Heading back to Colorado this morning, I left Columbia under a gray overcast and drove west through a verdant but soggy landscape. Floodwaters stretched across the Missouri River valley and several of its tributaries (especially the Lamine River and Davis Creek) enveloped their floodplains as well. Following two weeks of intermittent, heavy rain, I was more than ready for the dry, sunny weather of the American West.
The overcast began to break up near Lawrence, Kansas, and, west of Junction City there was more blue sky than cloud cover. As in western Missouri, the foliage of eastern Kansas was thick and green and its rivers and farm ponds were bank-full. West of Salina, however, the greenery began to fade and, on the sun-drenched High Plains, the smaller rivers and farm ponds remained dry; indeed, the recent storms that produced flooding across the Southern Plains and Midwest bypassed the High Plains and drought persists in that region.
Of course, the High Plains, far from Gulf of Mexico moisture and lying in the rain shadow of the Rocky Mountains are always relatively dry. That semi-arid ecosystem, heavily utilized for cattle ranching, does not receive adequate annual precipitation for crop production; the latter is dependent on the use of irrigation systems, drawing water from the underlying Ogallala Aquifer or from reservoirs along major rivers. While acknowledging the hardships produced by the ongoing drought, the sunny skies and dry air were certainly welcome today; to borrow a phrase from America's 1972 hit, "it felt good to be out of the rain."
