we had lines of storms coming at us all day, probably six to eight different squall lines. four drops of rain from the first, a few drops of rain from the second, but nothing at all the rest of the day. a few miles away they got downpours. we've not seen anything like a puddle in two months. so it goes in the valley.
we have had some rains, but not near normal at all. if i could not water we'd not have any garden crops at all this year, especially in this heat and drying winds. electricity, pumps and a deep well are miracles of modern society. if we didn't have those i'd be hauling buckets of water from the ditches and with the number of gardens here that'd go over really poorly. in fact it would have been a really good reason for me to build something like a water wheel and works for distributing water on this place. that would be fun, if i could trust the water from the ditches...
@baymule and others who are living in hotter places i'm wondering if you have a way to create an air gap and put up a tarp over the house which would act as a sunshield to keep the sun off the house directly. if you can tolerate the noise of it flapping and can keep enough air flow underneath (enough of a gap and open ends should do it) it might really cut down on how hot the house gets. basically you're doing the same thing as a tree would do for you, but you don't have to wait 20yrs for it to grow.
the idea came to me years ago when i was reading up on insulation and house construction but also how to cool off a greenhouse if needed and there was too much light. in recent times the other reinforcement for the idea came from watching the Hubbell Space Telescope and how they created the sunshield for that and put those layers between the sun and the telescope to keep it cold.
Short answer to that is nope. To put a tarp over an entire house would be quite a job, not to mention even finding one that big. What to use for spacers? The wind blowing would likely shred it after a short while.
Waiting to learn if the little storms coming from the SW will bring some rain this morning. Meanwhile, the wind picking up is discouraging a trip to the garden to run sprinklers.
We have had 7 recent days with above 90°f (32°C) afternoons. It starts off below 60° (15°C) every morning - fortunately for us humans . The days will soon enter our average hottest week of the year - we will see what that means in 2022 but we are a far cry from blisteringly HOT early Summer 2021!
I'm limiting irrigation to 2 times each week in the distant garden. A delay of one day will still keep me on schedule but 2/7 really pushes it. There has been no wilting but the rocky soil is plenty dry after 4 days of heat and sun. Fortunately, wind hasn't been much of an irrigation problem ... except for maybe today. Things to do here around home before the 90+ expected. I have that garlic bed to dig out and LOTS of spent foxglove and bok choy plants to bury for composting in-place. BTW, all those spent foxglove seed heads went out with the garbage truck but Good Grief those plants were huge this year! The compost piles have taken all they can hold of peonies and giant rhubarb leaves and the microbes are going great in the heat but not quite good enuf!
The pickup was hit with about 20 drops of rain on 3 different occasions, twice at the garden and once at the nearby park - while we cowered inside in consternation and fear. The wind was not bad at all so that worked out as a real plus.
Delaying irrigation until a better forecast tomorrow would have made watering next week a matter of imperative. It may be difficult weather but procrastination with the care of living things is just a no-no.
After a long dry spring and summer with too perfect temps from April till mid July; it started raining. In the last 6 days; we’ve had 3.6 inches of rain, which we expect late in August. We’ve broken all the records, some since they started keeping records.
currently it’s moderating and suppose to “ be more normal” for the remainder of our season! I guess we’ll see; thank you Lord for the rain that put the dozens of wild fires out.
we just have a storm arriving at last. i hope we can pick up a few good rounds of precipitation from this. supposed to be heavy rains, we're close to the border of that part of the storm so it will be interesting if it reaches up to us or goes more south. being the valley things do break up a bit as they go over.
i always enjoy watching the radar if it is a big complex storm front, if i have the time. i also like to see if any storms look really threatening or tornadoey.