Weather Where You Are

[Ridgerunner]

Temperaturewise it is forecast to be pretty pleasant down here for the next week. There is a system projected to be in the Gulf next week with a 20% chance of developing into anything tropical. Pretty low chances and even that might just be a fairly weak storm. It will bring rain wherever it goes and however much wind it develops. The latest projections I saw this morning said it might be here Tuesday/Wednesday if it comes here at all. From what I've seen I'm not worried about it but of course I'll watch it. It is pretty fast moving so rainfall totals should not be ridiculous. Where I am I will not be flooded from rain a lot heavier than these projections.

I don't know how much that potential system is factored into this, probably is, but I'll show the projections for the next week.

...................Hi Temp........% Rain Chance..........Projected Rain Total
Today................81...................80..........................1.36
Sunday..............82...................80..........................0.45
Monday.............86...................80..........................0.15
Tuesday.............83..................100......................... 0.96
Wednesday.........83...................90..........................1.00
Thursday...........84...................60...........................0.24
Friday..............86...................50...........................0.11

I don't see much of an opportunity for me to get much done outside preparing my raised beds. I'm just hoping to be able to mow the grass at the end of the week.

 

[digitS']

Those are inch measurements, @Ridgerunner ?

It's almost unimaginable! We have no rain forecast for the next 7 days. For the month of August, .35 of an inch fell. There was one of those "traces" in the middle of the month before we had that 1/3rd of an inch ...

It's also a little unimaginable that the climate scientists still seem to argue as to whether this is a Continental climate or Mediterranean. Look, it never rains much in the summer. Our recent, especially hot dry summers should be convincing and surely there is elevated land near the Mediterranean Sea. Alp, there is ...

Steve

 

[Ridgerunner]

See if that chart is easier to read now. Still not crisp but better.

Yes Steve, inches. Tuesday and Wednesday is influenced by what they are now calling a wave but afternoon thunderstorms aren't all that rare down here. When I was down here before we would occasionally have some pretty dry summers, dry enough that it caused problems, but our dry is generally different to yours. I'll admit this is unusually wet, it's usually not this bad. But it certainly can be.

 

[flowerbug]

rain and more rain, might get the next round of storm in a few minutes, but i'm really hoping we only get a part of it and the rest goes north of us. i told Mom i'd pick in the rain if i had to, but i won't if there is lightning... tomatoes and beans have to come in. in an hour or two perhaps i'll be able to see if we get a break for a while or not. hard to say yet from the shape of this storm and the way the front is moving.

last month we had about 10-12 inches of rain which is 4 times normal and most of it came in the last week and a half or so.

this month is starting out soggy too, only days in the forecast without rain are Tuesday and then Friday, but now i'm looking at the current forecast and those days are now marked as slight chances of rain too. only a few evenings aren't (Tue and Fri). so perhaps we'll miss some of those days. we'll see. going to have to pick today no matter what. i'll get out some old towels and fan if i have to...

 

[Zeedman]

Pretty much the same forecast here, and the rain is pouring as I write this... not the kind of weather I want when the beans are beginning to dry. I took a weekend trip Friday to Decorah Iowa to visit SSE's farm, and was fortunate that I left early & was able to tour the farm while it was still somewhat dry. Several of my beans have been drying on the vines, so I will be out picking as soon as the rain stops, to save as many as possible from spoilage.

Tomorrow I'll be making canned salsa, if I can get into the garden to harvest peppers.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The storm now has a name, Gordon, and a more definite track. The bad news is that it it now expected to intensify more than previously expected, t is now expected to reach Category 1 Hurricane status, not just a tropical storm. That means winds above 75 MPH. The track has moved east and it is now expected to hit the Mississippi coast. That means I should be on the dry side so my expected rainfall totals have dropped considerably. We'll see what they say tomorrow, that track can change again.

If you have to have a Hurricane Gordon is what you want. He is a small tight storm, not spread out that much. And he is moving pretty fast. I don't expect the impact to be that bad. Still, people in the path can use your prayers. There will be property damage, power will be lost. And there will be people in harms way.

 

[Zeedman]

Really odd, @Ridgerunner , that your area & mine are experiencing such similar weather, so far apart. The rainfall here has been one slow-moving storm front after another; we've had nearly 8" in the last week, with more on the way (raining again as I write this). No hurricanes up here though... I hope Gordon diminishes, and moves through quickly.

 

[flowerbug]

Really odd, @Ridgerunner , that your area & mine are experiencing such similar weather, so far apart. The rainfall here has been one slow-moving storm front after another; we've had nearly 8" in the last week, with more on the way (raining again as I write this). No hurricanes up here though... I hope Gordon diminishes, and moves through quickly.

we're just skirting most of the rains that are hitting you. i'm watching the current round go by and hoping we miss this too, but we're just on the edge by the looks of it. the ground is pretty saturated. the other day when it rained my water catch had water in it for most of the following day. usually it drains off within an hour or two.

as for getting into the gardens. i wore my usual extra pair of mud shoes into the gardens when i was picking the other day and also had along my weeding knife which also acts as a way to scrape the mud off the bottoms when i'm done. it was very soggy.

considering the past several years have been so wet for Wisconsin i wonder what the rainfall records have been like and have they been being regularly broken? for us 3 inches a month is about normal.

 

[Ridgerunner]

In Arkansas, to make it a lot easier to get in the garden when it was wet I used landscaping cloth from the gate along one end of the fenced garden and covered that with wood chips. I didn't plant that end anyway but left a bit of a walkway. That way I could at least get to each row without sinking to my knees in mud when I needed something for supper. And it helped keep grass from invading from outside the garden.

Those wood chips would mostly rot during the season but not all, they were from a utility trimming trees along power lines so were a mixed bag of types of wood. Some rotted pretty quickly, some did not, but by the end of the season there was enough compost in there to support sprouting seeds. So I'd pull up the landscaping cloth and remove the stuff on top, which was good for compost in between rows in the garden. That way the wood chips would finish rotting.

I mulched in between a lot of the rows in the garden, usually straw over newspaper though I'd use cardboard until my supply ran out. That was still pretty soft to walk on in some of the newspaper places but I didn't usually get that muddy when getting something for supper or pick drying beans. When I dug the garden for the next planting I could tell where the rows had been. The rows where I did not walk were pretty soft but in between were really hard from walking on clay when it was wet.

The main reason I plan on mulching the area between my raised beds down here is to keep the grass and weeds out so I don't have to now or weed eat and to keep them from spreading into the raised beds, but being able to walk without getting muddy is another benefit.

 

[flowerbug]

@Ridgerunner,

we have so many gardens it's pretty tough to keep all of them mulched... you can see [pic linked below] the main fenced gardens are mulched all around with the rinsed crushed limestone as permanent pathways and that does keep most of the weeds from the sides out (the back edge along the deep drainage ditch is where we get some things coming in from that side). when i work in one of the gardens in there i still have to use an extra set of shoes... my rows vary, i don't often plant the same things in the same arrangement every season to have permanent paths in them (there long enough for wood chips to break down). card board layers and sometimes newspapers are the closest i come these days to temporary pathway materials and those the worms take care of eventually. Mom really hates anything left on the surface other than bare dirt. it's frustrating for me because worms really do like some cover, detritus, cover...

we can use a couple dozen yards of woodchips a season and still want for more. i scrape up and reuse any well decayed ones i can. sometimes i just have to compromise for the sake of time and top off an area with fresh chips until i can get back to it. the wilder areas just have to get along with whatever i can scrounge up.

ground/landscape fabric is good for letting water through and to keep some weeds out but over the years i've found most of the brands to be rather icky as they can get holes through them and degrade and then they're a huge mess to remove/replace. instead, once i've found that i've smothered an area well enough using cardboard and wood chip layers then to keep weeds from the side from coming in via roots a good edge down a ways is the most time-efficient thing to do. once the edge is in place then the only maint i have to do is to refresh the wood chips once in a while on top and any light weeding if something new tries to pop in there (via wind, rains, animals, etc.).

i have a couple of large rolls of material at a warehouse i'd love to use, but it's just too heavy for me to haul it now. i hope my brother will remember i want them next time he's tempted to throw them away. it would be excellent to try it out as it may last longer than i'd be alive if it was kept out of the sun (buried as an edge or under a good layer of wood chips). *sigh* just not enough of me to do all these projects... i can daydream tho...

link to more general layout and various garden layout pics:
http://www.anthive.com/project/from-the-roof/

overall site layout somewhat (has changed in places in recent years):