Some local farmers are beginning to see a strain when it comes to their crops due to a period of abnormally dry weather.

“Farmers definitely have noticed the lack of rain, but unfortunately there’s not much to be done for a lot of farmers except to pray for rain,” said Katelyn Miller, field crop specialist for the South Western New York Dairy, Livestock and Field Crops Program of Cornell Cooperative Extension. “You know things are dry when the fields that usually act as swamps are dry enough to work properly with compaction, or almost getting stuck.”

The National Weather Service in Buffalo previously put most of Western New York into the D0 drought category, abnormally dry. A drier-than-normal weather pattern is expected to continue for the next few weeks.

“There has been a total of 0.36 inches of rain for the entire month so far for the area east of Jamestown,” said Dan Kelly, observation program leader for the National Weather Service. “In June, there was only 1.96 inches. This is 2.4 inches below normal.”

There were a few thunderstorms Monday night that brought rain to the area, but Kelly said they were “widely” scattered. The forecast is calling for scattered storms Sunday with a 60% chance of rain, in addition to rain possible Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

While Chautauqua County remains in the abnormally dry drought stage, if the dry weather continues, the next stage would be moderate drought, then severe, extreme, and eventually exceptional drought.

For farmers, the dry weather is hurting the crop season, especially for hay and corn. Miller noted that local farmers are unable to plant crops that do better in dry weather in this area.

“Installing irrigation systems such as we see with higher value crops like potatoes are not feasible options for many farmers in our region, especially with the high amount of acreage of many farms,” Miller said. “Already, you may see corn leaves rolling in the field trying to preserve moisture, burnt hay fields after slight rain — such as we received two nights ago — which will definitely impact third cutting. And pests prefer dry and hot weather so we may see an increase in their presence as well.”

Weather is one thing that farmers have no control over, so when it comes to unusual conditions during crop season, there’s not much farmers can do besides trying to stay prepared, Miller said.

“I’d have to say that farmers should ensure that the infiltration rates on their fields are adequate to support heavier rainfall so that when we get rain, their soil is taking it in instead of running off,” Miller said. “Infiltration rates are based on factors such as soil compaction and ground cover, but also by soil texture, which farmers don’t have control over.”