Sun Day

Around closing time at the Kansas Wetlands Education Center, many birds perched in the shade of the building with their beaks agape. This Orchard Oriole was too exhausted from the afternoon heat to fly away.

With triple-digit temperatures across the state, a heat advisory was issued by the National Weather Service. The thermometer in my car, which had been baking in the parking lot, registered 117 degrees and cooled down to 111 as I pulled into the driveway. The local weather station at the Great Bend airport recorded  a record high of 107.

National headlines have focused on record floods affecting Hamburg, Iowa and Minot, North Dakota. Strange to think that a few years back I was wading through fields of switch grass along the Missouri River flats, a few miles from Hamburg. On Sunday mornings, Father Vern,  the parish priest for Hamburg and Shenandoah, always had good North Dakota humor to share. Meanwhile, drought, heat, and high winds are the talk of central Kansas. As a result, the USDA declared a drought disaster for 25 Kansas counties.

According to Governor Brownback,  “This is worse than previous droughts I’ve seen and experienced during a lifetime in agriculture.  This extreme weather already is affecting how farmers and ranchers are doing business – and that in turn is impacting the economies of local businesses and communities.  It will take a great deal of time and rain to reverse the effects of this drought.”