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The long winter

A South Dakota cow-calf producer says farmers and ranchers are ready for the snow to leave.

Shawn Weishaar, who farms north of Lemmon, says the cold, snowy conditions started in November. 

We’ve been looking at snow for a long time and it just wears on you,” he says. “It’s part of life where we live, but we don’t always have winters like this. The last long winter I remember was in 1996 and 1997, which was when we decided to push back calving season to April.”

There’s a late season blizzard moving through this week that brought up to 18 inches of snow across the region, but only four inches have fallen at the Weishaar farm in the storm. He says last year’s late season blizzards were much worse. 

“This blizzard is one week earlier than the two that happened last year and we were in the middle of calving season then.”

He says spring calving began right before this week’s spring blizzard and so far, all is going well.

While there are warmer temperatures in the forecast, he’s not ruling out the possibility of another snow event.  

“It’s weather. It never has been predictable and it never will be. A bad winter is no different from a drought, some people have it better off and others have it worse, but no two are ever alike.”

Much of South Dakota remains in a winter weather advisory or blizzard warning through Wednesday night.

Photo credit: Shawn Weishaar

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