About a month ago, Clay County farmer David Kragnes was praying for rain.

The early spring's dry weather made for good seeding conditions, but his newly planted crops needed moisture.

"It would appear I prayed too hard," Kragnes said Tuesday, while water pooled in some low-lying areas of his fields northeast of Moorhead.

Kragnes and other area farmers say the weekend rain storms that pummeled parts of the Red River Valley could damage crops planted on low ground, or drown them altogether.

Farmers in Sargent, Ransom and Richland counties in southeastern North Dakota were among the hardest hit by the storms.

As much as 7 inches of rain fell in parts of the three counties, flooding fields and swelling nearby rivers, said Vince Godon, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Grand Forks, N.D.

More than 3 inches of rain fell in Fargo-Moorhead during the weekend. To the west, the storms dumped up to five inches of rain from Devils Lake south to Valley City and Lisbon, Godon said.

Ramsey County Emergency Management Director Tim Heisler said rainfall storage areas in the Devils Lake basin were already full when the weekend rains began.

The water storage areas are now overflowing onto cropland, he said.

"This is going to be a true farmland disaster," he said.

Some farmers in Sargent County could lose as much as 30 percent of their crops to flooding, Extension Agent Julie Hassebroek said.

"We can't take anymore," she said. "The ground is completely saturated."

Officials at the Wahpeton, N.D.-based Minn-Dak Farmers Cooperative and Moorhead's American Crystal Sugar said it's too early to say whether the heavy rains will cause significant damage to the region's sugar beet crop.

How much crop damage is realized depends on whether more rain falls soon and how quickly fields can drain, Cass County Extension Agent John Kringler said.

Hassebroek said the region's farmers also are contending with other water-related problems. The heavy rains are preventing farmers from getting in their fields to finish planting crops and to spray for weeds.

Now, farmers will increasingly turn to aerial sprayers to treat their crops, she said.

"The weed pressure is going to be huge and there's not a lot we can do about it," she said.

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