"We could have an 80 percent chance of rain and not buy a drop," he said of this year's dry spell, then joked, "Actually, they change the weather forecast more than I change my underwear."

The one thing that hasn't changed, however, is the drought, which is heading into a second year.

The year started out hopeful after one of the worst droughts since the 1930s Dust Bowl.

Millershaski said a rain came in October, helping farmers get good stands of wheat. Winter brought a nice snow, followed by a few small showers that made conditions better than last year.

Then everything shut off, he said.

"We haven't got much over a quarter of an inch since the first of April," he said. "Our pastures and the wheat stubble are the same color."

Still, southwest Kansas' wheat harvest is better than last year when his crop, decimated by both hail and drought, yielded a farm average of 16 bushels an acre.

"That was, by far, the worst crop I've had," he said. "This year I'm hoping for a 25 to 30 bushel average, but it is so sporadic."

It was dry and warm enough this spring to cause some of his wheat crop to die prematurely.

"It just ran out of moisture," Millershaski said, noting those acres made 15 to 20 bushels an acre.

A wheat, fallow, wheat rotation, however, faired better, making 30 to 50 bushels an acre. That was just a small percentage of the area's crop, he added.

Ken Jameson, grain division vice president at Garden City Co-op, said the Finney County-based cooperative will take in about 60 percent of a normal crop, compared to just 40 percent in 2011.

Yields are across the board, he said, from 6 to 65 bushels an acre, depending on what fields caught a rain. The company's territory in Gove and Lane counties, along the Smoky Hill River, caught timely rains that pushed yields higher, he said.

In Ford County, Jerald Kemmerer, general manager of Dodge City-based Pride Ag Resources, said harvest in his territory would be about 75 percent of normal, compared to just half a crop last year.

Heat and no rain in May took its toll.

"Timely rains would have made it a normal crop," he said. "We got into the last part of May with no moisture and that just put a killing to it."

At Plains Equity Exchange in Meade County, grain merchandiser Steve Thummel said harvest started May 23 - one of the earliest starts, if not the earliest. Yields on dryland averaged around 25 bushels an acre with some of the irrigated yielding 45 to 60 bushels an acre.

He is hopeful the drought pattern will break, he said.

"If you live out here, we don't get a lot of rain," he said. "So we keep looking and waiting for the next one. We're just one day closer."