’t as quick to come back.Sudden showers following drought have been linked in the past to proliferation of mosquito populations and sometimes a corresponding spread of disease.

Other insects seem to be attacking crops in irrigated fields in a way they did not before the onset of prolonged dry weather.

”Beetles are actually eating the pollen of rice crops and that’s rare, because they usually eat broad leaves,” Cormier said. ”It’s not a big problem, but it’s kind of nuisance that worries you because you don’t know why it’s there.

”We’re seeing some kind of weird things like that and we don’t know if attributable to drought but it’s one more straw on the camel’s back.”