Finally, Rain

We got our first real rain in five months a week ago Friday, and it's rained three days since, bringing in 4 inches of water, so things are looking up a little bit.

Of course, it's too late for the crops, and too late for the Fall leaf color too, but we will take what we can get.

The Washington Post describes the ground as still being as hard as bone (not dry as, but hard as), which I can vouch for. Nonetheless, a little bit of color has come back to my lawn, and the privet hedge along the driveway may yet lose its dusty pallor.

Of course, a little bad always comes with the good. At about 4 in the morning, I was wide awake when the house got very quiet. What was that? Actually, what was the noise before the quiet? To make a long story short, it turns out our electricity went out, and with it the fan my wife runs to help her sleep (I never notice it any more). I got up at 5 am and read a bit by flashlight, before heading off to coffee at 7 am. At 9 am, when I came back, the electricity was still off, and it did not come back until 9 hours later, by which time my wife no longer trusted anything in the refrigerator. So along with no electricity (and no house phone or computer), we also got the expense of restocking the fridge.

A few days of rain will not end the drought in terms of water resources. Communities across five or six that are dependent on reservoirs may still be in for a period of rationing unless we get unusual amounts of rain over the next month or so. The front page of The Washington Post this morning shows Lake Lanier, the Atlanta reservoir, so low that the boat docks now appear to be running out over dry land. Not good.

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