Wednesday, August 02, 2006, 20:04

What IS That Stuff?

Just as I predicted, we did not get any torrential rain on Tuesday. Not much, anyway. It rained hard for 10 or 15 minutes Tuesday afternoon, and then that was the end of the hard rain.

What did happen, however, is that it rained gently and quietly after that. For the rest of the day. And most of the night. And with very little thunderstorm activity.

All together, we ended up with around 4 inches of rain.

I can hardly believe it.

Four inches of rain -- in just the way we needed it to come.

Last night, while it was raining, Randy and I took Charlie for a walk, just so we could listen to the sound of the rain and feel the rain falling on us.

It seems like it has been so long -- too long -- since we've listened to rain pattering on the leaves and the blacktop and running along the shoulder of the road and the sound of our feet squelching in the wet and the pitter-patter of Charlie trotting along on a wet surface.

Actually, we took Charlie out twice, just so we could listen to the rain. (We left Pixie in the house; with her long hair, she gets soaked, and she really doesn't care to be out in the rain, if she can help it.)

Is this the end of the drought? Or only an interlude in the middle of a drought? I can't say right now. We will have to wait and see if it keeps on raining.

Today, the weather is much cooler, and the air is not so damp and humid and heavy and oppressive. The sun is shining, and the sky is dotted with puffy white clouds.

I had to go into town this afternoon to get more antibiotic for Charlie, and I couldn't help noticing how many brown and burned looking lawns there are between here and town. Was the rain that fell yesterday and last night enough to turn the lawns green again? Was it enough to make the lawns grow?

When we got an inch of rain at the end of June, our lawn turned green briefly, but it did not grow.

It will take, I think, many such rain events to bring us out of the drought and put the soil moisture back where it should be.

And to think, there are parts of the country where they are getting too much rain. . .

LeAnn R. Ralph

Tuesday, August 01, 2006, 19:08

Still Sticky

The temperature topped out Monday at 106 degrees Fahrenheit. In the shade.

In the sun, the temperature was 110 degrees.

Only four degrees difference between shade and sun. Wow.

On the weather report Monday night, the forecaster said that July 2006 was the hottest July since 1938. The other hottest July before that was 1935. So now I have a hint of an inkling of what it was like during the dry years of the Great Depression.

We got a little rain last night. About a half inch. It is cloudy today. The weather forecast is predicting torrential rain.

Haven't seen it yet. Probably won't.

But parts of Minnesota and western Wisconsin are under flash flood watches.

Right now Tuesday afternoon, the temperature is 84 degrees, which was the "low" for last night. And it is sticky. Terribly humid and damp. I am still breaking out in a soaking sweat whenever I try to do anything outside -- even though it's 22 degrees cooler today.

And it's sprinkling a little from time to time, which also adds to the humidity.

Isabelle was so worn out from the heat on Monday that after she finished her breakfast this morning, she laid down in her shelter for a nap. Stretched out flat. Snoring.

Kajun spent the day yesterday standing out in the sun. At first I couldn't figure out why he was outside instead of inside in the barn in the shade. But then I decided it must have felt better to him outside in 110 degrees under the sun in the wind (a strong south/southeast wind Monday at around 20 mph) than it did in the barn where there was no air moving and it was probably 120 degrees.

The hummingbirds weren't moving much yesterday, either. There was a little nectar left in their feeder (I filled it today), but their little flower ball feeders had plenty. But still they weren't flying around much when it was 110 degrees in the sun. Today, they are busybodies again, flying around and chasing each other and squeaking and squawking and scolding.

If we do get some rain today or tonight, it will be too late for the corn crop around here, and it will be too late for most of the second or third crop hay. But it would be a start toward moistening the soil again. And a start is better than no rain at all.

LeAnn R. Ralph