| TORRINGTON, Wyo. Irrigators in the North Platte Valley
are barely making it through this hot spell and will welcome
the annual silt run that began this weekend.
The rain helped some, but we wish the silt run was
starting tomorrow, said Bill Vandivort, manager of Goshen
Irrigation District in Torrington. We are delivering one
foot of water per 100 acres, but that is barely meeting
requirements.
Precipitation over the past week has been spotted and
varied in amounts. Rain reports range from almost three inches
along the Wildcat Hills west of Highway 71 to none in the
Huntley, Wyo., vicinity. Severe hail damage accompanied two of
the storms but was confined to an area between Gering and
County Road W to the south, and a strip about two miles wide
along the east edge of Scottsbluff and Gering.
The silt run will officially begin July 10 and run for two
weeks, according to Vandivort. The annual event flushes silt
out of Guernsey Reservoir through the irrigation system to
line the canals. This prevents seepage so that more water is
delivered to the farmers. There are 85 miles of canals between
Whalen Dam, located east of Guernsey, and the Wyoming/Nebraska
state line. The canal system, which includes the Gering/Fort
Laramie Canal on the south side of the North Platte River and
the Tri-State Canal on the north side of the river, continues
east past Bridgeport.
With this heat, it isnt easy, and the canal goes down
some every day, Vandivort said Saturday morning. The
banks are seeping pretty good, but with the silt, we can gain
about 75 to 100 feet of water for delivery. We need that silt
bad.
We have to take care of what we have and conserve
whenever possible, Vandivort said. We didnt get much
of a snowmelt this year, and if we keep drawing down the
reservoirs at this rate, next summer could be real bad if we
dont get a lot of snow this winter.
Fridays storms left .7 of an inch at Hemingford and .66
of an inch at Chadron, according to the National Weather
Service in Cheyenne. Scottsbluff recorded only a trace and
about .5 of an inch was reported north of Torrington. The
southern Panhandle remained dry.
More rain fell as predicted for Saturday evening throughout
eastern Wyoming and the Nebraska Panhandle.
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