Thursday, April 30, 2026

We escaped the big, big rain with marginal damage.  We received 4.5 inches (and in some field locations an inch more) of rain starting Saturday, and we had flooding in many of our creek-bottom flat fields.   But that has quickly drained away, and the resulting damage to the corn and soybeans seems (at this moment) to be minimal.  The situation for the fields near White River is not yet determined.  Flood crest levels at Edwardsport are predicted to crest at 17.1 feet on Saturday.  The crest will occur at our fields along US 50 about 1 day after that.  Those numbers will bring little damage.   Downstream at Petersburg, the numbers are a bit higher, showing 19.8 feet on Friday.  The Petersburg gauge is nearer our Freddie farm location, and a 20+ foot river will bring some flooding there.

Here’s this morning’s White River forecast at Edwardsport. The graph is helpful to know what to expect.

This big rain is a mixed bag of blessings and problems, but the blessings outweigh the problems.  We were getting extraordinarily dry, and the rain surely helped.  The damage, at least so far as we can know now, is limited compared to what could have been.  The pre-rain river levels were very, very low and that gave them some capacity to carry away the heavy rain with less flood damage to nearby fields.

Today, we are counting our blessings for this rain event.

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We are sending our sympathy to the family of Knox County farmer Marlin Dreiman, who passed away in a traffic accident on Tuesday.   His absence will be felt throughout this community.