 Hello, I'm Jim Sturica and I'm a soil scientist here at the Williston Research Extension Center. Today I'm going to share with you some of my thoughts regarding the current drought. So when did the current drought start? April of this year, January of this year, August of last year. At Williston, monthly precipitation was below normal every month in this year, 2021 except for June and every month in last year, 2020 except for January. Yet our crops did not suffer near as much in 2020 as they have this year. Why? Well, remember September 2019? In September 2019 we had a lot of rain. In fact, it was five times the normal amount for September. And thus we started the 2020 growing season with an ample supply of soil moisture. Now as shown on the bottom half of figure two, we had nearly seven inches of plant available water in the top four foot of soil, which is 76% of the soil's water holding capacity. And that amount was actually similar to the amount that we had during the five springs before that. Now if you compare that to the amount of soil moisture at the start of the 2021 growing season, this spring there was a little less than three inches of plant available water in the top four foot of soil, which is only 32% of the soil's water holding capacity. And it was even drier in the top foot, where we had only about a third of an inch of water, which is 13% of the soil's water holding capacity. And the seriousness of a value that low becomes even more apparent when you realize that as the soil dries, not only is there less water available for the plants, but that water is held much more tightly by the soil, making it increasingly difficult for plants to absorb it. So how big of a role does stored water play in the growth of our crops? In other words, what fraction of water used by the crop comes from water stored in the soil and what fraction comes from rainfall during the growing season? Well, obviously this varies from year to year. In the Durham plots in our crop sequence study here at the station, where we've collected data back to 2015, the fraction of crop water obtained from the soil has varied among years from values as low as 21% to values as high as 70%. So when did the current drought start? I'd say we'd have to go back to the start of the 2020 growing season. Because of the lack of rainfall during the 2020 growing season, we ended the season with soil on the drier side. This coupled with scant precipitation between the 2020 harvest and the 2021 planting resulted in soil conditions so dry this spring that even if we had gotten normal rainfall during the growing season, we still would not have had adequate moisture for this year's crops. During the preparation of this talk, I've had sort of an epiphany. We soil scientists talk a lot about the need to increase the soil's water holding capacity. But this is my 27th growing season working in Western North Dakota and I think I can probably count on one hand the number of times that our soil has been filled to field capacity. So why be concerned about getting a bigger gas can when we never fill up the one we currently have? What we need to do is get more of our precipitation actually into the soil. We need to use diverse crop rotations to increase soil aggregate stability so that water infiltration is increased and runoff is reduced. We need to use no-tel to keep residue, crop residue on the soil surface, thus reducing any evaporative loss. And I think after harvest, we need to leave crop residue standing in our fields to improve snow catch. Because what good does snow do for our crops if it is blowing off our fields and into the road ditches or tree rows? So my take home lesson for you today is in our semi-arid climate, we need to start thinking about water for next year's crop as soon as we finish harvesting this year's crop. Thank you for watching.