Following a rough farming season in Colorado over the summer of 2023 due to unprecedented rain and hailstorms, Michael Hirakata of Hirakata farms said he hopes his Rocky Ford cantaloupe and watermelon crop will have a better time of it this season.

“We’re praying for a comeback,” Hirakata said. “But we have a long way to go until harvest.”

Hirakata Farms — located 100 miles southeast of Colorado Springs outside of Rocky Ford — has been serving consumers for nearly 100 years, bringing the famous Rocky Ford cantaloupe, watermelon, and pumpkins to grocery stores throughout the state and beyond.

Over the early summer of 2023, Colorado saw a big increase in rainfall and hail events — weather that Hirakata said slashed his crop by 97% last season. Many shoppers saw no Rocky Ford melons, a summertime favorite, in their grocery stores.

“It was the hail. With the rainfall, you lose some to rot, but you can work through that. Those sets will be greened out and you’ll get to the next set of fruit which will be fine. The hail devastated the crop last year, there were no plants to come back,” Hirakata said.

According to Hirakata, while the farm typically packs around 180,000 cartons of cantaloupe, last year they only packed around 12,000 cartons. The decrease, Hirakata said, was extreme, but not unexpected.

“It’s a life we chose, and you have to take the good with the bad,” Hirakata said. “There’s a lot of good weather and a lot of bad weather. We just pray for good weather all the time. It comes with the territory.”

Colorado Springs saw its second wettest year on record in 2023, with May and June seeing the most precipitation of the year. According to a previous report by The Gazette, June made the largest contribution to the total bringing 9.62 inches of precipitation. May came in second with 5.22 inches.

As for the hail, meteorologist Cameron Simcoe with the National Weather Service said hail is the No. 1 severe weather event experienced in Colorado. The moisture generally present in the state last summer is what led to the extreme and more frequent hail events experienced in the early summer of 2023.

“It was a rather busy year, moisture wise, in Colorado,” Simcoe said.

“More moisture in Colorado means more storms. More storms at our elevation, means hail.”

Meanwhile in Cañon City, Ellen Kerchner of Ellen’s Flowers, approximately 45 miles southwest of Colorado Springs, said she also experienced loss in her crop due to last year’s extreme hail and rainfall.

She speculates the increase in extreme weather events witnessed in Colorado could become more and more common as the effects of climate change becomes more evident.

“We had a pretty significant hail event in June of last year, we lost about an acre of flowers to that event,” Kerchner said, estimating her business lost 50,000 of its flowers to the storm.

“It caused detrimental impacts, for sure.”

Running the business with her partner, Matt, Kerchner said she mainly sells her products at farmers markets throughout the state. She said hail in Cañon City used to be a rarer occurrence.

According to the National Centers for Environmental Information’s Storm Events Database, Cañon City experienced three hail events during June 2023.

“So I had been around hail in Colorado Springs, but down here in Cañon City, we tend not to get that much,” Kerchner said.

“Obviously, nothing is normal right now. Maybe this is the new normal.”

Changing weather means changing tactics for growers like Kerchner.

“Hail netting, other things like that to protect our crops. That’s something we might do in the future if we continue to experience it (hail), it would have to be a more normal event for us to invest.” Kerchner said.

As far as the rainfall, Kerchner said she did have to irrigate the flowers less. She says she tries not to speculate as to what other effects the farm might see from future climate shifts.

“As far as a lookout, I don’t even dabble. I just try to think about the next couple of weeks and not look too far forward. My experience in farming is you can never predict what will happen and trying to do that can create too much emotional stress,” Kerchner said.

Summer weather

Mark Wankowski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Pueblo, said southern Colorado’s weather pattern is shifting. While the area experienced an El Niño weather pattern last summer, resulting in the increased amounts of precipitation through early summer and winter, this season the area is transitioning to a La Niña pattern.

“La Niña is a drier pattern that usually consists of warmer temps and less precipitation along southeast Colorado and that is what the current forecast is for the summer,” Wankowski said.

“Right now, we’re thinking the snowpack and snowfall definitely helped with soil moisture. We’re currently sitting above normal in soil moisture in southeast Colorado,” Wankowski said.

“With continued warm temps and lack of precipitation, we will see soil moisture decreasing and possible drought conditions developing in the near future.”

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, 38% of the state is currently experiencing drought on some level. Comparatively, 16.6% of the state experienced drought on some level at the same time last year.

Justin Louen, a hydrologist with the weather service, said the Upper Arkansas Basin received above-average levels of snowpack this past winter season. While these levels are contributing to rising river levels due to snowmelt, that water is not anticipated to last through the summer.

“Generally speaking out on the plains, the overall water supply projections are slightly below normal due to lingering dry conditions,” Loen said.

“It’s been relatively dry. With that overall dry pattern possibility transitioning to a la Niña setup, the overall projections are to be pretty dry, especially throughout the plains.”

As for when you may expect the delicious and juicy Rocky Ford melons to grace the shelves this summer, Hirakata said he expects the first crop will be ready by July 20, adding that the foreseen La Niña pattern Colorado is transitioning into is much preferred over last year’s El Niño pattern.

“We’d rather have some timely rains, and utilize ground water that we pump out and irrigate. I know it’s funny to hear a farmer say, but we’d rather have it on the dry side than the wet side,” Hirakata said.