The average monthly rainfall in Wichita during May is 4.16 inches and in June it’s 4.25 inches. That means nearly two months of rain have fallen in just five days. THAT means my back yard has recently turned into a morass of muck and mud.
If I’d been a little kid I would have squealed and squished – squealed with joy at the opportunity to squish my toes in such pristine mud. But I'm not a little kid - I'm an adult who worried about the two window wells in the basement that kept filling up with water, almost to the glass. Another inch of water and the pressure would have pushed them in, allowing oozy mud to seep indoors.
Last night when I discovered this I started bailing water out of the wells, but the rain fell so hard and fast I had to come inside. I bailed again in the morning and then at intervals used a fountain pump to remove the water. Did any of this hard work make a difference? I’m not sure.
What it did was confirm that once upon a time in the life of my home and property, someone working on the landscape architecture either reversed the drawings or had a malfunctioning level that tilted the wrong way. My back yard slopes. Toward the house. Following is a dialogue that I imagine took place during the construction of my home, an era long ago, prior to GPS, cell phones, Facebook, and good restaurants in Las Vegas.
Landscape Guy #1: “Hey, shouldn’t the dump truck be closer to the house? Do we really want the dirt that far out?”
Landscape Guy #2: “Nah, fuhgettaboutit, we’ll just rake it in a nice little slope away from the house, sorta like this – hey, isn’t it time for lunch?”
There are places near the house that are like a miniature reservoir, with standing water six inches deep. Tufts of unmowed grass dot the yard like small islands. It’s possible to avoid most of the mud by leaping from one tuft of grass to the next. In contrast, the back of the lot looks normal. It’s almost a desert by comparison.
This is the most rain that has fallen in one month since I moved here. What I found today on http://www.wunderground.com/ (Weather Underground) confirms it:
“When it rains... OH can it pour. This is especially true in May 2008 as yesterday's record-shattering calendar day total of 3.23 inches at Wichita's Mid-Continent Airport for May 26th brought the monthly total to 11.45 inches. This easily breaks the monthly May record of 11.22 inches set 73 years ago which... oddly enough... was during the dustbowl era of the mid 1930s. Of this 11.45 inch rainfall total 6.31 inches... or 55 percent of the monthly total... drenched Wichita Mid-Continent in a 3-day period spanning the 24th through the 26th.”
There you have it. It rained the entire Memorial Day Weekend and it would be great to have the weekend again only with better weather. Squishing my toes in all that mud reminded me of something else kid-like: Can we have do-overs?
Last night when I discovered this I started bailing water out of the wells, but the rain fell so hard and fast I had to come inside. I bailed again in the morning and then at intervals used a fountain pump to remove the water. Did any of this hard work make a difference? I’m not sure.
What it did was confirm that once upon a time in the life of my home and property, someone working on the landscape architecture either reversed the drawings or had a malfunctioning level that tilted the wrong way. My back yard slopes. Toward the house. Following is a dialogue that I imagine took place during the construction of my home, an era long ago, prior to GPS, cell phones, Facebook, and good restaurants in Las Vegas.
Landscape Guy #1: “Hey, shouldn’t the dump truck be closer to the house? Do we really want the dirt that far out?”
Landscape Guy #2: “Nah, fuhgettaboutit, we’ll just rake it in a nice little slope away from the house, sorta like this – hey, isn’t it time for lunch?”
There are places near the house that are like a miniature reservoir, with standing water six inches deep. Tufts of unmowed grass dot the yard like small islands. It’s possible to avoid most of the mud by leaping from one tuft of grass to the next. In contrast, the back of the lot looks normal. It’s almost a desert by comparison.
This is the most rain that has fallen in one month since I moved here. What I found today on http://www.wunderground.com/ (Weather Underground) confirms it:
“When it rains... OH can it pour. This is especially true in May 2008 as yesterday's record-shattering calendar day total of 3.23 inches at Wichita's Mid-Continent Airport for May 26th brought the monthly total to 11.45 inches. This easily breaks the monthly May record of 11.22 inches set 73 years ago which... oddly enough... was during the dustbowl era of the mid 1930s. Of this 11.45 inch rainfall total 6.31 inches... or 55 percent of the monthly total... drenched Wichita Mid-Continent in a 3-day period spanning the 24th through the 26th.”
There you have it. It rained the entire Memorial Day Weekend and it would be great to have the weekend again only with better weather. Squishing my toes in all that mud reminded me of something else kid-like: Can we have do-overs?
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