MOTHER Nature dealt Alabama farmers a bad hand last year! Most areas of our state were devastated by unprecedented drought and heat. Peanut producers were particularly hard hit, but so were many Alabama cattle producers, who constantly moved cattle or bought hay. Even catfish producers suffered from high prices created by shortages of grain for feed. Perhaps the worst hit were the state's cotton producers, who had to endure both the drought and the worst infestation of tobacco budworms ever recorded in Alabama.

Though 1996 brought us a new year, weather-related troubles continued for Alabama producers. Successive late winter, early spring freezes virtually wiped out the state's peach crop and played havoc with speciality crops like blueberries, strawberries, and blackberries. In addition to weather-related problems, Alabama growers will suffer long-term from the closing of the USDA Agricultural Weather Infonnation Service at Auburn. Rodger Getz, Karl Harker, Dave Ihle, and others at the Weather Service provided critical infonnation for growers—and to researchers. They will be missed!

The Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station shares many things with farmers and livestock producers in the state. Unfortunately, one of them is the weather. Research projects at several of our research stations were decimated by everything from hurricanes to ice stonns. Unlike farmers, we can benefit by hostile weather. Though the primary mission of many of our projects was negated by the weather, we learned valuable infonnation as to how many crops react to prolonged drought, freezing temperatures, and other weather abnormalities. Hopefully, this information will help farmers and researchers alike cope with a common problem that we cannot do much about—the weather.