Lake Okeechobeee

This news is very, very good. It won't solve our water problems for the long term, but it does reset conditions back to normal. Since 2004, our droughty conditions have only made our man-made mess worse.

Wunder Blog : Weather Underground:

Lake Okeechobee Update
After the recent rains from Tropical Storm Fay, Lake Okeechobee has responded quite nicely. Based upon the latest information provided by the SFWMD (South Florida Water Management District), the average lake level now stands at 12.52 feet. To put this into perspective, in the past three days, a little over 40% of the deficit has been erased.

With all the rainfall still ongoing north of the lake and the constant rain bands swirling in from the southern side, Okeechobee will likely continue to rise and will likely be above the 13 foot mark by Sunday for the first time in nearly 21 months (if my memory serves me right here). If the lake were to reach or exceed the 13 foot mark, the lake would only be about a foot below normal.

All in all, while Tropical Storm Fay has become a nuisance for all Florida, it has served as a blessing in disguise. For the past four years, all Florida has been mired in a severe water shortage crisis that has resulted in water restrictions throughout the state. (Yes, there are still water restrictions in place in South Florida.) With this significant rainfall received by Tropical Storm Fay, it will replenish most the depleted water supply and will fill Lake Okeechobee to near normal levels. In addition, this will also help hold off the salt-water intrusion"

Fay...

Well, I've emptied my rain gauge three times now, each time it was overflowing at six and a half inches. That's more than the local weather station at DeLand's water treatment indicates, but I'm pretty confident of hte accuracy of my gauge -- I mean, it's a straightforward rain gauge, set about two feet off the ground, clear of any trees or anything that would affect its accuracy. It's impossible, or nearly impossible, for a gauge to read in excess, though fairly easy for a gauge to underestimate rain.

In other words, we've had, at a minimum, here on the north side of DeLand, twenty inches of rain.

Crazy flooding on the street, though I don't see any indication that houses have been affected. The usually dry retention ponds are all overflowing their banks. The one across the road from me has at least ten feet of water in it, and long ago breeched its banks to spill all over the intersection. There's at least a foot of water standing at the corner.

I took a quick stroll through my sodden garden. A fair amount of damage--okra's gone. At least one banana washed out. My false roselles (a lovely burgundy hibiscus), which had reached about twelve feet, have been blown over. (They'll probably recover with staking.) A noticed some of my salvias had split. They'll be fine, but won't bloom as heavily this fall. Lots of pots knocked over.

In a word, a mess; but things could be much worse.

Rain!

It rained two inches in about twenty minutes yesterday. I have a happy garden and one-hundred gallons of rain water in barrels.

Drip system installed...

I spent the morning finishing up the installation of my micro-sprinkler system. I like the simplicity of the system, and it's very effective at watering and minimizing wasted water, though it does require a bit of meticulousness and patience to install (compared, say, to a wand sprinkler on the end of a hose). I have two zones, connected to timers.

It should, therefore, pour today. I'm sure there's some law about it.

Time to install that drip irrigation...

Considering it's a La Nina winter, we've had quite a lot of rain. But it looks like our luck's run out.

More rain, now a cool morning...

The winds have started blowing out of the north-east. That brought a bunch of rain off the Atlantic yesterday, dousing us with a good one-and-a-half inches of rain. I don't know if that made up for a pretty dry August and a very dry spring, but I imagine the lakes and rivers are all back more or less to normal. This morning in the garden it was a cool sixty-nine degrees and very pleasant, except the blasted mosquitoes, which were hungry but torpid.

Froggy weather

A persistent and slow-moving low pressure area off the Southeast Florida coast has soaked my part of Volusia county. Forecasts predicated about an inch of rain... my rain gauge reads a mite bit over four inches. The ground is just plain spongy, and the retention ponds are almost filled.

We haven't had a rain like this one in two years. It's welcome to stay around as long as it likes.

Drought outlook

Rain!

It rained last night and today, a total of about two inches, perhaps a bit more. This evening we enjoyed the cool, drier air (73 degrees and 61 degrees for the dew point -- which translates into very comfy conditions). This "backdoor front" (backdoor because it comes from the north) is rare this time of the year. Our May winds are usually from the south-east, not the north-east:

Last night's rainfall was more characteristic of a winter storm than a summer rain, which is usually caused by instability brought on by the sea breeze interacting with the much hotter air over the peninsula. We're in the midst here in Florida of an epic drought and hellfire, so the rain is welcome, whatever its provenance.

It was actually too cool to sit on the patio with drinks. That never happens mid-May. My foxgloves and poppies are living large.

Useful weather data... Long Range Temperature and Precipitation Forecasts

From the Climate Prediction Center at the National Weather Service. The charts show the probabilty for two scenarios:

• hotter than normal/and cooler than normal; and
  
• more precipitation than normal/less precipitation than normal.
  

The intensity of cooler indicates the probability of exceeding or falling short of the norm, while the white areas (EC) indicate equal chance of exceeding or falling short of then norm. (It does not indicate, it should be noted, that weather will be "normal," just that no preponderance of evidence indicates a warmer/cooler or wetter/drier -- a subtle but important distinction.)

Thus, dark brown means it is very likely that temperatures will exceed the norm while dark blue would indicate that it was very likely for temperatures to be below normal. Notice that degree or intensity of deviation from the norm is not indicated, only probability.

Here's the prognosis for April, 2007 made mid-March:

So, evidence would indicate that we have a slightly better than average chance of a warmer (but how much warmer?) spring and early summer and a roughly equal chance of a wetter or drier period over the next three months.

For our rainy season -- July, August and September -- it looks likely we're significantly more likely to have a wetter and warmer period than historical averages:

The accuracy of these instruments isn't terribly high, but they I suppose some indication is better than no indication.

Record low rainfall in Central Florida

DeLand saw its lowest summer rainfall total ever...

2006 one of the driest years on record...

2006 will go down as one of the driest years on record across east-central Florida. The dry conditions can largely be attributed to the strong influence of enso (el nino-southern oscillation) on Florida weather. Last winter and Spring were dominated by La Nina... which typically results in drier than normal conditions across the state. Rainfall deficits continued during the Spring and early Summer... resulting in an increase in devastating wildfires across the area. El Nino conditions developed during the Summer which had a significant impact on tropical storm and hurricane development in the Atlantic Basin. The general lack of tropical activity across the region contributed to additional rainfall deficits during the late Summer and through the fall... when significant rainfall is often quite common across the area. El Nino
conditions are expected to continue through early 2007... which will likely result in above normal rainfall through the remainder of the dry season.

Below is a list of some notable rainfall totals from around the
forecast area:

Location 2006 rainfall total rank record low rainfall/year
Deland 37.09 inches 1 39.28/1974 (previous)
Stuart 37.77 inches 1 38.02/1981 (previous)
Daytona Beach 31.39 inches 2 31.36/1956
Lisbon 32.66 inches 2 29.26/2000
Vero Beach 33.56 inches 2 32.70/1961
Orlando area 36.35 inches 3 30.38/2000
ft Pierce wp 33.84 inches 3 30.07/1917
Sanford wp 37.25 inches 5 32.83/2000
Sanford Arpt 41.27 inches 6 33.16/1967
Melbourne 39.95 inches 7 31.97/1981