Saturday: 19 January 2013
Do visit our old friend Mark P’s new website, Caniconfidimus. I was delighted that he decided to do this. He’s been a commenter on many, many websites, with clever comments and observations that really needed a venue of their own. Mark has already addressed our [north Georgia] last few days of wintry weather here, and that includes a photo of a moderately swollen creek much more magnificent than my own, which I will address shortly. Mark also has cats, which aren’t his particular sorts of animals. Nonetheless he features them prominently, perhaps because of his eminently sensible wife. Anyway, go there.
And so, back to topic:
We’re back to a kind of average January weather pattern. For a week our highs were in the 70s, which is 20-25 degF above normal highs. The nighttime temperatures were in the 50s, similarly above normal. This was much like March of last year, a high pressure pattern over the eastern US states that brought temperatures into the 80s, again 20 degF above normal for March.
And then, we had three major days of rain, beginning Tuesday, and on Thursday the temperatures fell back to normal. If the timing had been right we would have had snow or ice, but as it was it stopped raining long enough before the cold so that we had nothing.
I’ve done it before, but let’s do it again: Here are some Goulding Creek comparisons, before and after the 2.6 inch rain.
This is part of my daily walk, which usually amounts to two miles. On this occasion, on Sunday before the rain, Glenn also braved the wilds and even got into the creek. We’ve had quite a rain deficit, so most places just had a few inches of water flow. I love this picture because I never have a really good scale - Glenn provides it here. Goulding Creek isn’t really that pathetic, is it? No, it’s a typically idyllic small southern flow toward the sea.
Although this isn’t exactly the same section, it’s good enough to show the effect of the rain on Goulding Creek just after it stopped, on Thursday. You’ll notice it was fairly muddy - an indication that we’re having some runoff into the creek itself, and the feeder creeks as well.
I love Goulding Creek. I’d love it by now no matter what, just as I love the little feeder creek that runs through our property and into Goulding Creek. Goulding Creek is a homely, modest little creek but it’s significant enough to have a name two centuries old*. I suspect it’s been plowing its way through our backwoods for, well, probably thousands of years in one form or another. I love walking down it, and seeing it in its different phases. Sometimes it’s just a trickle, and that alerts me to the extremity of our weather. And then it swells to enormous proportions, as we’ve seen here. Over the years and many miles and hours I’ve walked down it, I’ve only seen one other person enjoying the creekside hike. Isn’t that interesting?
We’re back east, 1/3 mile upstream at the roadcut, what used to be the westernmost boundary of our property in the 1990s. Here’s what it looked like on Thursday afternoon, just after the rain stopped. As it was above, it’s muddy here too. This point in the creek has been one of the most interesting to watch, and I’ve referred it many times, including from just about this point in the link above.
Let’s do revisit what that very section looked like after that real rain in March 2007. It’s next to a photo taken a day or so earlier, before the rain, and what it usually looks like. I guess you can see that Thursday’s rain effects are nothing like the ones in March 2007.
And finally, here’s Goulding Creek at that same location yesterday. The level has gone down somewhat, although still higher than it has been in the last year or so. The water has cleared up too, and that’s one of the nicest things about Goulding Creek. When it’s been flushed of its bottom debris and has settled down after a rain, it’s clear, with a sandy or rocky bottom.
A good bit of this was addressed at our annual CoCoRaHS meeting for the Oglethorpe County rainfall measuring network. Our Georgia Regional Coordinator, Pam Knox, answered the question about rain and lack of creek recovery: even though we had December rain, it wasn’t enough to replenish soil moisture, therefore none of it ended up enhancing the flow in the creeks and rivers. It’s been very very dry around here.
I think, though, that we might have finally replenished the soil, and that this past rainfall actually began to run off into the creeks for the first time in many months.
*Goulding Creek, perhaps named after Daniel Goulding or Golding, 1790s, Militia District 227, Captain. I’d love to know where he lived for the creek to be named after him.
And so, back to topic:
We’re back to a kind of average January weather pattern. For a week our highs were in the 70s, which is 20-25 degF above normal highs. The nighttime temperatures were in the 50s, similarly above normal. This was much like March of last year, a high pressure pattern over the eastern US states that brought temperatures into the 80s, again 20 degF above normal for March.
And then, we had three major days of rain, beginning Tuesday, and on Thursday the temperatures fell back to normal. If the timing had been right we would have had snow or ice, but as it was it stopped raining long enough before the cold so that we had nothing.
I’ve done it before, but let’s do it again: Here are some Goulding Creek comparisons, before and after the 2.6 inch rain.
This is part of my daily walk, which usually amounts to two miles. On this occasion, on Sunday before the rain, Glenn also braved the wilds and even got into the creek. We’ve had quite a rain deficit, so most places just had a few inches of water flow. I love this picture because I never have a really good scale - Glenn provides it here. Goulding Creek isn’t really that pathetic, is it? No, it’s a typically idyllic small southern flow toward the sea.
Although this isn’t exactly the same section, it’s good enough to show the effect of the rain on Goulding Creek just after it stopped, on Thursday. You’ll notice it was fairly muddy - an indication that we’re having some runoff into the creek itself, and the feeder creeks as well.
I love Goulding Creek. I’d love it by now no matter what, just as I love the little feeder creek that runs through our property and into Goulding Creek. Goulding Creek is a homely, modest little creek but it’s significant enough to have a name two centuries old*. I suspect it’s been plowing its way through our backwoods for, well, probably thousands of years in one form or another. I love walking down it, and seeing it in its different phases. Sometimes it’s just a trickle, and that alerts me to the extremity of our weather. And then it swells to enormous proportions, as we’ve seen here. Over the years and many miles and hours I’ve walked down it, I’ve only seen one other person enjoying the creekside hike. Isn’t that interesting?
We’re back east, 1/3 mile upstream at the roadcut, what used to be the westernmost boundary of our property in the 1990s. Here’s what it looked like on Thursday afternoon, just after the rain stopped. As it was above, it’s muddy here too. This point in the creek has been one of the most interesting to watch, and I’ve referred it many times, including from just about this point in the link above.
Let’s do revisit what that very section looked like after that real rain in March 2007. It’s next to a photo taken a day or so earlier, before the rain, and what it usually looks like. I guess you can see that Thursday’s rain effects are nothing like the ones in March 2007.
And finally, here’s Goulding Creek at that same location yesterday. The level has gone down somewhat, although still higher than it has been in the last year or so. The water has cleared up too, and that’s one of the nicest things about Goulding Creek. When it’s been flushed of its bottom debris and has settled down after a rain, it’s clear, with a sandy or rocky bottom.
A good bit of this was addressed at our annual CoCoRaHS meeting for the Oglethorpe County rainfall measuring network. Our Georgia Regional Coordinator, Pam Knox, answered the question about rain and lack of creek recovery: even though we had December rain, it wasn’t enough to replenish soil moisture, therefore none of it ended up enhancing the flow in the creeks and rivers. It’s been very very dry around here.
I think, though, that we might have finally replenished the soil, and that this past rainfall actually began to run off into the creeks for the first time in many months.
*Goulding Creek, perhaps named after Daniel Goulding or Golding, 1790s, Militia District 227, Captain. I’d love to know where he lived for the creek to be named after him.
