Rain Today

Well, yesterday actually. As I noted last summer, July and August in western Oregon are stunningly dry most years; according to the data I found for that post, from July 1 to August 13, we had zero measurable precipitation- though I found today that according to another archive we had 0.05 inches. But yesterday, according to the Hyslop Lab weather archive (an OSU ag extension lab just across the river), we had 0.79 inches. According to AccuWeather, we had 0.84 inches. And according to Weather.com, we had 1.10 inches. I'm not sure where the two commercial sources are getting their data; I know the Corvallis airport, about 6 miles south, has a weather station, and I think there's another at Lewisburg, about 6 miles north. (I suspect that all three of those links will have limited to very limited lifespans- I haven't found a decent online permanent archive, but the Hyslop Lab page will update in a predictable way at the end of the month; their permanent archive is here)

Based on the duration and intensity I was watching all yesterday afternoon and early evening, I was estimating an inch or more. I watched the radar loop a couple of times, and the storm just stalled out over Corvallis, sitting and spinning for five or six hours, before it finally moved out. From my perspective it was delightful; I miss the warm weather rain of my childhood. There were even some mid-distance rumbles of thunder. I didn't see any flickers of lightning, but others I talked to did.

Still, my perception is that summer precipitation here, particularly stormy precipitation, has increased markedly over the last ten years. However much I may enjoy it, it's unnerving to perceive such change over such a short period of time. If my perceptions are real, these changes will have a profound effect on agriculture and other aspects of life here. We are quite dependent on snow melt in the Cascades to meet our water needs, and as the winter snowpacks have become smaller over the years, there has been rising concern. More summertime precipitation could help to alleviate some of those issues, but what we're geared for is controlling mountain runoff, not precipitation here on the valley floor. Many crops don't want to get wet, or additional watering, after the dry season starts (wine grapes, a large and growing industry in the Coast Range foothills come to mind, as do our numerous varieties of cane berries).

All this reminded me of a very, very wet spring back in Athens, Ohio... I'm thinking it was my third grade year, but I'm not positive. The Hocking River flooded, and I remember going down to the waters' edge to meet Ohio University students who had been stranded in their dorms. Groups of volunteers had boats and would ferry the students- and enough of their belongings to survive- to shore, and other volunteers, my parents among them, would shuttle them to whatever temporary shelter they were able to find.

As a result of this flood (and earlier, but less severe, floods), the Army Corps of Engineers literally moved the Hocking River, from its old, naturally sinuous, meandering course to a new, straighter course. I moved to Oregon, and haven't followed events there in nearly 30 years, but my understanding is that the rechanneling of the river has been successful in reducing the severity of floods in Athens, but may have made them worse downstream.

My brother Clark and I were among the first to cross the new bridge on Richland Avenue, almost as soon as the concrete deck was set, months before the official opening.

And the title, and the joke I alluded to yesterday? That spring, it just never let up... the rain just kept coming down, hard, day after day after day. The OU student newspaper, the Post, in lieu of regular weather reports in the upper right hand of the front page, just started reporting "Rain Today." And they kept that report at least until the late seventies. I'm curious when (or if) they discontinued the tradition. More than ten years after the rainy spring, and the disasterous flooding, the front page weather report was still "Rain Today," every day. I always took it as a jokey statement that however well things are going, something's probably going to rain on your parade.

The winning move is to find some way to enjoy that rain.