Spray Drift

Spray drift, especially when dealing with dicamba, continues to make the news this growing season.  It appears that North Dakota has had nowhere near the problems of some other states, but some drifting problems have occurred locally.  Particle drift is often associated with the wind and that is why generally speaking spraying should be done with wind speeds of 10 miles per hour or less, but it can also occur with very light wind if an inversion is in place.  An inversion is an increase in temperature with height.  The North Dakota Agricultural weather network has sensors in place to detect inversions with more stations coming soon at ndawn.org.

Daryl Ritchison