80AcresOnline

We hit the jackpot this time.   Before dark today, Richard recorded a storm total (over three days ) of  4 inches at Owl Pavilion,  3.7 at Fox Pavilion.   The two house gauges, one north of our house and one west of the other house, were measured at roughly noon,  both over 3 inches.

This is a shot from the end of the front porch, across the barn pen fence, into the south horse lot, about four Friday afternoon.  Puddles!!!  Green!!!  (that field was gray-tan three days ago.  Our grass is ambitious.)

This amount of rain does count as a rescue rain.  Most of it soaked in; a little rain off here, but will undoubtedly soak into the first low spot that has a rise on the far side.   This should provide enough moisture to keep things that haven’t died yet alive for another month, if it doesn’t get too hot.   (Remember, there’s a more than 25 inch deficit over the past 18 months: the soil was totally depleted of moisture and we’d already lost some trees.)

A pulse of water went down the main creek channel (dry for a year or more) moving leaves aside, but not filling the bed–and it was dry when Richard saw it in the evening.   Normally, four inches in three days would produce flow all the way through, and also flow down the little west tributary–but he said there was nothing there.   The rain’s quit, and we’re predicted to have a dry week (and much-below average through June, which puts us into 100F temps where evaporative and transpiration losses are high.   I’m not complaining about 3-4 inches of rain (on the contrary, VERY happy) but it will take another 6-8 inches, at least, for the creek to have running water in it (other than a pulse of floodwater.)

It rained off and on today, so not many pictures, but over the weekend it will clear off and warm up.   For the photography buffs: yes, taken with a telephoto.   The far pipe fence is the far end of our property in this direction–the brownish field is a neighbor’s (pasture for cattle and sometimes sheep); the line of “cedars” (Ashe juniper) heading off for larger trees divides his land from our 80 acres; the big trees are part of the creek woods.   Most of the ones you can see are on our place, and include American elm, cedar elm, hackberry, pecan, eastern persimmon, and black willow.  The old cottonwood doesn’t show up in this picture.