With most summer row crops already harvested, tropical storm Hermine was mostly beneficial for agriculture in extreme South Texas, according to Texas AgriLife Extension Service personnel.

As it quickly passed through the southern tip of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, Hermine threatened shrimpers, among others, but didn’t bring the heavy rainfall forecasters had predicted.

"We seemed to have dodged another bullet," said Dr. Ruben Saldana, an AgriLife administrator in Weslaco.

"Fortunately, there just wasn't a lot of damage to be had with this storm," he said. "Lots of land, especially rangeland, got some badly needed rainfall out of it."

Rainfall amounts varied from a trace to as much as 4 inches, but most of it was slow steady rain, not the type that would cause major problems, Saldana said.

Throughout AgriLife Extension's District 12, which consists of 20 counties in the southern tip of Texas, only one county had reported the possibility of major crop damage, he said.

"Jim Wells County, near Alice, had as much as half of their 10,000 acre-cotton crop defoliated and not yet harvested, which makes it very vulnerable to rain damage," he said. "The jury is still out on the level of damage, but in today's market a 5,000-acre cotton crop would have a potential value of $3.2 million."

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