Great Possessions

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus meets the “rich, young ruler.”  In the course of their conversation, Jesus instructs the man to give away his fortune.  Matthew comments that, “when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.”  I know how he feels.  While my sorrow is motivated by physical exhaustion rather than spiritual seeking, I too am burdened by great possessions.  Honestly, we try to maintain rather than replace and we are fairly budget conscious, but the crap piles up anyway.  And never is it more evident than when you try to move.  I've been moving out of 420 Grand and my mother-in-law, Alice, is selling her house and moving to Dallas.  (That is the first line of a new country song I'm writing.)  Every weekend seems to be spent hauling things in and out of our two storage units.  Two!  Embarrassing.  At any rate, the other day I noticed this tiny house and began to covet it (another attitude Jesus had something to say about).  But, if we're going to trade The Homestead (below) for the tiny house (above), we're going to need to give away our fortune.

View from the Office

We spent part of this week on the Monticello Ranger District near Blanding, Utah.  The weather was spectacular:  Clear and bright without being hot.  For part of the time, the Ears of the Bear were visible (above), but many hours were spent driving back and forth from Elk Ridge (below).  When we finished the project and headed for town, it was about 2:15p.  I reached The Homestead at 9:45p:  A long commute.

Anatomy of a Drought, Part 2

 

While I think it is natural for most of us to think about the climate in terms of the calendar year, hydrologists think about precipitation in terms of the "water year."  In most formulations, the water year runs from October 1 through September 30.  This is because precipitation that falls during the months of October, November, and December is considered to be "stored" until the next runoff period or growing season.  Taking approximately the past 75 water years in Iron County, Utah, we notice a possible pattern:  One dry year leads to another.  The table (above) contains the precipitation totals for the ten driest water years since about WWII.  The matching colors represent back to back years.  In other words, six of the top ten driest years came in pairs.  Last year, 2019/2020, sits in tenth place.  If the pattern holds, should we expect the current year to be dry, too?  Indeed.  In fact, we are on a record pace:  Since October 1, we have received so little precipitation that, even if we were to return to a normal rainfall pattern today, the water year would be the fourth driest on record (below).  (Of course, when that happens, the 2019/2020 water year will move out of the top ten.)  The other interesting thing to note in these data is that we are on track to have three dry years out of the past four (highlighted in orange).  I hope this is not another pattern.

Anatomy of a Drought, Part 1

I think everyone can agree that we are currently in a drought across much of the Colorado Plateau.  I don't want to make too much of it because periodic, and sometimes lengthy, droughts have been common for a thousand years.  But a couple of interesting trends are beginning to emerge in Iron County, Utah.  The first is what I'll call "intensity."  For the past two years we have observed less than normal rainfall for 21 of the 24 months.  But, it is especially eye opening to realize that the normal expected rainfall for the 24 month period is 21.4 inches while we have actually observed just 10.4 inches.  The second trend is the failure of the monsoon.  Technically, the monsoon season is July through September, but in Iron County, October is also a wet month, usually wetter than average.  So, I have included it here.  The main point is that we would expect to receive about four inches of precipitation from July through October.  In 2019, however, we got 1.1 inches during that time.  In 2020, it was a paltry .23 inches.

Steep Thrashing

VSO isn't home this weekend.  She went on a river trip with Kelly.  It is just as well.  EDO and I got into it so deeply yesterday afternoon that we completely missed dinner.  As is typical, we were well into a steep, rugged, back-country scramble when we agreed to try a different route back to the truck.  This is not advised, though we seem to come up with the idea just about every time.  In this case, it was more than an hour of very steep thrashing before we got back on track.  Besides maybe Tiger, EDO is the only other person I know who enjoys that kind of outing.

Drought Diary

We got a message from the city this week.  They were ordering an emergency shut down of the irrigation system.  They said that the forebay was empty and that they would re-start the water by Monday if it filled over the weekend.  This (above) is what it looks like today (Saturday), so I have hopes for a restart.  On the other hand, it is only the beginning of May and the city has already implemented a one-day watering schedule (instead of the normal two).  I also went to Yankee (below) to see if we were dry at 9,000 feet.  It is down a little, but I've seen it worse, so maybe we are OK for now.  On the other hand, we are sitting at just 33% of normal moisture for the calendar year (29% for the water year), so, cheer up, things may soon be worse.

Joad Load

One of my favorite scenes in The Grapes of Wrath is the all-night crossing of the Mojave by the Joad Family.  The Joad's old, overloaded truck can't handle the heat of the day, so they make the run to Tehachapi in the dark.  I was thinking of the Joads when I overloaded my own old truck for a desert crossing this week.  Of course, there really are no similarities.  I was headed east, not west; my old truck can run all day without overheating; my old truck has air conditioning; and none of my family members died during the trip.