A pool of water sits in the middle of cropland in Brillion, Wisconsin on July 2, 2024. PC: Fox 11 Online
BRILLION, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — The month of June for all of Northeast Wisconsin was very, very wet. As the month closes out, the National Weather Service in Green Bay is showing the areas that were hardest hit.
Communities like Forestville, Brillion, and Wausau were bogged down by rain, while Green Bay stuck close to the yearly June average.
“It was dry yesterday and the little bit of rain we had last night and this morning, making tracks and mudding it up and pools of water, a great example of what we’re having to deal with each and every day right now,” says Travis Speirs, a dairy farmer at Shiloh Dairy in Brillion.
“The normals for precip for most of Northeast Wisconsin are going to range between about three to four inches for the month of June,” says Meteorologist Kira Jesse with NWS. “So, this year many locations have been seeing double that amount.”
“It’s really, really stressful, the last two to three weeks particularly,” Speirs adds.
The crops that grow at the Shiloh Dairy farm are solely to feed their thousands of dairy cattle.
Speirs says rain in May pushed some of their plantings into June, and even then, they barely squeezed it in.
“The stuff that got in the middle of May, we’re there. It’s right at knee-high ready to go, it should be waist-high if we got the proper heat, but we’ve not had the heat units to really make it go. Everything else that was planted here two, three weeks ago, it’s out of the ground but that’s all it’s really done,” he adds.
In a normal year, Speirs’ hay fields get cut three times.
“Trying to harvest the second crop, we’re 10 days outside our normal window for doing it,” he said Tuesday. “We managed to sneak it in this weekend, but obviously with another inch of rain coming right away, we finished 7 o’clock [Monday] night, and there are no opportunities to stretch out and apply some much-needed nutrients to the fields after the harvest to one, create the next cutting that’s going to supply for the animals and then two, give us some relief from all this rain.”
NWS says Brillion saw 9.08 inches of rain in June.
“That actually ranks third for the highest June rainfall and those records go back a little over 100 years until 1923,” says Jesse.
She explains that it’s a stark difference compared to last year when the whole state was in a drought.
“If you’re comparing Brillion from this year to last year, they only saw 1.73 inches and they were ranked the 11th driest June on record.”
“Last year we had a fantastic crop year despite the drought,” Speirs says. “This particular area with the heavy ground, we had all the moisture we needed and a couple of timely rains, we had almost record crop yields across everything. Fast forward another year, it’s cold and wet. We don’t win in wet and nobody wins in cold no matter where you’re at in the state.”
The rain they’re seeing now could impact Speirs’ farm for months to come.
“It’s going to be a rough crop.”
In Green Bay, the month of June brought 4.52 inches of rain, which is just above the yearly average of 4.10″. During last June’s drought, Green Bay got 3.58″.
In Appleton, June 2024 brought 7.01″ while in June 2023, the city received 3.73″.
In Wausau, this year marked the sixth wettest June with 8.66″, while June 2023 yielded just 2.11″.
Forestville saw the wettest June across the area with 9.48″, compared to just 1.66″ in June 2023.
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