After a long delay, rain falls once again!

Panel 1

A dry spell that lasted the better part of two months was broken towards the end of May when rain fell once again in and around my home in southwest Missouri. April saw only about 1.43 inches of rain while May was at an even more meager 1.30 inches. Two months that normally average well over four inches for each month (see panels 1)! This year about eleven inches has fallen all told against and average of 19 for a deficit of over eight inches! That’s quite a departure from the very excessive rain that fell the previous year.

In addition to it being on the dry side, the weather also warmed up much earlier than normal which has caused many of the area gardens to also produce vegetables as much as a month earlier than what has been normal. I have tomatoes and cucumber ripening on the vine already when normally that would not happen prior to July!

So, what’s going on with the weather these days?

I’ll tell ya everybody, the weather over the northern hemisphere has got me to feeling a little bit jumpy these days. (It’s like that thing with Obama and his White House. Like what’s he really doing when I’m asleep)? That scares me too.

By all accounts, the spring season over the United States has been pretty ‘normal’. By that standard, I mean if ‘normal’ is four to six degrees above what it’s been for the last thirty years. You know, that normal.

Water, via the rainfall we all need, has been in somewhat short supply over my modest adobe here in southwest Missouri and the temperatures have been a lot warmer than they should be. That’s resulted in most of the botanicals (trees, shrubs and gardens) running about a month or two ahead of schedule. Here it is, mid May and yes, the average temperature is running a full five degrees above normal.

Does anyone in the media care about this? No. Perhaps it’s only the folks who watch the weather, both for a living and for a hobby that notice this kind of stuff. Since neither of these groups have very much say in world affairs, I’m gonna guess things will continue as ‘normal’. More pollution, more population and a whole lot more carbon will be dumped into the atmosphere in the next decade. Wonder what that’ll do? See you all then…

Pesky spiders and wind gauges!

For some reason known only to spiders, they like to spin their webs on and around my Davis instruments wind gauge. This usually occurs during the warm days of summer when there are long stretches of time with little or no wind. These little bastards then go to town and sling their webs all over my anemometer thus locking it up. Then, when the wind does blow – nothing happens. That is, until a really good wind comes through and frees it up again. Generally, before that happens, I get a long pole and climb on to the roof to free it myself. I also will spray the whole array with bug killer to make sure that spider spins no more.

The trouble with all this is that; 1) I hate killing the spider and 2) I hate even more climbing on the roof! I wish I knew of an affordable solution in the form of a tower that I could service from the ground!

April 2012: Warm and dry

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My small heating bill that came towards the end of the month was proof to me that April had been on the warm side of things. According to my figures the area averaged six degree above normal and so, was in line with a trend that has been active over most of the spring.

Thankfully, other than for a bout of nasty weather in the early part of the month, things were relatively quiet. Rainfall was only about an inch and a half versus a historical average of 4.33 inches. Could another drought be on the way?

Because of all the warm weather, plants, weeds and grasses got to a stellar start. By mid month the pollen counts were already rising and I was in allergy Hell. It will be interesting to see what happens in May. I’m going to guess some severe weather, a little rain and more pollen than we’ve seen in a long time!