Rain Update

We finally have had enough rain to display above the bottom of the chart.

The amount of rain and its timing are fairly random, but....

Here comes the rain again

Falling on my head like a memory

Falling on my head like a new emotion

I want to walk in the open wind

—Annie Lennox and David A. Stewart

This probably isn’t interesting to anyone except Suna and me. After an inch of rain over the last two nights, our ponds are finally full again.

The top chart shows we have had enough actual rain this year to climb onto the chart. Based on a completely unreliable model, we should have a fairly wet year this year. Last year, we finished with an slightly better than average year. But we had enough rain to meet that milestone by the end of June when the taps turned off for a couple of months.

The bottom chart shows when we get rain each year since I’ve been living on the Hermit’s Rest Ranch. While monthly distributions are fairly chaotic, it’s starting to feel more like a tropical pattern. That is, we get heavier rains early in the year, almost nothing through the summer, and light rains in the fall. Unless a tropical storm or hurricane brings a flood.

The pattern of rains, their scarcity, and the melting of the permafrost have been causing me nightmares of late. The climate is always changing, but is this the beginning of the apocalypse climate scientists are warning of? As my dad used to say, “We’ll see.”