Did I Mention Dry?

I was practically giddy on Saturday morning when I heard a few raindrops hitting the leaves of the big maple tree in the yard. Why did I hear them rather than feel them, I hear you saying out loud. It was because it was 5am and all the windows in the house were open because it was above 90 degrees the day before and the house did not cool down during the night like we are used to here in our little valley with the river pretty darn close.

It has been a very warm July for us with an exceptionally hot week in the middle with record high temperatures. Here at the farm we clocked 108 degrees (not official but close for our purposes) two of those days. The house did not cool down very much on those nights either. But back to the story of Saturday morning.

I’m sitting at my computer getting my thoughts together for the next story when I heard the big leaf maple trees. At first I thought it was the leaves rustling, we had very little breeze during the night and I thought perhaps it might rust be that. But it made it sound like the leaves were dry as in autumn dry. Even though we are in a drought I didn’t think that the leaves were that dry. It was just as the sky was brightening up a bit and I could see the leaves clearly, I could make out the sound of fat drops hitting the leaves rather than rustling.

Completely surprised, I stopped typing and headed outdoors to get a comfortable baptism in the life sustaining moisture. But the drops ended as quickly as they had begun and I only saw a bare trace of the drops on the dusty Gator. The air did not even have the sweet smell of ozone that would have been expected after a long dry spell. The day continued to be strange with muggy-ness and clouds threatening. Later I read from the Oregon Department of Forestry that there were a few lightening strikes around the area without any complications of fire starts, but also without much moisture anywhere.

My trusty rain gauge only confirmed my suspicions with only a trace and not measureable precipitation.

Within a few hours, the rain we did have was completely evaporated and the ground is back to being as dusty as ever. I followed a single calf along the bottom of the hillside skid road and got dusted pretty good.