Just in time for spring, and April, cold weather arrives in Kansas. Snow a couple counties north of us this morning in the range of 4 inches, so says the radio, while we just saw the stray snowflake. Just when I thought we had missed the worst of it, a wonderful cold rain started. At 2:40 pm our current temp is 38F(that is 3C, I figured the conversion just for my British friends) as I glanced at the London forecast on the homepage I noted our current temp is 4 degrees below the predicted London low. Not to worry, Saturday afternoon strong south winds are supposed to usher in temps in the middle 70s, along with a high fire danger and a chance of severe storms Saturday night as a cold front collides with the strong southerly flow, giving us a high Sunday forecast at 42F. Farm work is at a standstill, once again we are in the fix of it is time for the grass to grow, but too cold to grow it(our warm season grasses need night time temps that don't fall much below 55F to really grow). I am nearing the end of my silage pit, and the cool season brome grass growing in the road ditches gives the cattle something to aspire too, generally resulting in one or two out every day. It seems that it is always either too dry with warm weather in April, or too cold with wet weather, either way our grass always gets off to a slow start.
With our recent moisture thoughts of drouth are not as prevalent for me, we have excellent subsoil moisture, so all we need are warm days and nights and the grass will explode. Much less has been burned than I thought would be by now, probably because nearly every day has strong winds and the fires are just too hard to control. The minute it gets dry the corn planters will start rolling in earnest, as we are now within the ideal time to plant corn. The race is about to begin, I can't believe it is time to start all over again.