Life
Rain brings welcome relief
The drought’s not over yet.
But, with a few more weeks like the past one,
the lack of rain earlier in the year will be a lot easier to bear.
Hondo took in an unofficial total of 2.63
inches of rain in the past seven days, starting with last Wednesday, and
extending all the way through Tuesday’s all-day gentle showers.
Included in that total was a 1.06-inch offering on Monday. That was the
city’s first one-inch rain since Sept. 4 of last year--a 306-day
stretch without a one-inch rain, or even a rain measuring seven-tenths
of an inch.
The weather pattern for the last three calendar
years has been weird, to say the least. The city’s eighth driest year
on record (2006), was followed by the second wettest (2007). And the
first half of 2008 had the year on track to be the driest of all time.
That has temporarily been put on hold, but the total only passed the
eight-inch mark for the year on Tuesday, so plenty more rain is needed.
In fact, in the ten-month span between Sept. 5,
2007 and July 1, 2008, a grand total of only 7.28 inches of rain fell in
Hondo, well below the record shortfall of 11.92 inches set in 1954.
Almost lost in the rain is the fact that the temperature never climbed
out of the 80s all week. Plus, the Edwards Aquifer rose back out of
Stage 1 restriction levels, for the time-being at least.
While Wednesday’s forecasts contained a slight chance of showers, none
had cropped up in the area by mid-afternoon. Forecasts for the rest of
the week, and heading into the weekend, called for a return to sunny
days, with the temperatures beginning to head back up.
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