Another rainy day and more on the way this week, I understand. So, is the drought over yet?
I've gotten about half an inch of rain out of this particular weather system so far. The soil in my garden has been well-saturated for days now.
I wonder when we gardeners will get truly grumpy and start complaining about too much rain. It'll happen, I have no doubt, because there's really no way to make gardeners happy with the weather. It will always be either too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry, too much sun or too many clouds. Pity the poor weatherman! (But not too much.)
Showing posts with label weather. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weather. Show all posts
Monday, February 13, 2012
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
ENSO-lated
What does ENSO mean to you? It sounds like it might be one of those acronyms beloved by the Pentagon or Homeland Security, doesn't it? It could stand for something like Enhanced National Security Options.
In fact though, ENSO stands for El Nino (La Nina) Southern Oscillation and it refers to a climate pattern that occurs across the tropical Pacific Ocean on a regular basis. It comes around on average every five years.
The variation that occurs in the surface temperature of the tropical eastern Pacific is known either as "El Nino" (warming) or "La Nina" (cooling). At the same time, the air surface pressure in the tropical western Pacific is known as the "Southern Oscillation." The two phenomena together create ENSO, and we need to understand ENSO because its effect on our weather is enormous, and as gardeners, we flourish or perish with the weather.
ENSO's effects are complicated and it affects weather right around the world, but let's try to at least understand what it does to us here in the southern part of North America.
During an El Nino period, winters in northeast Mexico and the southeast United States are cooler and wetter than average. It will not surprise you to learn that we were under the influence of El Nino last winter.
El Nino also tends to surpress hurricane activity which probably contributed to the fact that the 2009 hurricane season was the least active in twelve years. That El Nino period lasted through May 2010. Then La Nina took over.
For us, La Nina has mostly the opposite effect of El Nino. In North America, this means that the North Midwest, the Northern Rockies, Northern California, and the Pacific Northwest's southern and eastern regions all have above-average precipitation during La Nina, while right across the southern part of the continent - and that means us - below-average precipitation prevails. Also, in the southern part of the continent, warmer winters usually occur during La Nina.
Looking at the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center website today, I learned that the projection for November, December and January calls for above-average temperatures for our region and a continuation of below-median precipitation. If this is correct, we cannot look for an early end to our drought.
In fact, the NWS predicts that the La Nina period, with its dry conditions for the southern part of the country, will continue to hold sway until at least May of next year. Projecting beyond May is less reliable, they admit, but they believe that La Nina may be ending in the spring.
In my yard, we have experienced very little rain since July and the NWS certainly does not offer me any hope of real relief anytime soon. It looks like I might as well get used to moving sprinklers and hauling hoses around for the foreseeable future.
At the same time, if their predictions are correct, I might not be losing any plants to cold weather this winter, if only I can keep from losing them to dessication.
On the other hand, I've been seeing lots of woolly-bears lately and I have to tell you, they are all dark. Just like they were last fall when they predicted a cold winter for us. Who will be right this year - the scientists or the caterpillars?
In fact though, ENSO stands for El Nino (La Nina) Southern Oscillation and it refers to a climate pattern that occurs across the tropical Pacific Ocean on a regular basis. It comes around on average every five years.
The variation that occurs in the surface temperature of the tropical eastern Pacific is known either as "El Nino" (warming) or "La Nina" (cooling). At the same time, the air surface pressure in the tropical western Pacific is known as the "Southern Oscillation." The two phenomena together create ENSO, and we need to understand ENSO because its effect on our weather is enormous, and as gardeners, we flourish or perish with the weather.
ENSO's effects are complicated and it affects weather right around the world, but let's try to at least understand what it does to us here in the southern part of North America.
During an El Nino period, winters in northeast Mexico and the southeast United States are cooler and wetter than average. It will not surprise you to learn that we were under the influence of El Nino last winter.
El Nino also tends to surpress hurricane activity which probably contributed to the fact that the 2009 hurricane season was the least active in twelve years. That El Nino period lasted through May 2010. Then La Nina took over.
For us, La Nina has mostly the opposite effect of El Nino. In North America, this means that the North Midwest, the Northern Rockies, Northern California, and the Pacific Northwest's southern and eastern regions all have above-average precipitation during La Nina, while right across the southern part of the continent - and that means us - below-average precipitation prevails. Also, in the southern part of the continent, warmer winters usually occur during La Nina.
Looking at the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center website today, I learned that the projection for November, December and January calls for above-average temperatures for our region and a continuation of below-median precipitation. If this is correct, we cannot look for an early end to our drought.
In fact, the NWS predicts that the La Nina period, with its dry conditions for the southern part of the country, will continue to hold sway until at least May of next year. Projecting beyond May is less reliable, they admit, but they believe that La Nina may be ending in the spring.
In my yard, we have experienced very little rain since July and the NWS certainly does not offer me any hope of real relief anytime soon. It looks like I might as well get used to moving sprinklers and hauling hoses around for the foreseeable future.
At the same time, if their predictions are correct, I might not be losing any plants to cold weather this winter, if only I can keep from losing them to dessication.
On the other hand, I've been seeing lots of woolly-bears lately and I have to tell you, they are all dark. Just like they were last fall when they predicted a cold winter for us. Who will be right this year - the scientists or the caterpillars?
Friday, August 6, 2010
A gardener's week - #1
(I've decided to start a new Friday feature of the blog, a summing up of my week in the garden. Here's the first.)
I could sum up my week in the garden with one word: Hot! If you press me to use a second word it would be: Dry! Yes, it is August and the garden and the gardener are suffering. The rains of July are only a dim, faded memory.
In truth, we never got as much rain in my yard in July as some spots in the area did, but at least it was frequent enough that watering the garden was mostly unnecessary. No more. I've had to break out the sprinklers again this week, much to the delight of the avian population in my yard.
Birds do love flying through a mist of cool water on a hot day. Today, I saw a battling pair of hummingbirds flying through the sprinkler's spray actually pause and hover for just a moment before they recalled their argument and resumed the chase. Anything that can bring even one moment's peace to the Eternal War of the Hummingbirds is worthy of note.
Speaking of hummingbirds, it is that time of year when traffic from these little guys is beginning to pick up in the area. I'm certainly noticing a lot more activity in my yard, and, unfortunately, just now, there are few blossoms in the yard to attract their attention. Their favorites, the Anisacanthus 'Flame acanthus' and the Cuphea 'Cigar plant' are both at a pause in their blooming. This week, I cut the overgrown and floppy 'Flame acanthus' back rather severely to encourage more bloom for the fall. Within another month, it should be blooming again, but for now, what can I offer the little visitors?
Now's the time to break out those feeders and keep them clean and filled. I refilled this one this morning and this lady was waiting impatiently on a nearby limb, chittering at me, as I rehung the feeder. As soon as I stepped away, she nipped in...
...and had a long, long drink.
In addition to cutting back the Anisacanthus this week, I've been trying to bring some order to other parts of my yard that have become very overgrown due to my neglect over the last several weeks. I did my annual pruning of the wild hedge along my back fence and found that the elderberries, pokeweed, and beautyberries are having a bumper crop of fruits this year, more feasts for the berry-loving birds.
I also tidied up the cannas. They are suffering a severe attack from leaf-rollers. I cut off the offending leaves as well as the spent bloom stems and the plants looked a lot neater when I finished. Some of them should give me another round of blooms in the fall.
Some of the roses are doing better than others. All of the 'Knockouts' are pausing briefly now before they put on another flush of blooms. Poor 'Belinda's Dream' has been struggling to keep blooming, but this week I took pity on her and cut back all her stems a bit. I'll give her some food and plenty of water and let her rest from producing blooms for a while. There'll be time enough for that in the fall.
Meanwhile, in another part of the yard, 'Caldwell Pink' blooms on, unfazed by the heat or by my neglect.
Sadly, some of this week's gardening projects did not turn out well at all. We bought three tomato plants, 'Champion II', and planted them for the fall garden, but obviously, we should have given them more protection from the brutal sun. They didn't survive. Our vegetable garden plot is really the one spot in our yard that has sun all day long. In the spring and fall, that's a good thing for veggies, but right now, it's just too much. Shade cloth is in order.
I'm very happy to report that other garden projects have turned out well this year. For example, this one:
This is the mason bee home that I hung in the old apple tree this spring. I didn't know if the bees would actually use it, but they have! Repeatedly, in fact. You can see that three of the tubes are presently in use, but several more have already been used and have ushered new bees into my garden. It feels good to be able to help our wonderful native bees.
Of course, it is always good to be able to help the butterflies, too.
This week, I photographed this beauty as it enjoyed the blossoms of my Clerodendrum bungei 'Cashmere bouquet'.
Pipe-vine Swallowtails are common visitors to my yard. I just recently installed two 'Dutchman's pipe' vines so that they will have something on which to lay their eggs. I haven't seen any eggs or larvae on either vine yet, but I'm hoping.
Although these butterflies are common in my yard, what caught my eye was this butterfly's size.
It was huge! At least in comparison to the Pipe-vines that I usually see. At first, I thought it was something else. According to the field guide, these butterflies can be from 2 3/4 - 4 inches in wingspan. Well, this one was every bit of 4 inches and seemed even bigger.
As we near the mid-point of summer and the temperatures get hotter and hotter, it is harder and harder to force myself into the garden to do the things that need to be done, but little gifts of Nature like butterflies and hummingbirds definitely make it a bit easier.
I could sum up my week in the garden with one word: Hot! If you press me to use a second word it would be: Dry! Yes, it is August and the garden and the gardener are suffering. The rains of July are only a dim, faded memory.
In truth, we never got as much rain in my yard in July as some spots in the area did, but at least it was frequent enough that watering the garden was mostly unnecessary. No more. I've had to break out the sprinklers again this week, much to the delight of the avian population in my yard.
Birds do love flying through a mist of cool water on a hot day. Today, I saw a battling pair of hummingbirds flying through the sprinkler's spray actually pause and hover for just a moment before they recalled their argument and resumed the chase. Anything that can bring even one moment's peace to the Eternal War of the Hummingbirds is worthy of note.
Speaking of hummingbirds, it is that time of year when traffic from these little guys is beginning to pick up in the area. I'm certainly noticing a lot more activity in my yard, and, unfortunately, just now, there are few blossoms in the yard to attract their attention. Their favorites, the Anisacanthus 'Flame acanthus' and the Cuphea 'Cigar plant' are both at a pause in their blooming. This week, I cut the overgrown and floppy 'Flame acanthus' back rather severely to encourage more bloom for the fall. Within another month, it should be blooming again, but for now, what can I offer the little visitors?
Now's the time to break out those feeders and keep them clean and filled. I refilled this one this morning and this lady was waiting impatiently on a nearby limb, chittering at me, as I rehung the feeder. As soon as I stepped away, she nipped in...
...and had a long, long drink.
In addition to cutting back the Anisacanthus this week, I've been trying to bring some order to other parts of my yard that have become very overgrown due to my neglect over the last several weeks. I did my annual pruning of the wild hedge along my back fence and found that the elderberries, pokeweed, and beautyberries are having a bumper crop of fruits this year, more feasts for the berry-loving birds.
I also tidied up the cannas. They are suffering a severe attack from leaf-rollers. I cut off the offending leaves as well as the spent bloom stems and the plants looked a lot neater when I finished. Some of them should give me another round of blooms in the fall.
Some of the roses are doing better than others. All of the 'Knockouts' are pausing briefly now before they put on another flush of blooms. Poor 'Belinda's Dream' has been struggling to keep blooming, but this week I took pity on her and cut back all her stems a bit. I'll give her some food and plenty of water and let her rest from producing blooms for a while. There'll be time enough for that in the fall.
Meanwhile, in another part of the yard, 'Caldwell Pink' blooms on, unfazed by the heat or by my neglect.
Sadly, some of this week's gardening projects did not turn out well at all. We bought three tomato plants, 'Champion II', and planted them for the fall garden, but obviously, we should have given them more protection from the brutal sun. They didn't survive. Our vegetable garden plot is really the one spot in our yard that has sun all day long. In the spring and fall, that's a good thing for veggies, but right now, it's just too much. Shade cloth is in order.
I'm very happy to report that other garden projects have turned out well this year. For example, this one:
This is the mason bee home that I hung in the old apple tree this spring. I didn't know if the bees would actually use it, but they have! Repeatedly, in fact. You can see that three of the tubes are presently in use, but several more have already been used and have ushered new bees into my garden. It feels good to be able to help our wonderful native bees.
Of course, it is always good to be able to help the butterflies, too.
This week, I photographed this beauty as it enjoyed the blossoms of my Clerodendrum bungei 'Cashmere bouquet'.
Pipe-vine Swallowtails are common visitors to my yard. I just recently installed two 'Dutchman's pipe' vines so that they will have something on which to lay their eggs. I haven't seen any eggs or larvae on either vine yet, but I'm hoping.
Although these butterflies are common in my yard, what caught my eye was this butterfly's size.
It was huge! At least in comparison to the Pipe-vines that I usually see. At first, I thought it was something else. According to the field guide, these butterflies can be from 2 3/4 - 4 inches in wingspan. Well, this one was every bit of 4 inches and seemed even bigger.
As we near the mid-point of summer and the temperatures get hotter and hotter, it is harder and harder to force myself into the garden to do the things that need to be done, but little gifts of Nature like butterflies and hummingbirds definitely make it a bit easier.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Whither weather?
Gardeners and farmers love to complain about the weather. Weather is a constant in our lives, even as soil is. By our lights, Mother Nature never quite manages to get it just right. It is too hot. It is too dry. It is too cold or too wet. But Mother Nature would say to us that the weather is always just right. It is always exactly what it must be in response to the natural processes of the planet.
I've been thinking about weather quite a lot lately, because we've had an unusual summer of weather. While much of the Northeast and corresponding latitudes around the earth have been suffering from triple digit temperatures, we here in Southeast Texas have had a relatively mild summer with occasional rains. This is a stark contrast to what we experienced last summer with very high temperatures and drought that burned our plants and increased our water bills. Indeed, that is the usual pattern for our summers and so this spell of temperate weather has been a pleasant interlude. We should enjoy it while it continues for I fear it won't last much longer.
Weather is such an interesting topic, one that people never tire of talking about, and the most interesting thing about it for me is what generates our weather. Why do the rains fall and the thunder rattle our rafters? Why do the winds blow? Conversely, why does rain not fall for weeks on end at times?
Of course, there are complicated answers to those questions having to do with temperatures of the oceans and with air pressure and topography and the water cycle and many other things which I understand only sketchily. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is our agency that tracks and reports on such things. As well as weather, they track the larger, longer patterns that comprise climate and they just issued their latest report on that subject this week.
But climate is not weather. Weather is the short-term conditions that we experience and complain of, while climate is weather writ large. Climate is the sum total of conditions over decades, centuries, or millennia. Climate, though, may affect weather, and global climate change can have an impact on our daily lives, as NOAA points out, in longer growing seasons, increases in heavy downpours, earlier snowmelt, increased flooding, even in colder winters in some areas.
There are so many things that affect weather, though. There are well-known phenomena like El Nino/La Nina, the currents in the ocean, the humidity and temperature of the troposphere - it hurts my head just to think about it.
And that's another thing. Every summer as it gets close to my August 9 birthday, I start having headaches. I refer to them as my summer headaches because I don't have them at any other time of the year. Now, maybe it's partly psychological because I just don't want to face getting another year older, but I think it's mostly environmental. There's something in the air at this time of year that hurts my head, even if the weather is pleasant. Ozone, maybe?
Anyway, headaches are a good excuse for staying inside and leaving the garden to find its own way at this time of year and I almost always do. "Finding its own way" means returning to the wilderness that it almost is anyway. It's a time of rest for the garden as well as me when I don't struggle to bend it to my will.
So, I sit inside in the cool with my iced tea and read my books and think about things. I pity those people in the Northeast and elsewhere who don't have air conditioning because they thought they would never need it. And I ponder the origins of our weather and what next week will bring us. We are almost at mid-summer now. That point will come around my birthday. Will our relatively pleasant summer weather continue to hold, or will we see a return to normalcy? Whichever way it goes, I suspect we will find something to complain about.
I've been thinking about weather quite a lot lately, because we've had an unusual summer of weather. While much of the Northeast and corresponding latitudes around the earth have been suffering from triple digit temperatures, we here in Southeast Texas have had a relatively mild summer with occasional rains. This is a stark contrast to what we experienced last summer with very high temperatures and drought that burned our plants and increased our water bills. Indeed, that is the usual pattern for our summers and so this spell of temperate weather has been a pleasant interlude. We should enjoy it while it continues for I fear it won't last much longer.
Weather is such an interesting topic, one that people never tire of talking about, and the most interesting thing about it for me is what generates our weather. Why do the rains fall and the thunder rattle our rafters? Why do the winds blow? Conversely, why does rain not fall for weeks on end at times?
Of course, there are complicated answers to those questions having to do with temperatures of the oceans and with air pressure and topography and the water cycle and many other things which I understand only sketchily. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is our agency that tracks and reports on such things. As well as weather, they track the larger, longer patterns that comprise climate and they just issued their latest report on that subject this week.
But climate is not weather. Weather is the short-term conditions that we experience and complain of, while climate is weather writ large. Climate is the sum total of conditions over decades, centuries, or millennia. Climate, though, may affect weather, and global climate change can have an impact on our daily lives, as NOAA points out, in longer growing seasons, increases in heavy downpours, earlier snowmelt, increased flooding, even in colder winters in some areas.
There are so many things that affect weather, though. There are well-known phenomena like El Nino/La Nina, the currents in the ocean, the humidity and temperature of the troposphere - it hurts my head just to think about it.
And that's another thing. Every summer as it gets close to my August 9 birthday, I start having headaches. I refer to them as my summer headaches because I don't have them at any other time of the year. Now, maybe it's partly psychological because I just don't want to face getting another year older, but I think it's mostly environmental. There's something in the air at this time of year that hurts my head, even if the weather is pleasant. Ozone, maybe?
Anyway, headaches are a good excuse for staying inside and leaving the garden to find its own way at this time of year and I almost always do. "Finding its own way" means returning to the wilderness that it almost is anyway. It's a time of rest for the garden as well as me when I don't struggle to bend it to my will.
So, I sit inside in the cool with my iced tea and read my books and think about things. I pity those people in the Northeast and elsewhere who don't have air conditioning because they thought they would never need it. And I ponder the origins of our weather and what next week will bring us. We are almost at mid-summer now. That point will come around my birthday. Will our relatively pleasant summer weather continue to hold, or will we see a return to normalcy? Whichever way it goes, I suspect we will find something to complain about.
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