Across the region fields are green and hay, straw, corn, wheat, rye and other crops have rebounded considerably from 2016’s historic drought.
Even in April, parts of Northeast Georgia were still the driest areas in the U.S. "It was the driest year that I can remember in my 80 years," beef farmer Benny Cross said last week, standing ankle-deep in hay cut to replenish supplies he used up in 2016.
The Cross family usually keeps an extra barn full of hay for emergencies, but they used it up last year rather than buy hay like most other beef farmers did.
"We’ve been trying to get up some hay but it’s been raining the afternoons for the last week, week-and-a-half," said Cross.
Above normal precipitation — 1 to 5 inches — fell in Alabama, "resulting in drought improvement in all areas of the state," the report stated.
About a third of the hay was harvested before the rain."
"This time last year we were already dry," Tommy Cross said.
The Crosses got only two cuttings of hay in 2016 and three-quarters of the harvest came with the first cut.
However, Scoggins’ soybean crop — a crop planted after the rye grass is harvested for straw — only produced about a 20 percent yield last year from three plantings, he said.
The drought was a lesson for farmers.