Andy_Johnson's Blog

Normally, April is our driest month with a total of 1.8 inches of rain. So far we are slighty above normal already for the month due to yesterday's rains. Earlier this week, it almost looked like summer with regular afternoon and evening thunderstorms occurring each day. As I mentioned in an earlier blog entry, it is unusual that we have had a fairly wet winter and spring in Florida since we are in La Nina conditions. Almost without exception until now, La Nina is associated with drier than normal winters and springs in Florida.

Unfortunately, a lot of the rain events have occurred on weekends this year. The good news is that the rains are coming at regular intervals, not all at once. This allows water to soak into the aquifer more instead of just running off. Also, normally this time of year we are worried about the possibility of wild fires. So far we have been fortunate the the regular frequency of rain events has prevented any major forest firest.

What will the rest of the spring bring? Will La Nina act more normally and cause us to dry out or will we continue to get regularly spaced rain events that will help us through the fire season? Let's hope that the latter is the case. It would be better to have regularly spaced rain events in time than the ups and down with droughts and flooding.