Farmers Pivot Back After Storms

Companies Report Hundreds of Damaged Irrigation Systems Up and Running Again

Russ Quinn
By  Russ Quinn , DTN Staff Reporter
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Center pivots were among the farm infrastructure damaged in the Pilger, Neb., area following twin tornadoes that destroyed the town on June 16. Farmers across the Midwest saw extensive damage from a rash of severe weather earlier this summer. (DTN file photo by Todd Neeley)

OMAHA (DTN) -- Straight-line winds that blew through south-central Nebraska on June 14 toppled whatever was in their path -- including center pivots. In 27 years of working in the irrigation equipment business, Monty Vonasek had never seen so many center pivot irrigation systems damaged in a single storm.

"The worst storm we had in the past, we had 70 machines down; with this one storm, we had 260 machines go down," Vonasek, owner of Central Valley Irrigation, Inc. in Holdrege, Neb., told DTN.

And Mother Nature was just getting started.

Two significant wind storms on May 11 and June 3 caused significant damage in east-central Nebraska. Then, on June 16-18, deadly tornados struck northeastern Nebraska with two destroying much of the town of Pilger on June 16, killing two people and causing millions of dollars in property damage.

Another wind storm in south-central Nebraska on July 9 damaged crops and structures in Vonasek's home area. This storm caused another 35 center pivots of his customers to be damaged, he said.

CHALLENGE FOR IRRIGATION COMPANIES

Matt Huber, who works in sales for Scott-Hourigan Company, a dealer for Zimmatic center pivots located in York, said their region had "a lot" of pivots down after a couple wind storms hit their area earlier in the growing season. After assessing the situation, the company pushed hard to either replace or repair damaged center pivots in their east-central Nebraska area.

"Lindsay Manufacturing (manufacturer of Zimmatic center pivot irrigation systems) was very good in getting us the parts we needed to get out there and either repair or replace the downed pivots," Huber told DTN.

Huber said all of the damaged pivots their customers reported to them have been fixed and they are up and running. He estimated the work generally took about a month to move through the damaged pivots.

Bill Kranz, University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor and Extension irrigation specialist at the Haskell Agricultural Laboratory in Concord, Neb., in the northeastern part of the state, said he was very impressed by the irrigation dealers in the region and how quickly farmers had their pivots back upright and operating again.

"I know right around the (research) farm, I can probably think of 20 pivots that were tipped over," Kranz said. "Most of them are back up and running again."

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Much like the east-central and south-central parts of the state, the northeastern region of Nebraska also had its fair share of storms which damaged center pivots. Kranz said a wind storm in early June started things off, followed by the deadly tornados in mid-June and another wind storm about a week after the tornadoes.

Despite the obvious weight of the irrigation systems, Kranz said strong summer storms can play havoc with center pivots. If the winds of a storm are strong enough, center pivots will be damaged, he said.

In some cases, how the pivot sits in the field in relationship to the wind's direction can determine if it will be tipped over or not, he said. A unit with its towers facing the winds generally has a better chance of being flipped over than a unit protected by trees or topography or even sitting in a way that the wind cannot catch it.

Kranz said he has even known farmers who, if they have enough time before a storm, will run the pivot full of water so the added weight will hopefully keep the irrigation system upright.

TIMELY RAINS HELP

Farmers in northeastern Nebraska were fortunate to have timely rains during June and July, which allowed the crops to continue growing with limited stress while service crews continued to work on damaged center pivots. Kranz said the pivots in his area and at the Haskell Ag Laboratory have had to work very little this growing season.

DTN Senior Ag Meteorologist Bryce Anderson said rains in several locations across Nebraska this year have meant irrigation was not needed, or at least was limited.

"Central Nebraska has kind of been on the edge of the storms and dry weather," Anderson said. "They have been getting periodic rainfall and no storms recently."

Anderson said a frontal boundary which brought the severe storms earlier in the growing season has dipped farther south, which explains why the Cornhusker State has seen limited damaging storms in July and August. The state's crops have also benefited from cooler temperatures in recent weeks, a trend Anderson said he expects to continue.

"There really isn't anything out there that looks to change this pattern of moderate rainfall and basically temperatures in the 80s in the short term," he said.

Vonasek said what made a difficult situation worse this summer was dealing with all the damage to pivots from the wind storms on top of the service calls his company would normally handle this time of year. Service calls were slowed somewhat by the fact his crews were busy repairing and replacing damaged pivots from all the storms, he said.

"It just sort of stresses your capacity," Vonasek said.

Contract crews were brought into the area to help get to all the work that needed to be completed, he said. Seed corn fields with damaged pivots were first priority to cover, followed by field corn and then those fields in soybeans, due to corn plants needing moisture during earlier growth periods than soybean plants.

Vonasek also had to balance which farmers got their pivot fixed first. He said he had five customers with 10 pivots or more down each, while some of his customers only had one pivot damaged.

He said he utilized the strategy of fixing at least a few pivots from each customer, which allowed him to get through more of his customers. That plan seemed to strike the right balance, he said.

Vonasek said despite the challenging work, most of his customers' pivots damaged in these storms are operational again. The last few pivots were fixed in the last week or so, while there remain about another 20 pivots in fields where crops were completely destroyed by the straight-line winds. These pivots will be either be repaired or replaced at a later date.

Joel Grams, a farmer from near Minden, is one of Vonasek's customers. Grams had just one pivot damaged in the mid-June wind storm. Grams, who has farmed for 28 years, said this was the first time in his career that he had a center pivot knocked over in a storm.

Grams said he got his damaged pivot up and operational in the weeks after the June 14 windstorm, which also damaged his brother's grain bins just across the road, but did not cause any structural damage to his bins on the other side.

"The pivot got going on July 22, and it has been running non-stop since then," Grams said.

Vonasek said while this growing season was a challenge, it could have been worse.

"We only had about 30% of our coverage area affected by storms," Vonasek said. "I don't want to think about what would have happened if more of our area would have been affected by these storms."

Russ Quinn can be reached at russ.quinn@dtn.com

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Russ Quinn