Stormy Saturday: more staggering rainfall

Pinch me, I can't believe we got so much rain this week.

Today's severe thunderstorm brought almost 1 and a half inches of rain. It was quite scary when torrential rain turned to hail for a few minutes and a hurricane-like wind whipped through.

I was out on the front porch with the camera when a particularly nasty thunderclap sounded right on top of the house, so I ran back in. I heard later that my neighbour was so frightened she went down to her basement. Amazingly, no big tree limbs came down here.

The view from the front porch during the storm
As someone who got shell shocked by last year's record dry summer, I wasn't expecting any better from this summer, especially when May and June started off almost as dry. So this soggy July, the wettest we've experienced in our decade here, is quite a surprise.

Total rainfall this week: a shade over 4 inches. That's more than we got all last summer. The lawn looks awesome (you can't even see the creeping Charlie, at least not in the picture). I've never seen the grass this lush in July. There's a lot of mowing in my future.

After today's and the week's storms: the lawn all greened up again
The semi-circular perennial bed after the storm
© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener

Bloomsday highlights and amazing thunderstorms

Peonies and allium seedheads before the storm
Why is it that we get the worst thunderstorms when the peonies are in full bloom? This is just rhetorical question: I'm not complaining, really!

Who could complain when Sunday night's rolling thunder revue (my dog's least favorite light and sound show) brought us three or four thunderstorms in a row? Well, I could take issue with the 15-minutes of pounding hail. Our precipation total that night: one-and-3/10ths inches! Amazingingly enough, the hail damage is minimal. Even the big hostas have just a few holes in their leaves.

The rain has made all the plants put on a growth spurt, especially the giant hostas. Everything looks 100 percent better, particularly the lawn, which I care about despite all the anti-lawn sentiment out there. (What other ground cover sets off flower gardens on an acreage as usefully as lawn? If I didn't have lawn, I'd have weeds.)

Peony with Anthriscus sylvestris 'Ravenswing'

Verbascum 'Polar Summer' with irrigation running before the rain
© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener

It really did rain...

It rained last night - a thunderstorm that got my dog a-panting and hiding under the table. The total: 6/10ths of an inch.

With the rain we had earlier, we've in good shape again: the cisterns that collect rainwater from the house and barn roofs are full. For the moment, the grass is green and beds are radient with peonies and Siberian irises. Contentment reigns (or should I say "rains"?).

© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener

Six men, three big trucks, two small trucks

Waiting for the new transformer box
That's what it took to get our place humming with power again. Last evening, we had dinner with my in-laws (it was my mother-in-law's 80th birthday). During dinner there was a thunderstorm with rain (a cause of great joy), but when we came home, our power was out.

We went to bed without calling Hydro because it looked like the neighbor's power was out too, so we assumed they had called. Usually, if it goes out, the power is off for just a couple of hours, but this time, we still didn't have power in the morning. I called Hydro, and when they showed up a couple of hours later, they discovered that our transformer was fried: probably a lighting hit last evening.

Lifting the new transformer into place
So they came back a couple of hours later with a small army to replace the green transformer box - free of charge! (I remember what it cost when we put it in 10 years ago, replacing an ugly transformer on a pole and burying our line to the road.)

Now our place is humming again. What did I miss most? Not air conditioning, but the Internet. I can't live without my computer and the web.

After all that, the amount of rain we got was small: only a 4/10ths of an inch, but better than nothing. Today was a scorcher of a day, and so far a number of the thunderstorms have passed us by.

Over the weekend, my friend in Michigan reported more than 2 inches of rain on Friday, and 2.5 inches on Saturday. There's no justice: many states are getting too much rain, even flooding, and even northern Ontario is getting more rain than needed, and we're still high and dry. So it goes.

© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener

Luck turning? Early morning thunderstorm

Click on the radar map to view bigger
4:30 a.m.: Wake to thunder and lightning and then finally some rain falling around 5 a.m. I take a cup of tea and sit outside on the front porch bench while it comes down. It feels like balm for the soul. When it's over, the rain gauge shows 3/10ths of an inch. More in the forecast for later this morning, around 11 a.m. We'll see.

10 a.m.: Another small thunderstorm cell passing through. We get maybe half a tenth of an inch more, which doesn't quite take the rain gauge to 4/10ths.

Meanwhile, south of the border, more reports of flooding through many parts of the American mid-west. It's hard to believe that we are still so dry.

My friend from Michigan reports:

There's massive flooding in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Ohio. Some parts of those states have received 14 inches of rain with 5 inches on Tuesday, alone. We are lucky to have been on the outskirts of the storm. it's hard to believe that you - in a rather direct line east of here, have no rain. I'm actually beginning to believe the US weather maps that have only white above
the northern US border. There is no weather in Canada, only hot or cold.

Drought watch: July catching up to June

Could the drought pattern be breaking? Already in July, we've had almost as much rain we got in June. (Mind you, what we got in June was almost nothing.) Yesterday, a steady, soft rain in the morning netted 4/10ths of an inch, and this morning we had a similar kind of rain that brought 2/10ths.

With today's hot and muggy weather, there might even be more later if a thunderstorm actually makes it to us. One small storm cell passed frustratingly close at noon: close, but no cigar.

This adds up to just over half an inch for July, and the month has only just begun. Considering that the total for June was about 7/10ths of an inch, things must be looking up. Right?

I sure hope so. All this hose wrangling and buying of water has got me down.