The old joke says
that when it rained for forty days and forty nights and Noah boarded his ark,
Eastern Colorado got 1.75 inches. Around
the first of March, when Kansas and Oklahoma and parts of Texas and Colorado
were on fire, it wasn’t funny.
We were a little
more fortunate than Denver, catching a narrow, streaky thunderstorm about the
third of August of over an inch. It wasn’t
enough to get wheat up in September. Things
dried out pretty rapidly after that because everything around us that didn’t
get rained on was so dry.
Since August, we
have had nothing of note until March 24. The fire danger was quite real. An assessment of the farm revealed plenty of
fuel around the farmstead. There wasn’t
enough snow all winter to tamp down the dead foliage.
I celebrated
Saint Patrick’s Day by mowing a firebreak around the yard.
About a week
later, it really did rain, then blow, then snow. The prelude of rain was a Godsend, preventing
topsoil from blowing in the wicked wind that followed.
The storm
coincided with the end of another drama.
The wind energy company sent the 2017 rent check to the wrong bank. Then they posted a check to Kansas (haven’t
lived there since 2014).
Finally, they
UPSed it to the farm. I wasn’t there
when it arrived. The UPS guy left it
between the storm door and the main door.
He failed to get the storm door properly latched. The wind blew. The snow fell.
There was no package between the doors. I used my detective skills. The wind had to be from the south to swing
the door hard enough to shatter both panes of glass. The gallon jug flytraps went north. I found the envelope by the northeast corner
of the garage.
The envelope was soaked. The cardboard deteriorated in my hands. The accompanying statement went to pieces
when I touched it.
Was I in for more futile communication
with the folks in Florida? Thankfully,
the check was made of sterner stuff. New
meaning for “watermark”? It dried out
just fine. It cleared the bank. End of that story—for this year.
The rain gauge said 1.5”. There was probably more, since it was in the
form of windblown snow, which the gauge doesn’t capture very well.
“When it rains, it pours” isn’t exactly
right, but we did get another storm on March 31. It started with a day of foggy drizzle. Then Mother Nature April-fooled us with heavy
wet snow that measured .45”. The
entrance to the gauge was plastered shut when I went out to check it, so there
was probably more moisture.
A lot of the snow melted shortly after it fell. It collected on some of the grassy areas and
in the trees. The metal roofs caught
enough to create a few snow slides.
The fire danger is greatly reduced. Blowing dust is no longer probable. The wheat crop is still questionable. Emerging seedlings are filling in bare spots
of last October, but it’s not nearly 100%.
The grass and the dandelions are breaking
dormancy. Time for humans to revoke
hibernation. “April is the cruelest
month,” said T.S. Eliot. Maybe there
will be asparagus soon to comfort us.
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