Wichita ? Widespread rains idled combines and their crews as the wheat harvest ground to a halt again Wednesday in most of Kansas.

Hot weather ripened the state’s wheat crop unusually early in southern Kansas, but the promise of an early harvest has been repeatedly stalled by developing storms.

“We are early — a week to 10 days early,” said Brett Myers, executive vice president of the Kansas Association of Wheat Growers. “It is not harvest time yet. Mother Nature doesn’t think it is.”

Wheat harvest offices from Anthony to Great Bend all reported Wednesday that cutting was delayed by either rains or high humidity.

“Anytime wheat is ripe and you start getting moisture you start losing test weights,” Myers said.

Some fields where test weights were running 60 pounds per bushel just days ago are now testing at 58 or 59 pounds, he said. The more it rains on that ripe wheat, the lower the test weights will go.

Fortunately, much of the Kansas wheat crop is not yet mature. The high moisture content farmers are seeing when they test their wheat indicates it still needs to ripen, Myers said.

It’s too early in the harvest to worry about sprout damage, a condition where the kernels in the head begin to sprout. That tends to occur when the wheat gets a lot of rain and the soil stays damp with high humidity levels, he said.

“It would have to take days, if not weeks, of wet weather to have that happen — especially since a lot of wheat is not ripe yet,” Myers said.

But Myers said if the rains continued on a daily basis for a week to 10 days, sprouting damage would become more of a threat.