Irrigation system ripped out, leaving crops without water
Mimi Thurston surveys damage to a center pivot irrigation system Wednesday at the family farm on Florida Mesa south of Durango. Strong winds associated with thunderstorms in the San Juan Mountains came through their Weaselskin Farm on Tuesday afternoon, pushing the pivot across the field and twisting it like a pretzel.
Jerry McBride/Durango Herald
A center pivot irrigation system sits twisted like a pretzel on Wednesday at the Weaselskin Farm on Florida Mesa south of Durango. Mimi Thurston, who works the Weaselskin Farm with her husband, Doug, said the damage happened Tuesday when gusty winds hit the area.
Jerry McBride/Durango Herald
A center pivot irrigation system sits twisted like a pretzel on Wednesday at the Weaselskin Farm on Florida Mesa south of Durango. Mimi Thurston, who works the Weaselskin Farm with her husband, Doug, said the damage happened Tuesday when gusty winds hit the area.
Jerry McBride/Durango Herald
A center pivot irrigation system sits twisted like a pretzel on Wednesday at the Weaselskin Farm on Florida Mesa south of Durango. Mimi Thurston, who works the Weaselskin Farm with her husband Doug, said the loss of the irrigation system means the crops will be lost.
Jerry McBride/Durango Herald
A massive gust front is the likely culprit for upwards of $100,000 in damages Tuesday at Weaselskin Farm, about eight miles south of Durango on U.S. Highway 550.
Mimi Thurston, whose family has ranched on Florida Mesa since the 1970s, said a storm that passed through Tuesday afternoon leveled an irrigation system, shutting down 160 acres of irrigated land.
“We’ve been here more than 30 years and never seen anything like this,” Thurston said. “This is kind of extreme.”
Chris Cuoco, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Grand Junction, said it’s hard to pinpoint the conditions at Weaselskin, but there were strong winds around Durango.
“There were definitely strong gusts associated with those thunderstorms coming off the San Juans at that time,” he said.
Cuoco said a peak gust at the Durango-La Plata County Airport was recorded at 41 miles per hour at 3 p.m.
The Thurstons, who mainly grow quality hay and oats for racehorses in California, will have to rebuild the system, but the crops are a “complete loss,” she said. “That particular 160 acres will not have water for a while,” Thurston said. “It’s just kind of a domino effect, but it’s part of farming.”
Thurston was not aware of any of her neighbors suffering damage from the storm.
We use cookies to improve your experience on our site. By using our site, you consent to our policies
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
