The Garden City Telegram
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Headlines from 1974: Hail Delivers Dollar-Death Blow
Published 6/20/2009 in History Page : Historical Page
Insurance adjusters replaced combines today in wheat fields of eastern Finney and Scott and western Lane counties following a sudden and heavy rain and hail storm Monday evening.
"I had about 800 acres (of wheat) hailed on," Finney County farmer Milo Joyce Jr. told the Telegram. "The majority is totaled out, really.
"We were going to start (harvesting) today. The wheat out here ripened eight to 10 days earlier than usual," Joyce said, adding that his regular combine crew was delayed by rain in Oklahoma and was to have started harvesting his today.
Joyce's farm was said by several farmers in the area to have been "almost dead center" in the sudden 30-minute storm which ravaged fields from the Healy area in Lane County to all along the Mennonite Road which stretches north and south from K96 highway to US156 in Finney County.
Damage was reported as far south as the Pierceville area in southeast Finney County.
The storm with its pea-to-marble-size hail, driven by hard winds and accompanied by heavy rains (from one-half inch to more than two inches), struck without warning about 6:30 p.m. Driving many farmers from the field, the storm lasted from 20 to 30 minutes.
"It really chopped the heck out of things," Bob Pound, another farmer in the affected northwest to southeast region, said. "It was a real fine hail with quite a little wind with it. The wind hit first and then it just opened up and dumped. It just poured for 20 to 30 minutes, just like you pulled the bottom out of the barrel.
"It really pounded the heck out of things," Pound added.
Joyce said he was out in a field on a tractor and was watching the cloud build up and listening to the radio for weather reports. He said the local announcer reported a storm in the Healy area moving to the northwest and thought his area would be missed.
Pound said the storm appeared to "back up, it came back" and slammed the area.
Another heavy loser in the storm was Garden City's George Meeker.
"All up and down the Mennonite Road it hit awful hard," Meeker said. "Some fields up to 100 per cent, you can tell that just by driving by. You don't have to get an adjuster out in it to see that."
Meeker added that some of the wheat which looks fair from the road actually sustained heavy shatter damage which will increase in degree as the damaged head dries and the loosened kernel drops out.
"There was very little cutting done. Really, most of us were just ready to go," he said. "We were going to start cutting today on a field that had over 80 per cent loss.
"It shattered bad and it actually cut the heads off some. We had 560 acres of wheat that was hit bad. It's going to run somewhere in the vicinity of 80 per cent, some of its going to be more than that."
One insurance agent in Garden City said his firm had received reports this morning of from 30 to 40 losses in the area of northeast and eastern Finney County. Adjusters, he said, were out in the field assessing the losses, he added.
Among farmers in the area (Finney) with losses, according to reports to the Telegram, are Meeker, Joyce, Pound, K.O. Powell, Laverne Hoskinson, Rex Burden, Roy Harms, Ed Hawes, Junior Boyd, Ed Theisen and Ted Friesen.
"It was one of those fast ones," one farmer remarked.
Joyce said he has been hailed out on two previous occasions: 1955 when extremely large hail even punctured building roofs and again in 1958.
Heavy thunderstorms bearing walnut-sized hail late Monday afternoon also brought an abrupt end to some wheat harvest in Scott and Lane counties.
Mrs. Lester Rodenberg, whose farm is near Healy in western Lane County, said two hail showers Monday afternoon destroyed approximately 75 per cent of their 300-400 acres of wheat.
"The cutters were supposed to come Thursday," she said. "Our crops seem to have about 75 per cent damage, but not too far from here it looks like 100 per cent damage," she said.
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