Drought

I just looked at the extended forecast from intellicast.com. It appears that our dry weather will continue for the foreseeable future. Precipitation on June 03, 04, and 08 amounted to a total of 1.1 inches (28 millimeters), which was great at the time. Unfortunately, we've still only had 1.5 inches (38 millimeters) of rain since April 29. That's a severe drought for our area. Normally we would have received about 4.5 inches (115 millimeters) during that time period.

This extremely dry weather comes during the year that I planted a bunch of conifers. What luck, huh?

Living in South Texas led me to cherish rain. When I moved up here, I decided that I wanted to live in an area of high rainfall. Ironically, my new "wet place" was one of the driest areas in New York. In four years, I've experienced both Texas- and Scotland-like weather. 2004 was an extremely wet year. 2005 was one of the five driest years ever recorded. 2006 was another extremely wet year, and 2007 is shaping up to be drier than 2005.

It's impossible to know which of these patterns will become standard. It's entirely possible that the pattern of extremes will continue. I hope that's not the case, because it puts a lot of stress on the plants and animals, and it makes it extremely difficult to plan for tree plantings and forage production.

Whatever happens, I'll continue to roll with the punches.