new "normal"?

the farm machinery is parked...

and there are still a lot of unworked fields that were fallowed last year laying around...

and this is why...1.6" of rain overnight in my back yard brings may's total to 5.6" back there...i am uncertain of the rainfall amounts out in the fields ( they vary from place to place in my yard...i have measured micro-climate in my yard..the results are somewhere around this blog )...however in looking around out there...

whatever the totals, there is quite a bit of standing water impeding what should be the onset of dense yellow #2 planting...it was delayed last year which is why there are fallow fields and why there were a lot of beans locally...we seem on our way there again...

the drainage systems are trying to do the job, however they seem overburdened in places...and with at least the possibility of rain forecast in six of the next ten days they may not get much of a break...this could be anomalous...that happens in weather...could be the "new normal" around here too...we'll see what the rest of the month is like ( and we are on schedule to replicate last may's ten inches of rainfall ) and what may 2021 brings...jury's still out.

six days later

in the past four days we have had two and six tenths inches of rainfall...and it is still raining...i had some necessary errands to run which took me out south so i took advantage of the situation to have a look around the industrial fields...i did not find any tanks of anhydrous ammonia...

i did find considerable standing water out there...

some of it draining through older and more recently established formalized channels...

and some through cuts eroded into the berms of the fields...erosion is no one's friend...ask the slash and burn horticulturalists on hillsides...and, while rain is a necessity in the land of dense yellow #2 a surfeit is as much of an issue as a lack...climatologists maintain that wet areas will become wetter and dry areas drier with climate change...so far the empirical evidence supports that...last may we received ten inches of rain in a month...something like a quarter of the yearly total precipitation...and it put a stop to corn planting hereabouts and left more than a few fallow fields that are still colonized by native plants...so far this month has seen five and a half inches in my back yard and rain is forecast for the rest of the month...or, at least, the probability of rain...may is almost here and it's raining..another stalled season?

another shift

not as warm as the sunny afternoon yesterday...it is dead on the "average" high for feburary seventeenth hereabouts...

that's not melt water on the deck reflecting the maple trees...those concentric rings in the center of the photo are from a rain drop...

a tenth of an inch so far with another fifteen hundredths forecast...one may not expect rain in february...here it is...that makes seven and one tenth inches of rain ( let us emphasize that rain...not snow ) since the beginning of the year at a time when snow would be the expected form of precipitation...something may be amiss...

shapes change

change is constant...stasis is death...that is valid for people and for weather...and, at least in my back yard, climate as well...two days and the "sternest" had retreated from winter hereabouts...there is considerable standing water...

the winter rye has begun to emerge from the snow cover...no sign of wheat or ramps just yet...

while the egyptian walking onions...

the native berries...

and new york imports have remained stubbornly green through it all...

in defiance of the weather and the rabbits that have been criss crossing my back yard in search of something to browse...it is the second half of february and i would probably profoundly mistaken in thinking winter nearing its end...still...we remain on the lookout for crocuses.

2.8" ( so far )

the temperature in my back yard is a bit more seasonable today...only nine degrees ( fahrenheit ) above the "average" high for the day...

and, in a throwback to last may, we again find ourselves under a weather system that stretches from the gulf of mexico to the great lakes...

and which, by seven this morning, had produced 2.8" of rain in my back yard ( it has rained a bit more since then and there is more forecast...there may be an update )...so i decided to go have a look around...

the ground isn't frozen so you know all this water standing in the fields is there because they are sodden...

all but the largest of the drainage ditches are full ( the roads are flooded in places as well ) and some are creating miniature rapids as they run downhill...

there are numerous cuts in the berms of fields where there was more runoff than the drainage systems could handle...

and this field has created a waterfall where the runoff has over-topped an abutment for a culvert...deniers aside ( or ignored if you care to...i have no use for the willfully ignorant...denial is usually not a good thing ) this much rain in january at the south end of the inland sea in nothing like "normal"...the local evidence for a serious change in the climate continues to be reinforced by a growing number of threads...all we need do is look.