I remember as a young boy I would gather with other neighborhood kids and go to a friend’s house that had a huge dirt hill behind his home. We would consolidate our little army men and associated tanks, jeeps and halftracks in an intricate pattern staging for the big one. A long garden hose was strung from his house providing more action as we would dam up an area and eventually flood it.
A vision, still ingrained in my mind of pushing the palms of my hands upward with dry soil to reinforce the ever-building pressure of water to shore up the dam we had constructed. However, water would continue to seep under and through the massive pile of dirt no matter how much we tried to contain it. It was a losing battle and it would have been a simple task to just ‘turn off’ the water faucet. Guess we were so distracted by the situation that it never came to mind.
So, what does this have to do with weather? The merry month of March, 2011 as you know has been wet. Very wet in fact. The only day this month that I have not recorded any rainfall at my home in Salmon Creek was on March 6th. Remember that day? Probably not since we are apparently lost in the onslaught of rain squalls.
You realize that the above statistic represents 20 consecutive days with measurable rainfall. I know due to the sometimes-showery nature of the rain there may have been a day or two at your house where you escaped the pitter-patter against your window. But overall wet. Looking back at the past 15 months, March is the third wettest, wetter than January or February of this year even. As of late Saturday afternoon, I had recorded 6.34 inches.
The only good news in the shift of seasons is that we do see more blue sky in between the periods of rain. There were even some ice pellets mixed in Saturday and a couple claps of thunder. My childhood story came to mind writing this column but unfortunately there is no ‘rain faucet’ to turn off. Yeah, I already thought about that one. ~Patrick Timm