Gum Slough

Gum Slough is yet again another one of a kind in Big Cypress Nat’l Preserve.

It’s unusually narrow. You could literally throw a rock across it in most places. (That’s assuming you could find a rock!) Most sloughs are endless as far as the eye can see.

Even more perplexingly, it runs in a due east-west direction. Most flow systems in the preserve – whether they be forested strands or marshy sloughs – have a north-south component to them.

But most shockingly (although not altogether surprising this year), Gum Slough has gone almost completely dry.

Or, at least, as dry as we’ve seen it!



Above is a short video clip of a cypress enclosed marsh in Gum Slough where we monitor its water levels, filmed just last week.

Fourth horseman?

Florida has four meteorological horsemen.

They stampede into town from every corner of the sky. The thunderous approach of their hooves and sun-eclipsing clouds they kick up are cautiously greeted by Floridians with an equal dose alarm and routine:

It’s time to take cover … a drenching of apocalyptic proportions may be on the way.



Who are the horsemen?

Three of our four horseman ride into town in the summer and fall.

They are the enhanced sea breeze (Florida’s bread and butter storms), the giant Cape Verde hurricanes that spawn off the coast of Africa, and the often smaller in strength but gorged with moisture tropical disturbances that arc up from the gulf and Caribbean.


The fourth – the continental front – rides to town, or more correctly stated, usually rides into town, for unpredicable downpours here and there during our 7 month winter and spring dry season.



Not this year, or not enough this year.

Apparently someone forgot to open the “great stable in the sky” and let that horse run free.

Off the beaten Trail

Sometimes you don’t have to go deep into nature to get into deep nature. Tamiami Trail is the perfect example. It’s the main road between Miami and Naples.

I crossed the canal on its north side using an old wooden bridge.

That led me into a wet prairie which, because it’s the dry season – and an especially dry one at that, is better classified as a dry prairie in spring … at least until the summer rains start back up.



This particular dwarf cypress caught my eye because it was short and stout, but probably as old as the larger cypress in the adjacent dome.



The cypress dome was thoroughly greened out but like the prairie dry also as a bone. And this was a deep dome. As flat as the Big Cypress Swamp is, it was a downhill journey to the center of this dome. (The plus side of no water of course was the equal absence of mosquitoes.)



The cypress knees were especially impressive, and rekindled in me a question that has periodically tugged at my curiosity, but one I’ve never been able to answer:

“Why is it that knees are absent from some domes, sparse and smallish in others, and – as in the case of this dome – omnipresent and quite tallish (hip high)?”

I thought about that for a moment, in the silence of the dry dome, periodically interrupted by the thrush of Tamiami traffic on the nearby road … which with Alligator Alley being closed due to a wildfire (named Deep Fire) has been steadier than normal.

Then I left.



I turned once to the east (toward Miami) and once to the west (toward Naples) before crossing back over the Tamiami.

It was good to get a off the beaten Trail, even if for only a few minutes and a couple hundred feet to the north.

Any longer or further and I could have gotten lost!

Seven year slough

Mark your calendars!

Because it only happens once about every 7 years …


And I’m not talking about locusts, or in this case the Everglades equivalent – the lubbers (although come to mention it, they are cyclical too.)

No, I’m talking about Shark River Slough going dry.



This marks Shark River Sloughs lowest April in over 15 years – going back to 1991 to be exact -- as measured at Everglades National Park's P33 monitoring station.

It’s the preceding year, however, (1990) that stands out as the contemporary drought of record, going all the way back to the mid 1960s. That’s the year that Shark River Slough went dry in February.

Shark River Slough’s current level is about a foot lower than the 15-year late April average, and a foot lower than late April of last year.



Compare that the spring flood of record – 1995 – when Shark River Slough was brimming in late April almost 2 feet higher that its current level.

That’s a bit of a shocker because as late as this October Shark River Slough levels were climbing high up the wetland ladder. The difference maker of course has been a dry winter, and now a dry spring.



That has me wondering what such a record dry down means for the lubbers?

Could this be their year too?

You never quite know in the Everglades.

Spring dry out

We commonly split our year in two parts in south Florida:

A summer wet season and a winter dry one, the latter of which has been drier than normal.

(The result was an earlier than normal “dry down.” Our lowest-lying marshes, sloughs, and strands went dry by late February, leaving only isolated pockets of water in our dry-season refugia pools.)



But that bi-modal categorization misses the pivotal role that spring plays in our seasonal drought.


We’re now seeing those effects in full bloom:

Waxing daylight hours, hotter temperatures, a surge in plant transpiration, and often gusty desiccating winds.

Isolated showers quickly soak in, and within days its back to being as dry as it was before. (Don’t get me wrong – we’ll take any rain we can get!)




The winter “dry down” is all but passé; the spring “dry out” is the new concern.

That’s because in south Florida spring is not wildflower season, it’s wildfire season:

All it takes is a lighting strike from one of those isolated showers.

Deepest fire

There’s a fire raging in the Big Cypress Swamp which, with a steady wind blowing out of the east, has cast a smoky haze across coastal-hugging Naples (25 miles distant) … and even more strangely – shut down Alligator Alley.

At last count Deep Fire (as it’s been named) has consumed 12,500 acres. That’s just shy of 20 square miles.



Here’s a short video clip of the wildfire and the traffic free interstate below, filmed Friday from a helicopter.

Muddiest lake

How many gators are in Mud Lake?

Probably the better question is how many gators aren't in Mud Lake! It was about as filled with gators as it was empty of water.


Mud Lake is not the deepest lake in Big Cypress Nat'l Preserve, nor the most scenic -- but it is the muddiest, and unusually so. No other water hole in the preserve has its distinctive cloudiness.

In this photo it's doubly so: cloudy waters beneath the surface and also on top -- reflecting the sky above.


If you're a gator, that's about as good as it gets.

Meteorology plant

Where do plants and meteorology meet?

That would be the resurrection fern.



It’s an air plant, also known as an epiphyte, which means it attaches itself to another plant, and catches what water and nutrients it can directly from the sky or from the outer surface of its host plant.

But more than that, it’s a meteorological indicator.



All brown and shriveled: that’s the resurrection ferns way of telling us the dry season is still here.

But don’t be fooled, they're not dead.

All it takes is a splash of rain for them to unfurl dainty fronds of vivid green.

That’s the first sign that the wet season is here, and the swamps will be rising soon.



Now we're getting ahead of ourselves.

The top photo is of the "shriveled up" variety, taken just last week in a pond apple swamp north of Alligator Alley.

The bottom one is from 10 months earlier along the boardwalk at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in early June (... and you guessed it, just after the wet season had begun).

Springtime blues

Graphs don’t tell you everything, but once in a while they’ll remind you of something you forgot -- even if they don't have a cure for it.


Up in the land of ice and snow, it’s about this time of year that New Englanders battle the springtime blues season.

You wouldn’t think that would be the case, with temperatures on the upswing and summer greenery on its way, but after a long cold winter of fighting cabin fever and room rheumatitis, all it takes is a needle on the camel’s back in the form of a blustery cold or overcast skies to plunge ones spirits into a melancholic state.



We have the same thing in south Florida, only it occurs in early fall.

I can hack the heat and humidity all summer long, but the trigger for me is Labor Day – the traditional first day of fall up north. Once it hits, my mood dampens with the reality that Florida’s humid days and sultry nights grind on for another 6 long weeks.



Out of the blue my brother gave me a call today. He lives outside of Boston, but he’s a Yankee fan.

“The weather’s really got the best of me,” he lamented. “It’s been all clouds … and cold.”

“I know, or rather I heard” I told him, explaining that I had listened to the Yankees afternoon game against the A’s on the radio. “(John) Stearling and (Suzyn) Waldman (they are the announcers) kept alluding to it ... and how it was affecting the players.”

“By the way, the Yanks won in extra innings” I said. “Melky Cabrera hit a walk off in the 14th.”



That momentarily buoyed his spirits, but then he reasoned out loud: “Those extra innings can’t bode well for the upcoming series against the Red Sox in Fenway.”

Sometimes the springtime blues are hard to shake.

Photos are of Gunpowder River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay, earlier this winter.

Tortoise marches on

The water cycle in south Florida is an annual race between the Tortoise (evapotranspiration) and the Hare (rainfall).



The Tortoise moves along at a steady pace all year round – and, just as in the fable, overtakes the sleeping Hare in slow-motion fashion about halfway through the winter dry season.

Currently, that’s where we are now.


Yesterday’s dash of rain in Loxahatchee and in the Big Cypress was a reminder of the summer rains to come, but those drops were largely “hit or miss,” and the ones that did “hit” were rapidly soaked down into the ground and transpired out.


The Hare stirred, but did not awaken.

Water levels continue to drop.


That will change toward the second half of May with the start up of our 5-month long wet season.

That’s when the Hare will leap ahead to the thunderous applause of the cumulonimbus, with wetlands rising out from the ashes in the water from its wake.


Until then, look for the drying down and drying out to continue.

The Tortoise marches on.

Photograph shows Turner River's drought-exposed channel, looking south from US41.

Trafford puzzle

Last year was Lake Trafford’s drought of record.

It plunged below 17.5 ft for a record-setting 12 consecutive months (from May 2007 to May 2008).

The next closest dry spell was all the way back in 1962. But it wasn’t as severe (see graph).



That raises a bit of a hydrologic puzzler.

Isn’t it this winter that’s been the record-setting dry season? And if so, why is Trafford still hovering above 18 ft all the way into late April of such an epic drought?



My guess is this:

Because Trafford is a lake, not a wetland, and that it has no major outlets draining it away has allowed it to store water deeper and longer from Fay than the wetlands that surround it, (and which have been dry for months).





That leads me to a follow-up puzzler:

To what degree did Lake Trafford feed water into those wetlands – Camp Keais Strand, Corkscrew Swamp, and Okaloacoochee Slough – during both the dry and wet seasons, back in the days before they built the canals?



That makes Lake Trafford an unsolved puzzle piece of the swamps.

Which Withlacoochee?

Emergency service providers are insistent about naming conventions of roads:

One per zip code.

The same thing should apply to water ways in Florida!



Case in point is the Withlacoochee River.

I was stunned to hear it mentioned among the river channels cresting to record heights after the record rainfall up in north Florida.

The Withlacoochee I know makes its headwaters in the peninsular Florida’s Green Swamps and flows north. That’s not only far from the panhandle, but dead central in the most drought-stricken part of the state – Tampa.



Turns out my hunch was right, but my river was wrong, or rather, I had the wrong Withlacoochee – there are two in Florida!

They were talking about the southern-flowing Withlacoochee that makes its headwaters in Georgia and feeds south into the Suwannee.



Anyhow, it and the nearby Apalaha River have fed a record pulse of water into the Suwannee’s main stem, which has it progressively cresting to record heights from Ellaville on down south. (Ellaville crested about a week ago.)


To clear up any confusion on this matter, I will differentiate them from now on as “northern Withlacoochee that flows south” and the “southern Withlacoochee that flows north.”

On second thought, that could add to the confusion!

Time out of mind

I’m not sure if I am forgetful, or remember too much.

As a hydrologist, I never have to be reminded to look deep into the data – otherwise I know I will forget, but if I look too deep (and for too long) into those ancient data streams, I run the risk of missing out on what’s unfolding right in front of me, outside my window, on the event horizon as it occurs.

On occasion, that leaves me both unable to keep up and struggling to recall.

The result?

It’s the most dreaded space of all.

A variant of being “lost in time,” but only more rudderless in nature, with a fog-obscured retrace into the past and a future destination no longer known: it’s the peculiar state of cognitive disengagement we call “time out of mind.”  

I’m happy to report (in good cheer) that it is the exception.

Most of the time, for me, the problem is just the opposite – – a mind out of time.

It seems these days I can never quite find enough of it, (at least on this side of the event horizon).

As a hydrologist, that’s what keeps me waking up and coming back for more. Now if the Florida water cycle would only do its part … and slow down!

First two photos were taken during the early fall peak-water season. The last was taken in December two months into the dry season.

Momentary reprieve

In mid March a stalled front dropped about an inch of rain at Raccoon Point.

That gave the illusion that the cypress had reflooded, but it soaked in fast -- so it was a momentary reprieve. By the time I shot this video the wetting front had already retreated back down into the pond apple swamp.

Fast forward a month to mid April – with no rain, warming days, transpiring plants – it’s safe to say that water’s gone.

Below sea level

How low can it go?

When you’re talking water elevations in the southern end of the Big Cypress, the answer is below sea level.

Case in point is Turner River Canal.

This is its earliest descent below sea level since 1990, when it went also “went under” in mid April … although not as early as 1976 when it plunged to zero in late March.  

What about the longest?

That would be spring 2001 when waters dropped below sea level for the better part of 9 straight weeks from April to early June.

Does this happen every spring?

No, but it has happened in 5 of the past 11 years, compared to only 3 times in the twenty-five years.

What is sea level?

That’s a relative question.

We have two datums: the “old” tried and trued NGVD 1929 (which I’m using here) and the “new” and improved NAVD 1988, both of which are concrete geodetic lines in the sand.

As for the liquid line – it famously fluctuates, up and down 1-3 feet diurnally (here in south Florida) superimposed over a 20 cm global sea level rise over the past century.

But this isn’t a sea level rise issue, it’s a fresh water drop issue.

Blame it on the rain, or in this case, lack thereof.

Bottom photo taken at same bridge during this summer's peak stage following Fay.

Tale of two Floridas

It’s the typical tale of two Floridas.



And I don’t mean east coast versus west, or coastal dweller versus back country cracker, or even year-round native versus winter snow bird. (But yes, they are tales all their own.)

I’m talking about peninsular versus continental weather patterns.



The cut off, if we had to pick one, is somewhere in the Suwannee Basin.

To the south the spring is typically dry, and fronts increasingly rare. To the north it’s a wetter spring, and by Florida standards, colder.

That makes the Suwannee a bit of a hybrid. It has a hydrologic signature part peninsular and part continental … but 100 percent its own.

Not that there’s a meteorological stop sign in the Suwannee … at least that I’ve ever seen.

Summer is the season we all join hands and become one Florida: humid highs in the low 90s and sultry nights in the 70s … and that’s all state round.

It’s a summer only a Floridian could love – east coast or west, coastal or inland, native or … well, maybe not the snow birds!

They head north for the summer.

Dry well

Here’s two photos of the same spot:
Kissimmee Billy Strand north of Alligator Alley.




The bottom photo is from earlier this summer near the top of our wet season peak.

Fast forward the water-cycle clock 8 months later to mid April (this Monday) and the top image is what you get – no water. Even the bottom of the water level well was dry.

That’s why the graph flat lines at 11.75 ft.

Heart of dry season

We’ve entered into the “heart of the dry season” in Big Cypress Nat’l Preserve.

What we call sheet flow here in the swamps, has long since stagnated and, unless you really look hard, completely disappeared from sight, but it’s still there to be sure: only it’s below ground, dropping deeper and deeper by the day.

We call it the water table.




Last spring was soggy in comparison:

The mid-April standing wetting front was still flooding up into the cypress domes thanks to a wet February, March, and April.

Over the past 15 years, the swamp apple forests – our lowest lying wetlands – don’t dry up until mid April, but this year waters vanished from its peat floors by the end of February.



The reason of course has been the lack of rain.

Winter is our traditional dry season, but this winter and spring has been an unusually dry one by any measure – only 3 inches. Big Cypress Swamp averages around 12 inches of dry season rain (as measured from November to April).


I call it our “heart of dryness” because each new day of no rain and increasing air temperatures brings dryer and dryer conditions – converting the swamps into a tinderbox,

But it’s the same rising heat that eventually sparks the engine of peninsular Florida’s great rain machine – the sea-breeze fueled convectional thunderstorms.


They should start up sometime toward mid May … only weeks away.

Until then, it’s high-alert wildfire season in the Big Cypress Swamp, similar to recent dry springs of 2001 and 2007.


Click here to view an update on the Keetch Byram Drought Index.

(Note the clear line between continental Florida – where rains last week ended the southeast’s multi-year drought – and peninsular Florida, where the seasonal drought marches on.)

Florida's champion tree

Among the many impressive features of this 85 year old tree, the aerial prop roots really caught my eye.  These viney tentacles seem innocent enough dangling down from the branches, drifting back and forth in the breeze.  

But once they "touch down" and take root, there's no going back. They turn into satellite trunks -- propagating from the main stem -- each worthy of being called a tree all its own.

The distinctive effect is a "tree on the move" ... closing distances between it and buildings once built with ample room to spare, but now all but dwarfed by the tree that envelopes it.

This particular tree had to be strategically trimmed to prevent it from overtaking the nearby laboratory. Admiring visitors don't so much walk beside it as tunnel beneath it, as indicated on the designated path.

Non native

The Ficus tree has a bad reputation in south Florida.

The reason?

It’s been lumped the group of undesirable, low-life, who-let-them-in-to-begin-with non-natives. 

They out compete natives for the same patch of real estate. Three of the more infamous plants in that group are melaleuca, Australian Pine, Old World Climbing Fern. Ficus isn’t as bad or all bad to be sure, and what’s more – there are so many species of them (800+), I’m not sure which is which … other than the Strangler Fig, which is native to Florida, is my favorite.



The patron saint of Ficus in Florida is Thomas Edison.

He dabbled in many varieties of the tree at his Ft. Myer’s winter retreat – no, not as a retirement diversion, but rather in pursuit of a natural source of rubber from a latex producing plant.

He grew some big ones, which are still there, standing (or rather, growing). They are as big a part of the historic grounds as the buildings, high-dive pool, and lab. Actually they are even bigger … literally, these trees are giants.

The most prominently displayed tree was a gift from his good friend Harvey Firestone. Did I mention that Henry Ford wintered right next door?



So for me, native or non-native, the Ficus tree is vital part of south Florida – and for that matter, American history.

What’s the highest rubber-yielding plant he found?

That would be a native – Golden Rod.


Some endings are too good to be true!