Rain in the mountains

It poured yesterday. Lots of rain. Our small bog will be happy, as will the sedum garden.

It looked like a tropical rain forest.

Finally, a thunderstorm

It rained hard for about 20 minutes this evening, not exactly impressive, but worth a quarter of an inch in the rain gauge. It might have been more, as it came in at a slant for some of that time.

Cool(ish) air is colliding with warm moist air as a front moves in. It will bring temperatures in the low 80°(F)s for a few days. Fabulous for mid-July in the Southeastern U.S. Up in the mountains, temperatures will be in the upper 70°s.

Some experts think that we're missing the regular afternoon thunderstorms that used to punctuate summer afternoons in the South and Mid-Atlantic states because of climate change. Old-timers around here like to blame the lakes created in the 60's for power generation for changing the trajectory of rainstorms.

A young horticulture expert suggested to me that all the storms are moving through the mountains, and not passing through here. Well, that's true, to be sure, but is historically true as well. The Blue Ridge Escarpment, the Blue Ridge mountains, and the Southern Appalachians receive a tremendous amount of rain compared to the Piedmont.

Regardless, in long hot summer dry spells, I'm grateful for rain, and a bit of cool weather.

Finally a prospect of some decent rain

Gardeners and naturalists are almost as keen as farmers following the weather. Where I live, garden, and pay attention to the natural world, we're in the center of quite a severe drought.

We normally get fairly even rain throughout the year, but not for the past ten years or so, except for one year (the year the front meadow looked especially fabulous, with moisture-loving Joe-Pye weed and huge Blazing Stars (Liatris spp.)

And the last two summers have been truly exceptional (note the current rating for the dark red area- ugh). I've marked where I live with the arrow!

But Tropical Storm Fay is bringing some decent rain, even to us in Upstate South Carolina. I'm sorry for the flooding in Florida, but we'll be thankful for the downpours that are predicted for the next few days.

Finally a thunderstorm...

It's hard to overstate our drought here. We haven't had more than a small amount of rain since mid-May (1/2 inch, tops, in our garden), and normal rainfall is about ~4 inches a month. We're 10 inches behind for this calendar year, and over 20 inches behind, for the last year & a half or so.

So, it's cause for excitement when a potential thunderstorm actually materializes (this is a normal occurrence in 'regular' years). Summer thunderstorms are very spotty in their distribution and rainfall amount.

We just had over 1/2 inch in about 20 minutes. What a relief to have something. And the clouds are dark with lots of thunderstorm possibilities predicted for tonight and the rest of the week.

Any bit helps plants, animals, and insects parched from lack of rain. I've just see the male hummingbird check out the vines (for insects?) near the window twice on his 'trapline' around the feeders, even in the rain.

Time for gardening

The humid spring air early this morning felt fresh and mild. It rained yesterday and last night, leaving small leafy branches scattered about. It must have rained hard; the Spanish lavender and parsley looked pummeled, but everything else seemed to have grown overnight, soaking up moisture.

The early morning light was soft, with the pink humid edges we see in tropical areas, and with no hint of the hot hazy humidity to come.

Today is the first day of summer break, bringing with it a delightful sense of anticipation, and days of poking around in the garden and in the field ahead. I love what I do, and actually in summer, I don't really do much differently, but am grateful for being able to reorient my time to focus on the natural world without the schedule of work and programs.

The garden is waiting outside my study window.

Rain and thunderstorms

I still haven't replaced the rain gauge by the main vegetable garden, but the birdbaths serve as crude measures of how much rain we've had. They're full right now, hooray! It's been dry the last couple of weeks, and the afternoon warmth has pulled additional moisture out of plants and soil.

But this morning, a big front is pushing through with lots of thunderstorm activity, and is periodically pelting down raindrops, alternating with light drizzle. I just looked at the U.S. drought monitor yesterday -- it's predicting continuing drought with improvement (compared to last year, anything is improvement). But I don't think non-outdoors-oriented people are paying attention to how the prolonged drought is affecting plants, not only in our gardens, but in natural plant communities.

My gardening companion, on a botanizing trip yesterday to get photos, reported that Steven's Creek and Savannah River Bluffs (two SC Heritage Reserve sites) were wonderful, with lots of spring wildflowers in bloom. He said, however, that Heggie's Rock, an interesting granite outcrop area protected by The Nature Conservancy, had been dramatically affected by the ongoing drought, and that the unusual plants there, adapted for the unique circumstances of the empheral pools that are characteristic of these plant communities, were barely evident, and there were many indications of drought-induced die-back in the vegetation. This is troubling for a plant community adapted to seasonal drought. Hopefully, today's rain will pass through that area as well.

More rain

I talked to a fellow this week who grew up in West Texas, where he said the topic of discussion has always been rain. Ranchers there (of which his father was one) talked about needing rain, is rain coming, how much did we get, etc. -- it was critical to the dryland forage that the cattle depended on, and meant big expenses to bring in extra hay for feed. So the continuing drought in the Southeast (where he had lived for 15 years, compared with the deluges that came last summer in Texas and mid-west, where he lives now) posed an odd puzzle for him to contemplate.

Thinking about the drought here, and the weather extremes that seem to be becoming greater, with the contrast of floods in the Central U.S. last summer, and record snowpacks in the Rockies and Sierra, with concerns of spring flooding this year are something to consider.

But it's raining here now, and perhaps we'll get a couple of inches. Our rain gauge split over winter break, an unfortunate casualty of being not put away before traveling, and freezing and thawing. Time to get another one, and start watching the totals again.