New Water Year

Happy New Year! New Water Year that is. Recording moisture that we receive is calculated by Water Year rather than by the Calendar Year.

Rainfall (and snow and hail) totals begin on October 1st, what is traditionally the beginning of the wetter/fall season. The CoCoRAHs newsletter explained it well,

…this marks the end of another “water year”. The definition of “water year” is practical and somewhat arbitrary. More than one definition exists. But we use the Oct. 1 – Sep. 30 annual cycle because it captures the bulk of the cool season soil moisture recharge time of year (October – March) and the warm growing-season time of year (April – September)…

If you think my farm stories are outlandish and strange, you should click the link and read the newsletter. At the end of the newsletter, Nolan recounts just what happened on his farm while he was away for a vacation. My stories don’t seem near as odd as I had imagined.

As we celebrate the new year, we will generate Water Year Summary reports for every CoCoRaHS station. A first draft of these summaries will be provided in early October to give all observers the chance to review their observations for the year and make any corrections if necessary. (We’ll send out A message when they are ready.) Then in a few weeks once everyone has had a chance to review their observations and fill in missing data, we will then regenerate the reports.

To look at previous year’s Water Year Summary Reports please click here: PAST WATER YEAR SUMMARY REPORTS .

Since I am going to go the lazy route on this one, I will be waiting for the numbers to be ran by CoCoRAHs on October 7th (and again at the end of the month) to verify my recorded totals against what my neighbors in the surrounding area recorded. It had been a rather mild weather year for the first six months with lower than average rainfall totals so seeing how things shake out for the whole year will be interesting.

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