Thursday, October 20, 2011

It's official. Wettest year ever!

If you're tuning in from the drought-stricken south and central, I'm sorry, but yesterday, just a little after 6 pm, Cleveland records that Northeast Ohio broke the record for combined rain/snow precipitation since records were establish in the 1870s.  Click here for the story.

Looking for the silver lining

While my calendar doesn't reflect snow melt, I do have rain totals.  The first rainy day this year was January 1st, when we got .6".  Definitely an omen.   I brought in the rain gauge, afraid it would freeze and split.   I put it back out in March when we got lots of snow and rain.  I only recorded rain:

March 4.25"
April 4.75"
May 8.7"
June 3.6"
July 6.75"
August 4.9"
September 4.6"
October (to date) 5.15"
Total (to date) 43.3"
(My 2010 totals only come to 27.3")

(And, lest we forget there are still more than 2 months left in the year to go!)

In fact, yesterday we got over 2.5" from a system that starting dumping early in the a.m. and went until nearly midnight.  We got a respite this morning, but it's spinning around and will punch us again, probably before noon. *glub glub*

I shouldn't complain, there ARE lots of silver linings.  From the 'big picture' (water table benefits, local farm crops) to the lushness of my sanctuary plants and non-stop supply of grass clippings this year.  I also count that Craig totally fixed the roof leak in the sunroom and it's high and dry *knock wood* in there now, and Andy fixed the gap in the basement interior gutter system that overflowed a bit during July and it's low and dry *knock concrete* down there.  And just 2 days ago I cleaned out all the back of the house gutters.  Great timing, no?

The system should rain on us more today and Friday, but Saturday should bring 3-4 days of cool dry conditions with nights dipping into the low 30s.  Ah well, another silver lining about all this rain - at least I didn't have to shovel it! ;-D

2 comments:

  1. Amazing. That almost 4 inches in July! Wow.

    No wonder your gardens look so great. Well, you had something to do with that too!

    We had a hard frost last night.

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  2. Actually, almost 7 in July, 4 in June. And thanks - I've done more work in the gardens this year than the last 2.

    Hard frost?? Eeeeek. We're 3 days past our traditional first frost, but I'm sure we'll get it this coming week.

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