Flooding from Fay

The rain was just starting to let up for the first time in three days when I took these videos:




Here's what that second area looks like in the dry season:

What Mary said...

My friend Mary dropped me this perceptive note...

A little rain with your coffee ? I miss the sun too . I have not been out of the house enough to tell what is occurring on our property or the three near-by retention ponds. The R. ponds are 1 acre , 1.5 acre and 5 acres . I can imagine they are more like lakes today than ponds . One pond was built when the road was widened to accommodate 100 year floods . After the 2004 hurricanes dumped a total of 64 inches of rain , two more ponds were added . With this record setting amount of rain for one storm , they might be wishing they had added a fourth pond !!

I am sure we have close to the same amount as you quoted - almost 20 inches . Since we are on a septic system , I have stopped doing laundry and dishes to avoid a back-up . Don't want to add to the umpteen inches or more of H2O already there . Drainage is good on our property and so far - no damaging flooding . The rains from Fay have been slow and steady which has saved us by allowing percolating
and soaking into the ground . The good news is no lightning --- yet !

Even after Fay decides to end her Florida vacation , we will still have thunder storms following her . The weather forecast does not look good for the next 5 days - thunder, lightning and more rain. The following storms might just do us all in with the fast rainfall that can cause flash flooding . Since the ground is saturated there is no place for very heavy rains to go ! Lightning has also been a huge problem in the past for us here . Now people will have to deal with the St. Johns River flooding.

Beach erosion has been major and the millions and millions of dollars spent on bringing in sand earlier this year has been for nothing . This is not good for tourism and business in general . The small business owners were not making any money before this storm . 5 days of shops closed and destruction from flooding may just close these businesses especially in downtown DeLand . I worried before this
storm about my friends who own their own stores . Now ? The citrus industry is affected as well . This much rain causes fruit split and destroys much of the winter crop - mine included . Citrus trees are very sensitive to flooding and cannot have their roots under water for more than a few hours or they suffocate . I have one tree that is slowly dying from the hurricanes of 2004 . This storm will definitely be the final blow to that tree.

The worst part for us Floridians is that we have not seen the sun in almost a week . That's not normal ! I should be watching a glorious sunrise but instead am sitting in the dark with pounding rain outside . When ( if ? ) the storm gives us a break , we will walk about and do a check of the fencing , cows and neighbors . Now the radio is predicting tornadoes this afternoon . Oh , joy ! What next ? If the economy and housing crisis did not drive away newcomers , this storm might just do it . Water front property anyone ? Hope you are dry and safe and not going stir crazy!

I am going stir crazy. And I need some sun. I haven't seen it since last Sunday while fishing at Canaveral.

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.

Another day...

Another inch. Rainy season has arrived.

It never rains...

Fifteen minutes.

Brrr....

It's pouring out there right now -- my guess is we've had at least an inch of rain, with much more expected. It's just too wet to even check the rain gauge. I did my spring fertilizing today, so this rain is particularly welcome.

We almost never get this weather in the middle of March. I'm planning on doing some major landscaping projects tomorrow, so for me this is perfect. It's been, overall, a fairly cool winter here -- witness the dogwoods and Prunus blooms, which are a lot more florid than in recent memory. I'll have to take some pictures...

Update: They've dropped the forecast to thirty-five degrees. Brrrr. Keep in mind that it was eighty-three yesterday!

Holy Cow Update: I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of an intense rainstorm -- drops so huge that I thought initially someone was walking up the old wooden staircase to our bedroom. This morning the gauge read three-and-a-half inches! On top of the half-inch earlier this week and the inch last week. March is usually a pretty dry month, averaging just under four inches of rain in a normal year.

It never rains...

Three inches of rain on Monday night/Tuesday morning alone. I emptied the rain gauge at 7 this morning, and by the time I went to work around 9:30, it had already rained another half an inch... and by the time I got to work, it had started REALLY raining.

Arugula, lettuce and chard in my garden are all up. I'll be surprised if they don't have some fungal issues, though.

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