LAS CRUCES, N.M. >> In January, while the West made national news with extreme cold weather caused by the polar vortex, the southwest experienced another phenomenon. It was the morning of Jan. 27 when strong winds hit the town of Clovis, breaking off dry tumbleweeds from the fields. In a matter of hours, thousands of weeds covered houses and businesses, many up to the roof. It took heavy machinery to help people out of their own houses.
"It took about two days to clean up the mess," said Abdel Mesbah, superintendent of the New Mexico State University Agricultural Science Center at Clovis, who will focus his future research on controlling weeds. "In the western part of town, the weeds blocked doors and windows. I've never seen anything like it."
Mesbah believes the reason there were so many kochia, Russian thistle and possibly London rocket weeds blowing across town was because several growers in the area did not clean their fields the previous year.
There could be multiple effects of having dry weeds ranging from fire danger, property damage, road hazards to the economic impact of cleaning residential areas and simply the natural occurrence of weeds spreading seeds as they tumble, leaving thousands of seedlings to become weeds the following year.
"They could spread 200,000 to half a million seeds, depending on the size of the plant," said Jill Schroeder, NMSU professor of weed science.
Mesbah added that it could be possible that next year will have even more tumbleweeds since so many spread their seeds this year.
"Growers might have a hard time next year trying to get rid of them or see more of them," he said. "That's why it is important to clean the fields every year."
He added this could have been prevented by cleaning the fields using herbicides or chopping the weeds when they first appeared.
"The invasion is largely due to their tolerance to grow in some pretty nasty conditions," said Brian Schutte, NMSU professor of weed physiology. "They do well in dry, alkaline soil. Exactly the type we have here in our area."