Agricultural report: It's powerful warm out there!

If you've been outside lately, we're sure you've noticed that it's hot. It got up to 93 yesterday, 9 degrees short of the record — but we haven't been through anything compared with what's been happening out on the farms and ranches, where a drought and soaring temperatures are burning up crops and putting a dent in the cattle market.

Texas is coming off its hottest first six months of a year ever recorded: Temperatures were 3.5 degrees above normal for January through June, and several parts of the state are still seeing 100-plus-degree days. Meanwhile, average rainfall for the first six months of 2006 was the 16th lowest since 1895. It means that about 1.3 million planted acres statewide won't grow, which is really hurting corn, soybean and cotton crops. "This drought has been so bad for so long and been so widespread, it's going to take the land some time to recover," Texas Farm Bureau spokesman Gene Hall told the AP.

The drought is causing problems in the cattle market, too: With pasture land drying up, many ranchers have had to sell; about 100,000 more cows were sold at auction between January and May than in the same period last year. (At the beginning of the year, Texas had 14.1 million head of cattle, or about 14.5 percent of the 97 million in the U.S.)

Estimated losses statewide from the drought were estimated at $1.5 billion in late January; there's been no new estimate since then and meteorologists say there's little hope of relief anytime soon, with slight rain chances in the next few days and higher-than-normal temperatures in the coming months.