It really is a drought!

 It's official.  Howell County is a disaster area due to heat and drought.  That's probably not news to most readers since nearly 1,300 counties in 29 states are in a drought disaster, according to the U. S. Dept. of Agriculture.  It's the most wide spread drought in the U. S. since 1956.

At right is a photo of my front yard rain gauge on July 2 waiting for a rain.   We received 1.7 inches of rain in Mountain View in first 8 days of July and no more until August 1 when a piddling 0.3 inches fell. 

The next photo is our front yard on August 3.  Even my weeds are dying. 

 Our average July precip is 3.7 inches.  Normally in January-July we receive 25.7 inches of precipitation.  This year we've had 18.1 inches, a short fall of 7.6 inches. 

The average annual precipitation is 43.7 inches at Mountain View.  We have a long way to go.   

Then... add to that the extreme heat, the worst since 1954.  We've had 11 days in July when the high temperature reached 100 degrees or more. 

Our drought started in April.  January-March had near normal rainfall.  Then May was even worse.  May is usually our highest rainfall month, but this year we had only 1.3 inches compared to nearly 5 normally. 

It was a terrible year to plant pine trees to grow for Christmas trees.  Most of mine didn't reach Independence Day.  Sad pine at right. 

Weather? Hot and dry.

This is a photo of our brown front lawn on August 19. In the center is the “stump” of our new maple tree that we planted in the fall of 2009. As you can see, our new tree didn’t make it. And our weedy lawn turned brown and ugly.
The news in summer included reports of flooding in Iowa, northern Missouri, Oklahoma, and western Arkansas. But Mountain View was in the center of a circle of low rainfall; drought really. Our soils are thin to non-existent. Ozark soils are rocky and very well drained. It dries out fast around here. We need about an inch of rain weekly in the summer to keep pastures and lawns green.
I’m so thankful that September rains came and also brought some cooler air. July and August 2010 were very hot and very dry in my corner of the Ozarks. We had 7.5 inches of rain in September which is almost twice the average. I thought the drought was broken.
But October brought more dry air, dry skies, and dry soil. We had only one measurable rain in October and it was only 0.3 inches. Nothing yet in November.
We’ve had a warm fall, which is pleasant, especially after a miserably hot summer. The heat started early. We had 15 days in the 90’s in June including 98 three times. In late July we had 17 straight days at 90 or above. From August 1-25 the daily high fell below 90 only two days. We had seven days in August with highs of 100 or more. Yuk!
What’s next? I guess I’m going to open up some persimmon seeds and go in search of wooly worms to find out.