It might not be a big deal, or even a welcomed event, when it rains where you live. I live in Austin, TX in the U.S., and it hasn’t rained here since October 26th – until yesterday. That’s more than 10 weeks without any appreciable measurable rainfall. I’ve been motivated to running my sprinkler system in my yard every two weeks, just to keep my trees alive.
We have been in a drought here in Austin for 2 years now. We did have some temporary relief about this time last year, but that was very brief, and basically did nothing to replenish the lakes that supply our drinking water.
This is why it was BIG news that a storm front was coming across northern Mexico and into Texas to bring us some much needed rain.
When I went to bed last night, there was just over ¼” (6mm) of rain in our rain gauge. When we woke up the morning, there was almost 3 inches (7.75 cm) in our rain gauge!
The official time of sunrise this morning was 7:20 AM, so it was about 8:45 AM – before I left the house to go to work – when I opened our back door while it was still raining, and took a few photos of this monumental event! It’s been so long since I’ve seen our deck all wet….
I was using my weatherproof Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera, and the equally weatherproof 12-50mm f/3.5 -6.3 lens. The photo above was with the lens zoomed out to 41mm (82mm equivalent), while the photo below had the lens zoomed all the way out to 50mm.
And finally, one last image with the lens zoomed to 22mm.
I decided that I would take my camera with me to work today. It had been so long since it had rained, I figured I would see something else worthy of a photo.
When I got to the parking garage at the office, I took this photo while looking away from the office building.
On the way home from work, I stopped along Spicewood Springs Road, near the intersection with Yucca Mountain Road, and took a couple photos of the water flowing over the little man-made spillway.
It has been a long, long time since I have seen more than just a trickle of water flowing over this little dam!
I got home before it got dark this evening, and there was plenty of light for me to capture the next photo with over 3 inches of rain in our rain gauge.
Don’t believe the temperature reading on the thermometer…. It always reads too high when the sun is in direct line-of-sight with it. It doesn’t matter if it’s overcast or not. The actual temperature was more like 55 degrees (13 C).
Once again – rain is probably more of a nuisance than a blessing where you live, but the rain we got today in Austin was a BIG DEAL. It was the main story on the local TV news…..
Thank you for visiting my blog.
We had our share of drought in NY. Even last April late in the month, there was some cracking in the yard soil. Not parched, but dryness. We have had only one major snow this season which is fine by me but also worrisome, and that will all be gone by Saturday as it is supposed to get up to 55 degrees here. I don’t mind the rain so much – but I hate the winds. Breezy is fine but it gets up over 40mph quite often and I hate fighting it.
How is Lake Travis doing? I remember that post you did back when. Terrible.
Libby, I often check the weather near you – my sister lives in central Michigan. Now I know that you aren’t all that close to Michigan, but it causes me to look “up there” on the national weather map.
When I see snow or a heavy storm heading your way, I often wonder if it’s going to show up on one of your blog posts! http://ohnostudio.com/
Lake Travis is only 1 foot higher than it was when I did that blog post last February. If we have another summer like 2011, the lake will be dry – Austin will have no drinking water, or water for anything else. I suppose they will start up some convoy of large tanker trucks to bring it in…. they only have to go 100 miles or so to get to areas nearer the Gulf of Mexico that are not in the draught area.
A few years ago I was seriously looking to get out of where I am. One of the places I looked at was rth of Houston because I had spent a lot of time there. So I did a little research, and even then I found stuff about water issues there. And I believe they get more rain than you do. It was still worrying. It’s not that I can’t abide by restrictions – I can. It’s just that the populations in Austin, Houston are approaching critical mass, and with that comes infrastructure and environmental especially when a population is not properly educated across all of the demographics. Think Black Market Water here. And with today’s quick hit media culture, all it would take is one irresponsible news report to set the lunatic fringe into a mass panic.
The other places I had looked at were The Rockaways and Staten Island, and we all know what happened there. In the latter case, it was fortuitous that things fell apart. I’ll be taking PA and OH trips this summer – we’ll see what happens.
While you experience drought in Austin, we in Malaysia have just too much rain !! We get flashfloods which can be troublesome, one moment it was sunny and hot and half an hour later the road is flooded and vehicles can’t move. I love that shot of the water overflowing from the little dam, I would make it black and white for more drama !
Gregg, I too am happy that we got some much needed rain.