A little more than 20 inches of rain has fallen on Dale Murden’s Texas grapefruit grove in 2022; “about average for the year,” he says. But the majority of Texas is in severe drought, and that poses problems for Murden and other Texas growers, especially for the future.
“We just are not seeing any rain or significant inflows in the watershed that replenishes our two main storage reservoirs for irrigation and municipalities,” Murden says. “The water districts in the commercial citrus zone have been on allocations since the first of the year.”
Murden, president of Texas Citrus Mutual, says the drought over most of Texas is just the latest in a series of weather-related setbacks for Texas growers.
