San Antonio – Farmers are celebrating the arrival of the potential rainfall Thursday, but they’re cautiously optimistic that too much rain won’t damage their crops.
Joanna Garcia and Pat West are nervously watching the clouds. The SoTex Farms owners have spent the weekend and more of the week picking ripe strawberries. But there are still a lot of berries left in the field as the rain approaches.
“If it rains too much, that could damage them,” said Garcia.
“The berries that ripened throughout all the heat that we just had on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, we’re just going to kind of roll the dice and see what happens,” said West.
He said other farmers picked everything, trying to salvage and get whatever they could.
Paul Berreti with the Edwards Aquifer Authority said the area has been in stage 3 water restrictions for several months. Rain is always welcome, but rainfall west of I-35 is much needed, primarily in Uvalde and Medina counties.
“It’s been especially troubling, especially out west. So farmers are going to have to irrigate more, so water levels in Uvalde County are dropping,” Berreti said.
With several years of droughts, steady rainfall is desirable, but more is needed to return to a comfortable zone.
“It’s good to have some of these rainfall events over a weekend, but we need lots of those over many weekends,” Berreti said.