AIR MARCH 10, 1999

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. A little bit of just about every kind of weather this week - more on weather in a moment. If you want to go to the Soybean and Sorghum production meeting in Washington Kansas tomorrow give me a call at the Extension Office today! I’ll be leaving at 7:30 in the morning and I need to know today if you are going along!

This is severe storm awareness week. Anyone who is outside during the spring and sumer need to be very aware of the weather. We’ve all watched those towering anvilly thunderheads build in the late afternoon. Sometimes they’re coming our way, and sometimes they build on past us. But it is very important to simply be aware of them. There are many times that you are on a tractor or somewhere away from where you may be able to get an up to the minute forecast or alert of watches and warnings. Do you have a plan of how to deal with watches and warnings. Does the family have a way to get ahold of you or even know where you’ll be working in case they need to. Let’s face it, there are a lot of times that you are in very exposed places, and while we may not be overly worried about tornadoes, what about hail and lightning. Severe storm awareness week is the time to jump start the planning process. A chance to say, well, what if I’m here or there and a storm comes along, what should I do, what should the family do. It’s not stupid or lame to have severe storm drills for the family, yourself and any employees you may have. Does everyone know where the safest/strongest structure is? Do they know when they should go there? Do you have battery powered radios, remember when we used to call them transitor’s, with fresh batteries where you can get to them if necessary. And do you have flashlights with fresh batteries as well? All of this planning is simply so when the warning comes everyone can react instead of asking, gee what should we do! You hope you’ll never need to take advantage of those emergency plans, but the folks of Hesston or Andover or Topeka probably didn’t think it would happen to them either. There are no magical areas that are immune from severe storms - and the odds of being hit by lightning are better than of winning the lottery. So take steps now to start planning for, "what if....."

This is Chuck Otte, Geary county Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook '99.

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