Thursday, May 11, 2023

Rain....and Lots of It

 Heard on the radio this is the most rain in a single storm we've had in 2 years. It's been a pretty steady, but mostly light, drizzle for 24 hours now. My Davis weather station shows about 1/2" of rain, but my new rain gauge shows over an inch.....hmmmm...gotta figure out the discrepancy there!


But the yard is greening up nicely, and we had just finished scratching up, re-seeding, and putting an inch of dirt on all the bare spots in the backyard. Hopefully the new grass will come in and choke out the weeds. We used some Scott's grass seed, as it works really well here, and judging from the areas I did a couple of years ago, it seems pretty tough. These yards were originally sodded, and you'd think the local sods farms would have something especially suited for here, BUT...it's a business, and they'd probably consider that a "premium" product. I wanted to use Buffalo Grass, something native to this area and very stout, but the seed is hard to get, and I missed the window to order some from this year's crop.

The hip continues to improve, but I'm at another plateau, and it can bum me out at times. Stairs and getting down on / up from the floor are the current hurdles.

8 comments:

  1. Rain - we could use some.

    We had the landscape crew out last week to do some weed control and trim some of the trees. Yard looks pretty good now but grass? What's that? ;)

    Plateaus are commonly encountered but you will continue to improve regardless.

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    Replies
    1. "Grass" was that burned out brown stuff we had in Long Beach. This stuff is GRASS! Nice and green, and the dog loves laying in it in Summer.

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  2. The rain seems to soaking into the ground. The Platte was about normal yesterday evening. Since the weather pattern extends far to the East the Ogallala Aquifer may be helped along with area reservoirs.

    I'm happy none of my current assignments are on county roads. Yes, I run Mud+Snow tires year around. That doesn't mean I like to drive on mud.

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    Replies
    1. My Taylor rain gauge says we got two inches, and no puddles in the back yard. 2" in Long Beach, and the back yard would be flooded! Rain just doesn't soak into the black adobe soil we had. It's like concrete!

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  3. The Davis counts how many times the small internal catch reservoir on the rainfall probe fills and dumps. There is a calibration setting to match it to the size reservoir. If it is set for the wrong size, it will be off. Usually it will show either half or double the actual amount depending on which way it is off. I've seen that before.

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    Replies
    1. Yep, supposed to be .01" per tip, also called "points". I've been through the manual, and all I can find is whether or not you have the metric adapter in it, and I know I didn't install that, as you have to take the bucket assembly apart and install a little "magnetic retarder" to the buckets. Might in the menu on the console, so I'll check that, but I installed everything with the "default" settings, so it should be .01".

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  4. I'd tend to believe the rain gauge. And yes, plateaus happen. Don't get discouraged!!!

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    Replies
    1. I think it's an issue with the software I'm using. I'm going to take the rain gauge out of the holder, put one inch of water in it, and dump it into the rain collector on the weather station. They *should* read the same. That's why I bought the stand-alone rain gauge in the first place. I just never did it, and then hung the new rain gauge outside a few days before this rain started. Time to upgrade the weather station software, I think.
      Thanks for the encouragement. You're 100% correct. I guess I'm lucky that it happened when it did. If I'd have broken the hip in June or July, I'd be out of action for the whole Summer!

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Keep it civil, please....

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