The success of a whole year can turn on the weather of a few autumn weeks, when the plains grower prays for the dry, breezy days that let the combines run.

Deep in the heart of winter, the plains often enjoy a brief and welcome softening, a spell of milder days that the old-timers have long marked on the calendar.

On still, cold mornings the plains wake transformed, every twig and grass blade and fence wire furred in white hoarfrost, the countryside briefly made of crystal.

Between the last frost of spring and the first of autumn lies the narrow window in which the plains must raise a crop, and the whole calendar of the farm bends to it.

Cycles of dry years are woven into the plains climate, and the memory of the great droughts still shapes how the region farms, saves and prays for rain.

In minutes a hailstorm can flatten a season's crop, and no summer worry weighs heavier on the plains grower than the ice that falls from a towering cloud.