South U.S. Plains Wheat, Livestock Endure Hot Weather
By Brad Luchen and Drew Lerner
Kansas City, February 12 (World Weather Inc.) – Unusually hot temperatures for this time of year occurred in portions of the U.S. southern Plains Friday and Saturday impacting hard red winter wheat areas and some important livestock areas. The heat was stressful for animals and yet the impact on wheat was mostly minimal. Winter hardiness continued to diminish in the wheat crop and 
soil temperatures are now warm enough for new crop development in Texas and southern Oklahoma. Cooling this week will help stop any potential for “significant” crop development in the central Plains, but the far southern Plains may find waves of rain and rising soil temperatures to be a stimulus for greening and some early season crop development.
Highest afternoon temperatures Friday and Saturday ranged in the middle and upper 80s through the lower 90s Fahrenheit from eastern Colorado and western Kansas into the heart of Texas. Some of the hottest temperature extremes were in the middle and upper 90s with Odell, Texas reporting 99 degrees and Altus, Oklahoma 98. The heat was far above the average which usually ranges in the 40s across Kansas during the mid-February and the 50s in Oklahoma and northern Texas. Central and southern Texas usually has high temperatures in the 60s and lower 70s and they too were well above average.
Soil temperatures were already pushing up close to and slightly over the minimum threshold for wheat development (around 42 degrees Fahrenheit) Friday in portions of northern Texas and southern Oklahoma. The heat Friday and Saturday likely brought the soil temperatures higher throughout the southern Plains even into a part of the central Plains briefly. The rising soil temperatures brought more of the wheat out of dormancy in central and southern Texas while crops in the central Plains lost more winter hardiness, but new crop growth was restricted by dryness in the soil and the recently wildly fluctuating daily air temperatures.
However, rain is expected to fall over Texas and parts of Oklahoma late Monday into Tuesday and again late next weekend. The two waves of rain will mix a little moisture into the warming soil to stimulate some greening and early season crop development in Texas and southern Oklahoma where temperatures may not fall below freezing for a while.
Cooling temperatures in the central Plains, however, will put an immediate reversal on the warm up keeping winter crops dormant or semi-dormant. Nightly freezes in the central Plains will prevent any significant new growth from occurring in Kansas, Colorado, northern Oklahoma or the Texas Panhandle.
Morning low temperatures Monday through Friday this week will be in the 20s and lower 30s Fahrenheit for most locations that had received high temperatures in the 80s and 90s the past few days. The near to below freezing temperatures will allow the crop to regain some of its winter hardiness in the central and southwestern Plains. Daytime high temperatures Monday and Tuesday will be in the in the 30s and 40s in West Texas, the Texas Panhandle and western Oklahoma. The cool off will only last a few days, however, with high temperatures quickly returning to the 60s and 70s starting Thursday and lasting through the coming weekend.
In the meantime, livestock are still donning there winter coats and seeing temperatures reaching into the 90s and near 100 degrees Fahrenheit Friday and Saturday had to have been extremely stressful for some animals. Temperatures did cool off favorably at night, but the situation was still not very healthy for animals in the region. This week’s cooler bias will be many times better for the animals. There should not be any extreme heat like that of the early weekend again for a while.
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