Dry oases

Isn’t it always the case in life that it’s the dialog that matters most.

That’s what you look for in friends or on any subject that matters: just a chance to informally flip an idea back and forth for a while.

It’s in speaking out loud, whether to a friend or an acquaintance or even just a by stander on the street, that a mind starts to build and fuse ideas, share a laugh, and might take one to an unexpected place you’d never thought you’d tread.

Hydrology’s the perfect case example of that.

It’s my profession, and a bit of a passion to be sure, but its greatest reward is that there are so many others out there both far and near that are also intrigued by the watery world around us.

There’s a misconception out there that online journals help you connect with the far away world in its most distant reaches (I have a few readers from Australia). 

But blogs are just as good with connecting us with the close-by corners that are right under our noses and that otherwise – in the day in day out grind that we live our lives – we may never have had a chance to share an idea with.

That leads me to my “email bag.”

Here’s a few photos and narrative I received by email from a Big Cypress local. 

Traversing the Big Cypress the last thing on your mind would be the need for an oasis.



But after miles of cypress and prairie, you will find areas that suddenly are green and thick with foliage.



Unlike the desert oasis, these areas are formed not by water but by the lack of it. A spot of high ground surrounded by water.

Like the desert oasis, they provide habitat for many species, especially in the wet season.

Man also seeks out these oases in the swamp.



Built in 1954 the people who built this brought materials over many miles of tough terrrain to enjoy this spot. Termites and hurricanes have gotten the best of their hard work, but the wildlife and foilage haven't noticed a bit of change.

Thanks for sharing Brian, and thanks for taking us to one of those unexpected places we never thought we’d tread.

Down gradient

There's a misconception out there that water flows downhill.



I found myself loosely using that expression until a estuarine ecologist friend of mine, in the precision of a true scientist, corrected my language:

"Water flows downhill most of the time, but it flows 'down gradient' all of the time" he would say ... light-heartedly but also with insistence.

His case in point was Herring River Estuary.

It's located up on the outermost arm of Cape Cod, tucked up in Wellfleet Harbor and reaching up into Cape Cod National Seashore. He spent a good chunk of his career working to restore tidal flow to its upper reaches, which historically had been blocked off by a dike.


What other instances come to mind?

The beach for one (as shown in the video clip above), where the tide rolls water up on the beach front, riding the momentary wave of an breaking swale, or the Central Arizona Project sending water uphill to Phoenix and Tucson by way of pumps and a canal.

The paradox of "water flowing uphill but also down gradient" is resolved.

But more broadly speaking (and as proven in the video), doesn't water always find its way back to the sea.

I would say yes, most of the time.

Groundhog shadow guarantee

The hydrologic interregnum appears to be over, and just in time:

It’s almost Groundhog Day.



Groundhog day is an important milestone “up north:” 

It's the mathematical halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, and while meteorologically still in the heart of winter, it is also the metaphorically gateway for leaping ahead to the spring thaw and bloom that beckons in the weeks to come.

If the Groundhog sees his shadow, 6 more weeks of winter are at hand … so the legend goes. 

If it’s cloudy and he doesn’t, an early spring is on the way.


For us here in sunny south Florida, the Groundhog most always sees his shadow.

Our rendition of Groundhogs Day can loosely be interpreted as an indication that we have 6 more weeks of delightfully mild “dry season” weather ahead. Those 6 weeks takes us pretty much up to the middle of March, after which the “scorching” final third of the dry season begins.

The term “scorching” has a double meaning here: both

(1) The unrelenting heat of a cloudless Florida sky and
(2) The onset of peak wildfire season due to the absence of water.

But that’s thinking ahead.



In front of us now is the waning days of the hydrologic interregnum.

What is the hydrologic interregnum you may ask?

It’s just a fancy way of saying winter dry down.

It’s the hydrologic transition when the outgoing wet season – the “lame duck” – has lost its primary contributor – the summer rains – but when the ground is still wet (or mostly wet).



The wet season ended 15 weeks ago, in mid October.

Since then we’ve seen nary a cloud and hardly any rain, but the wet season’s surface water was still with us – and in plain sight – until the start of the new year.

That’s no longer the case:

The pinelands, prairies, and most of the cypress are dry.





The water is still out there to be sure.

You just have to go hunting deep into the swamps to find it.

The hydrologic interregnum is still active in two of our wetland habitats: the fringes of the tall cypress and in the liquid heart of our swamp forest.

But even those won’t hold water for much longer if we don’t get some rain soon.



If and when we get those dry season rains is anyone’s guess:

Let's wait until Monday and watch for the Groundhog's shadow first.

It's a pretty good bet we'll see it here in sunny Florida!

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Falling branch

When you think of Big Cypress and Everglades, the term "water wonderland" comes to mind ...

But we lack the perhaps the singlemost water attraction that so often comes to mind when you mention that descriptor, namely:

Waterfalls!




Blame that mostly on south Florida's flat landscape, but also to a small degree to historic canal dredging.

Famously, there used to be a water fall at the coastal fringe of the Miami River (which is now the Miami Canal). 

There was also one at the headwaters of the Caloosahatchee River -- the so-called Fort Thompson Falls, before it was blasted away to join the river to the Big Lake (Okeechobee) in an effort to carve an navigable waterway into the wild interior of the Everglades.

Above is a short video clip of a small waterfall up north, called Kilgore Falls.

It's located on the Falling Branch of Deer Creek in Maryland, which in turn flows into the southern stem of the Susquehanna River just before it spills into the Chesapeake Bay.

Click here to see more hydrologic images from Watery Wednesday.

Coldest January

We know that January is our coldest month,

But which January is our coldest?



That would be January 2003.

It was a month that never saw a deep bitter freeze on any single night –

Although it did put a glaze of ice over a local evaporation pan, thus temporarily turning it into a “sublimation” pan, measuring exchange of water from its solid (as opposed to liquid) to vapor phase.

Rather, it was a January that just couldn’t get warm. 

Day after day and week after week was a steady descent into colder than normal territory.


That was partly a result of the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) being in the El Nino phase.

The presence of an El Nino tends to diminish the likelihood of low digit freezes than can devastate citrus and vegetable crops, but can set the stage for the steady flow of “milder” cold air across the peninsula.



Compare that to this January.

It’s been a mild one by any measure, but low and behold, Jack Frost touched down deep into the peninsula last week.

The water I set out didn’t freeze, 

But I did wake up to the sight of a thin veneer of ice on my car windows.

I hurried outside to scrape it off before the sun got to it first.

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Swamp legend

The tall cypress are our “giants" of the swamp, even if it’s the shear number of them, not their size, that gives Big Cypress Swamp its name.

But that begs the question:



How big are our giants compared to the redwood giants in the Pacific Northwest?

Old growth redwoods – at 350 ft – are about four times as tall as our old growth cypress.

Quadruple that and you are right up at the top of the Empire State Building.



It’s pure coincidence that each of the three comes with its own “giant ape” legend: Skunk Ape for the Big Cypress, Bigfoot for the Pacific Northwest, and King Kong for the Empire State Building.

Do any of them exist?

When it comes to urban or swamp legends, that’s almost beside the point:

They take on a life of their own.

Around the bend

Do you have a favorite park right around the bend?

For me it’s Fakahatchee’s Big Cypress Bend Boardwalk.

It’s a spectacular spot to be sure, one of the two lone stands of old growth cypress left in south Florida. (The other is Audubon's Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary about 50 miles to the north).

But it’s the convenience that keeps me coming back:

It’s on my way home from work.

Swamp bird

Here's a short video clip of a small sliver of Big Cypress National Preserve from the air, up in the helicopter at about 1000 feet. 

The highway in the middle of the clip is I75, also known as Alligator Alley, and which connects Naples to Ft Lauderdale. If you look closely you can see the road curve in the background. Otherwise it's a "straight as an arrow" two-hour drive from Naples to Ft Lauderdale.  

To all of you that drive the road on a regular basis and always wondered what it looked like beyond the low vantage of the road fringe, here's your chance to get a peek at its endless miles of cypress trees which, incidently, give the preserve its name -- not by the height of their crowns, but by their "far as the eye can see" expanse.

How many cypress trees are their in the preserve?  

That's a good question.  Good luck counting!

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Peninsular state

Just when I’d given up on the cold, here we have a cold couple days on the way.

Thursday morning is projected to drop to 36º F at Naples Airport.

Real cold is what they had up north at the inauguration.





I find myself these days thinking of winter weather as an abstraction:

Yes it exists, but not having stepped in it or shoveled it for the past 10 years, I probably think of it as the same way denizens of the Chesapeake Bay watersheds receive a January-stamped postcard from “Sunny Florida” …

Or those standing and sitting and watching the inauguration:

“You’ve got to be there first hand to really feel it.”

But watching a bit of TV earlier today, seeing was believing: 

It looked every bit of below freezing.

I’ve always harbored a theory that the most memorable occasions, whether a hike along preferred trail or an afternoon at a stadium taking in a game or a presidential inauguration for that matter, are made all the more memorable with a bit of weather in the mix, be it cold or rain or snow or clouds.

On this day, as I look northward and imagined in my mind the cold weather sweeping across the country “up continent,”

I felt somehow connected.

Why so?

Forecasters are calling for a dose of that cold air plunge “down peninsula” in the coming days.

And to misquote Thoreau, “No Floridian lives on an island.”

(Metaphorically speaking of course, as some Floridian’s actually do live on coastal islands, such as Sanibel, or out on the keys).

But more broadly speaking, and no matter how you slice it, Florida is a peninsula:

One foot on “Sunny Florida” and one foot on the continent,

It’s a special corner of the United States of America.

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Per capita conundrum

Sometimes measuring water is an inexact science.

That especially applies with determining per capita water consumption.


How the water is used at the tap is a bit of a fuzzy proposition:

A small fraction goes to drinking, but the rest goes to other household uses and irrigation.


Fortunately, there’s a statewide effort to track that usage county by county, published by the US Geological Survey.

Below is a county by county map showing public water supply withdrawals across Florida. (The graph does no factor in domestic water supplies, agricultural, or industrial uses.)

Not surprisingly, Miami-Dade leads the way with 400 million gallons per day.


How much water is that?

It translates to 618 cubic feet per second, which is the same amount of water being delivered to Everglades National Park through the S12 structures as of mid December.


There’s a big seasonal difference between Everglades flows and public water supply withdrawals. The former peaks in late summer (at the end of the wet season) whereas the later peaks in the mid winter when the dry season is already in full swing.

Other counties high on the list include Gold Coast counties of Broward and Palm Beach, Hillsborough, Orange, and Duval.


Added together, the public water supply infrastructure of Florida’s 67 counties withdraws an average of 2,540 million gallons per day.

That translates to around 2.8 million acre feet per year, or in other words, enough to fill our Lake Okeechobee measuring cup about half way up – to the 12.5 ft level -- during the course of a year.



The Lake is currently just over 13.6 ft high and holding 3.3 million acre feet.

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Pileated woodpecker

Here's a short video clip of two pileated woodpeckers I filmed in Naples earlier last fall. 

They are really fun birds to watch at work, and whenever I look at them, I'm struck by thoughts of the ivory billed woodpecker, what it looked like "alive in the flesh" (or rather -- feathers), and if they are still out there. 

I heard, but did not see, a pileated woodpecker when I was up in Maryland.  

That speaks volumes of that bird's range, and also goes to show: there's more out there than meets the eye. 

The search for the ivory bill continues.

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Honeybell season

I was in the local green grocer and was happy to see the sign that I’ve waited for all year:

“Honeybells: First of the season.”

Honeybells are my favorite orange – although in actuality they are not an orange at all –rather a Tangelo, 

But regardless, they are the sweetest of south Florida’s citrus, and made all the sweeter by their short season.

Fresh Honeybell season only runs for a few weeks – reaching their peak toward the later half of January, 

After that they're gone (at least the fresh ones).

Arrival of the Honeybells also rings in the middle part of south Florida’s dry season:

It’s been 3 months of nearly no rain,

Dry by even dry season standards.

That can partly be explained by a subtle shift in the global winds:

We entered the dry season with the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) index in neutral gear. That had me prognosticating the chance at a deep freeze or two, events more likely to happen when the jet stream is not constrained by the prevailing forces of El Nino or La Nina.



But now that’s all apparently changed:

The ENSO is starting to dip back into La Nina mode.

That tends to give the south peninsula a drier than normal winter – thus explaining our sparse rainfall (even by winter standards) – and also influences on other parts of the country – such as the Olympic peninsula and the Midwest – in the form of colder and wetter winter weather.

If it stays around long enough, La Ninas also put an extra skip in the step of the Atlantic Hurricane season … but that’s looking way too far ahead.





On our immediate horizon is the second half of the dry season.

Currently water levels in Big Cypress National Preserve are tracking right along the 5-year average for mid January.

Wetland water levels have dropped a full foot since the high-water peak in early September, in the weeks following Fay.

Incidentally, Lake Okeechobee has also dropped a foot since Fay passed.



Did you know that the Lake’s perimeter levee – as originally built in the 1930s – is about the same age as that the Honeybell hybrid? 

It was invented in 1931 up in Orlando, 

Just outside the northern most reaches of the Lake's upstream Kissimmee watershed, which -- if you didn't know -- gives the Lake about a quarter of its annual inflow. 

So get them while you can,

If you are from Florida, you can find the crème of the crop along a roadside stand and farmers market near you …

Or in the case you are out of state, you can have them shipped up north for around $25 per dozen.

You won't be disappointed!

Flu and no cold season

Snow bird season has officially begun.

How do I know?



I look to the sky and see the contrails: a sure sign that the northerners have finally started to arrive.

We call them "snow birds."

That also means that “cold and flu” season is in the air down here in peninsular Florida.

Last season’s influenza in Florida peaked in February and March, but this year’s peak looks on schedule to arrive a few weeks earlier as reported in a recent article by Jeff Hess of WOKV up in Duval County.

One thing is for sure: it seems that the flu has arrived in full force:

But the other side of the coin – the “cold” has been noticeably missing.

No, I’m not talking about the “runny nose” variety of cold, what I mean is our coveted frontal freshets of crisp northern air variety of cold.

It’s been over 30 days since we’ve felt the nigh-time air temperature dip below 50º F (since early December), and day-time highs have been regularly sneaking above 80º F in that time span.


Which makes me think:

Florida is a winterless retreat for the icebound weary souls from up north. We open our doors to you and our sunshine, knowing full well that along with that hospitality comes the many strains of flu bug from every part of the continent’s blustery bounds.

The only favor we ask in return is that you bring some “cold air” along with you.

Will my plea be answered?

Apparently so.

Cool air is scheduled to arrive by week’s end.

A heart-warming thanks to whomever brought it down … the “cold” that is, not the “flu!”

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