Friday, August 24, 2007

Crazy rain and flooding - but not here

One of my sisters lives in Algonquin, Illinois, near Chicago. In constrast to our never-ending drought, she reports:
Crazy rain – we are now at 27.5 inches since mid July. We drove through several areas of flooding over the road on our way home from work last night. It took 90 minutes as opposed to the usual 25 to get home. The river in our town is flooding as well. Good thing we don't live near it.
Meanwhile, in Mike Johnston's part of Wisconsin it also keeps raining. As he wrote yesterday:
Damned if it's not going to rain again today, if the gray sky is any indication. I don't mean to complain, because I know a lot of people have gotten far worse in recent days, weeks, and months—in other parts of this country as well as in England—but, man, have we ever gotten hammered lately. It's been raining for six days. We haven't had a chance to get the grass cut in between downpours. Every day I think, well, it can't rain again today. I should stop thinking that.
In the six weeks that my sister has seen more than 27 inches of rainfall, we have just barely cobbled together two inches in dribs and drabs over the course of several disappointing little showers. We could actually use six days of rain in a row, we're so parched.

Here's the result: the Agriculture Canada drought map (click on the picture to see it bigger) updated to Aug. 22 shows record dryness spreading through many regions in the southern part of the province. We are in the record dry red area between London and Toronto.

3 comments:

  1. I know I've done my fair share of whining about the drought here in Souther Maryland. In June and July we probably had a grand total of 1/2 inche of rain. Then I went on vacation and what happens? We get FOUR inches in a single week!!!

    So I stop whining for a bit anyway.

    --Robin (Bumblebee)

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  2. Nice maps! I must search those out for future reference! We too have finally received a little rain, 1.5” last 48hrs, first rainfall of any kind in over a month, did get abt 1 ½” in July but it was so dry and followed by the hot sunny days it did little to save things. We are in the “O” of Owen Sound on the drought maps and the only reason there is not a red dot in the brown is because the local reporting station seems to be defunct since mid 2006. Communities North and South of us got several sprinkles but we did not.
    Our grass is dead (not dormant) in many places, however being ”mowed field” the weeds are doing quite well, its just been too dry to drive on the crispy brown stuff to do anything about it till yesterday! Our dog, Sadie, does not help by “wiping her feet” after doing her business as the dead remains just fly across the lawn that was behind her. Just cant seem to get her to put the diviot back like the good golfers do!
    Anyway that little bit wet the top inch or so but barely penetrated the mulch on the Perennial garden but I’m not complaining at this point. Every little helps, Im so glad that I decided to keep the Rhododendron seedlings in the Greenhouse and give them extra TLC and did not set them out. The first try with them is looking good but next year will tell, one thing about gardening, you just cant rush it.
    Doing my rain dance in Grey County.

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  3. Hi Rural: Nice to hear from you. By the way, the maps are at http://www.agr.gc.ca/pfra/drought/maps/on_gs_pe_s_e.pdf and as they're gov. of Canada and I'm a taxpayer, I figure I can copy and post them to my blog.

    Hope you get some more needed rain. Cheers, Yvonne

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