A couple days ago Wendy was reading through old posts on this blog, and she came across this post from several years ago, where I mentioned we had gotten a lot of rain and that the pond near our house was the highest I'd ever seen it. Here's the picture I included in that post, which was taken in May 2019:
How times have changed! Our section of northern Illinois is currently having an "extreme drought" that's lasted most of this year. We didn't get much snow last winter, then had a dry spring, summer, and now fall. Here's what the same bench and pond look like today:
The pond is now the lowest I've ever seen it!
Last week the Illinois State Climatologist blog had an interesting post comparing this year's drought to the severe drought years of 2012 and 1988. I was surprised to learn that this year's drought hasn't been as bad. There are several reasons for it:
- This year had less rain in the spring, which actually helped crops. Dry springs allow plants to develop longer roots so they can reach deeper moisture. Some trees also produce smaller leaves, which leads to less water loss later in the year.
- This year didn't get as hot as the other 2 years. I was very surprised by this, since temps were warmer than normal this year. But the daily high temperatures never got really hot, like in 2012 and 1988.
- It was more humid this year, which led to less evaporation.
- The little rain we got over the summer came at just the right time to prevent widespread crop damage.
The article points out we got a decent amount of rain in October, but we're still up to 10-inches below normal. The long range forecast predicts a warmer and wetter winter for Illinois. The more precipitation we get before the soil freezes, the better shape we'll be in next year.
In the meantime, I'll continue my daily precipitation measurements for CoCoRaHs. Just for fun, I ran a report comparing my measurements for the months of March-October in 2020 and 2021. In 2020 I recorded 31 inches of precipitation. In 2021 I recorded 18 inches! Here's hoping for more rain.