As reported in The Hutchinson Newsa: A little more than two weeks ago, grapefruit-sized hail fell on parts of Hays. Wheat farmers with less than one month until harvest watched their crops get pelted.
Those in the path of the May 26 storm watched as frozen balls ricocheted across their fields. The Kansas State University Agriculture Research Center in Hays lost a large majority of their crop.
“If it was 5 to 10 minutes it would have caused some damage but not like this,” said Guorong Zhang, Ph.D., the official wheat breeder for the High Plains.
According to the weather channel, the hail was as large as a tennis ball in Goodland, but by the time it entered Hays it had grown to the size of a grapefruit.
The hail, which fell on and off for almost an hour, remained mainly south of the city.
Zhang, who runs the wheat experiments at the K-State facility, lost between 40 to 100% on a variety of his experimental wheat crops.
“In one of my experiments, all the yield will have to be discarded,” Zhang said. “Everything is gone.”
In other experiments, more than 80% was damaged by the hail. Zhang’s research helps farmers throughout Kansas know which seeds work best for their environment. Although the Hays office is the primary location, there are eight additional locations in western Kansas. These include crops in Decatur, Graham, Ness and Pawnee counties, as well as Colby, Garden City, Kiowa and Osborne.
The facility works with hard red winter wheats and hard white winter wheat varieties. Some of the seeds that came out of the center are Lakin, Oakley, Stanton, Tiger and Tatanka.
Zhang lost the breeding populations for some years completely. For others, he has a few “remnants” from his 3,000 yield plots.
Like the farmers just South of Hays, Zhang was not able to save his crops from the storm.
“There’s nothing we can do,” he said.
It is not yet clear how many farmers lost their wheat. Kevin Royer, the general manager of the Midland Marketing Cooperative in Hays said several farmers called in, but he will not be able to tell the damage until harvest next week.
