Universal solvent

How much water will a dollar get you?

It depends on the water.


The answer is 2.2 gallons for the water truck driving around town,

Even though I pay for it in 5 gallon jugs upfront in advance



The grocery store has plenty of brands of water on its shelves, from which – on occasion – I’ve been known to indulge in a high-end imported bottle (with carbonation).

A dollar would only get me 12 ounces of that stuff,

Better known as one cola can.



How about if I were a wine drinker?

At ten dollars per three-quarters liter bottle, a dollar would put me on the market for 5 tablespoons.

That’s barely a sip!

My tap is probably the best bet.

Yes, it does seem free at the time, but we all know about the monthly bill to pay at the end. What if that weren’t the case, and it had a “pay-as-you-go” meter on it instead?

The answer there for the single dollar is 80 gallons!

That would give me a few quarts for drinking and the rest for washing.


Water, you know, does more than quench my thirst:

It’s also the universal solvent.


(Carbonated water by the way is good for wine stains if you went the other route ...)

The "legend" of Sleepy Hollow

The "real" Sleepy Hollow

Concord, Massachusetts

Even swamps get spooked!

Are the swamps spooky?

To the uninitiated, “yes” –

And who could blame them, they are wooded, dark, and watery.

Alligators lurk, and so do pythons – but those worries are misguided:


The animal you really have to watch out for are water moccasins.

Not that they chase you – they won’t!

Nor do they spook – they don’t!

Rather, it’s because they don’t spook when they hear you that causes the real fright. If you walk without caution in their path, you can expect a strike when you least expect it – and yes, that could bite.


There are giant spiders too!

But even worse is a trunk-to-trunk spanning web on your face (and in your hands as you try to remove it after the fact),

Is a spider there too, in my hair or crawling down my neck?

It rarely the case, but the thought certainly spooks!


Hollywood-inspired legends of a Swamp Thing and local lore of a Skunk Ape may have you fearing knee-deep cypress forests alone at night the same way Jaws kept you in the knee-deep shallows of breaking saltwater waves in a crowd at the beach with the sun at its peak.


The truth is that humans evolved to fear the swamps.

They are virtually uninhabitable by modern day standards, and efforts to inhabit them quite literally ruin whatever swamp was once there … by way of digging, draining, filling, cutting, and building;


Not to mention the real Frankensteins of the quagmire –

Maleleuca trees, Brazilian pepper, Old World climbing fern, pythons;

Plus every other invader on the rapidly-spreading list of non-native invasive species!


I’m here to tell you it’s not we who should fear the swamps:

(They are a misunderstood beauty in need of love instead.)

In actuality is quite the opposite:

It’s the swamps that should fear us!


So tread lightly in a swamp near you, and trust in me whenever you do – by sun or night or nearing twilight – its liquid realm is a beautiful sight, from top to bottom and start to end, it’s silence is the comfort of your oldest friend.


Happy Halloween!

Be careful carving!

Ghouls of the gulf

Turns out our coastal waters are also haunted by a Halloween ghost.

Actually lots of them;

And even worse: they sting!



Early fall is jelly fish season in Florida.

You can’t see them in the water, but when they touch you with their tentacles there’s no question they are there.

It’s a wincing pain if you’re an adult, for a child – count on crying.



The good news here in southwest Florida is that we don’t get the Portuguese Man o’ War, which apparently they do over on the east coast.

(Yet another reason to live on the left hand side of the peninsula!)


These ghosts are little less scary so long as you have a stock pile of the antidote on hand, or rather in a bottle, which in this case is vinegar.

It soothes the sting immediately when you pour it over.


A beached jelly fish is fairly harmless.

Just watch your step.

cumulonimbus cloud of late October

"Friendly" ghost of swamps

A dry season ghost lurks in the swamps.

But that’s not because we’re nearing Halloween –

It’s there all year round.



Although you can’t see it,

Starting each year around Halloween:

You can see what it does.



Halloween, by the way, is a translation from the Old Irish term for “End of Summer,” which is very fitting for south Florida –

It is the final day of the last rainy month of the summer wet season.

The day after – November 1st – ushers in the traditional start of the multi-month disappearing act of south Florida’s the summer stockpile of surface waters,

Which vaporizes (ghost like) into thin air.


Waters disappear first in the pinelands, and then on down the wetland ladder, until slowly – over the course of the winter dry season – the water is gone.


This year swamp stage crested early in mid September.

Since then, waters have been steadily dropping throughout the preserve. Surface water has receded out of the pinelands and is already down a half foot from its wet-season peak.



For those that don’t know this neck of the woods, the swamps can look scary,

But this is one ghost that no one need fear:

We call it evapotranspiration – it has a very sunny disposition.

watch your step ...

October sky "phantom"

Florida’s water cycle is haunted by many ghosts,

None probably scarier than the “Phantom of the October Sky.”



October averages 4 inches of rain for the month,

But it’s decidedly not a core wet season month – which tend to accumulate twice that amount (even if it is also the month that our “pseudo” monsoon showers come to an end).

But it’s also premature to call it fully dry season – as on the official scoreboard, most years at least, the tropics are still churning.


And the history books are clear –

Rainy Octobers of water year’s past have boosted the sheet flow season well into the fall,

And can also be quite “scary!”


Think Hurricane Wilma in October 2005.

The Even Bigger Case In Point was 1995 – an El Nino October – when over 10 inches fell south Florida wide.


This current October we’ve chalked up 2 inches for the month.

That plus the heat (see last past) has sheet flow shriveling down and pinelands drying up all on the short side of November,

Which by my calendar metrics, is the dry season’s official start.


My point?

October rains haunt –

Either in the form of (1) too much all at once (and often with strong winds), or (2) not enough, sending us off on an early start to the long dry season ahead, or (3) the illusory promise of a “half full” 4-inch average.

Mathematically-speaking I call that an invisible number (i.e., averages of an extreme-skewed data set).

Hydrologically I call it a water ghost!

cloud view of a wet season rain storm, September 2009

Trick of melting treats

Just when we thought the 90º F days were behind us,

Summer just won’t seem to quit.


Other than our first cold front, which we received mid month in the form of two consecutive nights that dipped below the 60º F, it’s been an unusually hot October in Naples.

Half the days in October have inched up to or above 90 º F.


The air has tended to be drier, and sunlight hours are dipping, not to mention daylight savings time is right around the corner, but with no clouds in the sky (or very few), solar heating can be quite intense.



To be sure, the first cold front doesn’t “trick” a true Floridian –

Halloween is more often hot and humid than crisp and cool,

Which appears to be the case this year.



The “trick” will be to get the “treats” back into the air conditioning before they melt ...

At least the chocolates!

fishing frenzy

Snook spillway runs dry

September 23rd



October 22nd



Water's no longer flowing over the spillway at Henderson Creek, which it did much of September.


But it is still sliding through the open shoot of the gate next to it. That presumably has bait fish from the canal slipping downstream into the snook's estuarine feeding waters.

Snook season opened on September 1st.


The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) increased the minimum size limit for snook from 26 inches to 27 inches.

The maximum limit stays at 34 inches.

tangle-free waters

The art of hydrology

Hydrology is the science of water:

Its flow, its depth, its quantity, its quality, its distribution, among other things – but the essence of hydrology, or at least making sense of it, lies in converting it – in all its forms – into language and metrics that people can wrap their mind around.


Often the metrics are confused:

Gallons per minute, acre feet per day, inches per year, cubic feet per second … and that’s not even cracking into the metric units.


Then throw in the weather.

Or should I say “throw out the weather.”

What every happens on any given day is the subject of scientific and “word on the street” speculations, often wrong on both accounts, but equal in the outcome that we all tend to take whatever we get.

Just ask the Yankees and Angels!


Weather is that infamous topic of last resort that we find ourselves nervously broaching when, in the midst of an unexpected encounter in the hallway, and with not much else to say (at least at the tip of our tongue), we find ourselves defaulting to the thoughtfully posed “how about the weather?” which on a sunny day is answered by the standard “we could really use some rain,” or on a rainy day is met with the resigned I Told You So of “I knew it was coming because I could feel it in my ankle … or sinuses … or knee.”


The weather and water looms large wherever you go, each in its own peculiar way.

South Florida’s story is a tale of two seasons:

A water-abundant summer is followed by a rain-scarce and extra thirsty winter.

(Not that the snow birds (i.e., tourists) drink more water on a "per capita" basis, rather there is just more of them!)


Whatever the season, or wherever you go, it’s just fun and infectious to try to track the water cycle as it unfolds, by what we see and what the number say.

I feel fortunate to live in a small peninsula of the universe where so much attention, time, and resources are dedicated to trying to better understand it.


When the day is done and the sun sinks down,

It's my hope that this journal contributes to enhancing those conversations, provides a place to stay in tune and an opportunity to dig deeper,


Or if nothing else, a way to wonder out loud about the wet stuff that's everywhere you look but is never quite enough where we need it.

Water is more than a science you know!

storm water drain

"Storm water" chaser

Am I a “storm chaser?”

Not really – I tend to take cover when a storm approaches.




Or flee (to Inverness),

Which is exactly what we did four years ago in late October when a late season storm spinning around on the Yucatan Peninsula finally spun free and dead-eyed its way toward the southwest side of the Florida Peninsula.

The winds knocked down our lanai and water perplexingly found its way into one corner of the house, presumably through a soffett.

It’s amazing what horizontal rain can do!



Even locally-produced lightning storms (and trust me, they can be scary) have me running for cover.

Although, admittedly, I do make it out for the rainbow afterwards.



My conclusion is that “storm chasers” are more aligned with the meteorology school of thought. They are basically the high-seas adventurer version of the smiling “back to you Marty” meteorologist you see in the comfort of your home on television every night.


As for me – I’m a “hydrologist,” not a meteorologist.

My interest lies in what that liquid stuff does when it finally makes up its mind (it can so indecisive in the sky) and hits the ground running ... or in this case, “flowing.”


If anything that makes me a “storm water” chaser.

Royal Poinciana in June

Cool shade of fire tree

There’s not really a plant that vividly rings in the end of the wet season.

Cypress needles come close – they are now browning, but that’s a gradual process;

It isn’t until late November that they fall in full.


The wet season’s start, near the end of May, is greeted by the fiery display of flowers on the Royal Poinciana tree.

Streets literally light up in their presence.

But it’s a strange light in that it doesn’t bring warmth, but rather shade … a very deep and luxurious shade, all thanks to its copious canopy of outstretching branches and fern-like leaves.



Raindrops, wind, and a month long aging process eventually drop the flame-like flowers to the ground one by one, or in clusters, often in pavement and inevitably in puddles, where I half expect to hear them sizzle.



I’ve never bothered to take a photo of a flowerless Royal Poinciana tree.

Now of course is my chance … the wet season is over!

S-79

Hydrologic self "reliance"

I was kicking around shells on the Caloosahatchee shoreline – not too far from where it splashes up on Thomas Edison’s winter retreat – when I happened upon this great aqua-archeological find, possibly a hydrologic missing link:

I call it the Caloosahatchee “Rosetta stone.”


It displays in “calendar format” five decades of flow history through the WP Franklin Lock and Dam (S-79), the river’s famed release point for sending freshwater into the downstream estuary.


Whenever I get a chance to see them, water structures have a way of captivating my attention. Usually I see them by way of a detour on my way to other things in Miami or Ft Myers, and it’s usually those detours that become the highlight.

South Florida is so big, it takes a good decade or two before you see it all … or even half of it.


Strike that! What I mean is a small sliver … and a very thin one at that.

That’s where the data comes in handy. They stand sentinel in perpetual water monitoring mode while the world sleeps, eats, and otherwise goes about its business.


To date around three-quarters of a million acre feet of water has discharged through the S79, about a third of which came from the Lake. That’s about the same as last year through 10 months.

Lake stage appears to have crested in late September. It’s now about 10 inches lower than late October of last year, a foot and a half below the 15-year late October median, and 3 feet below the post-Wilma high water mark in 2005.


The Magenta 1997-1998 line is worth a second look:

It’s not often you see Lake stage rising through the dry season. That was the last year’s El Nino of the century, or rather the second one. The first occurred in 1983 to similar effect.



What were Thomas Edison’s thoughts on the Caloosahatchee?

I’m sure in his day he had some,

But they weren’t about the S79 … it hadn’t yet been built.

wet-season train rolls into dry-season station

Big rain month "no show?"

This year is shaping up as a “Big Rain Month” no show!

By that I mean we didn’t have a single month all year, including the early wet season’s precociously rainy May, that registered over 10 inches “south Florida” wide.


Last August we had a memorable Big Rain Month, but it was really two consecutive big rain days in the form of Fay that filled the monthly coffers.

Double Big Rain Months appeared in 1995, 2001, and 2004; and our Big Rain Month “of recent record” was June 2005 when around 15 inches fell south Florida wide.




Various regional basins of south Florida had their day in the sun – or shall we say “month in the rain” – this wet season.

Big Rain Months were recorded by the Upper Kissimmee Basin in May, Big Cypress Nat’l Preserve and Miami-Dade in June, and East Caloosahatchee in July.

On the low side, Lake O only recorded 4 inches of rain in September.



An inch of rain in a single day (south Florida wide) is called a Big Rain Day by the way, as coined by the meteorology team at the South Florida Water Management District.

That happened twice this year, once in May and again in June.


As for October, it hasn’t recorded an inch of rain through its first half.