Just "subtract" water

Do all plants wither up and die during the dry season?

Not the bougainvillea.


In fact, the less water you give it,
The brighter its leaves burn ...

Which – from a distance – are often mistaken as flowers.




That makes the "paper flower" plant a coveted drought-tolerant choice for cascading color (pink, magenta, orange, and white) into Naples' monotonic winter green.




Just watch out for its thorns …

They are pointy!

Rocky Glades

Rocky (_____)

This “before and after” video clip
could just as easily be described as
“left and right.”



Roads serve as convenient fire breaks in the Everglades,

Or as is the case here – The Rocky Glades.


Actually,
Sans the “Glades” half
(which was turned ashen in the flames)

A more accurate description
would be to just call them “Rocky.”

marl
prairie
middle
ground

Halfway there

Getting "half way there" isn’t exactly a wellspring of positive thinking:



Often described as a No Man’s Land
(within whose middle waters we should never stop),

We are also fed with the mixed metaphorical message
to not switch our horses in “midstream” once we do.



Me being forever the optimist:
I’ve always seen it as a glass half full …



Or in other words,

"Halfway there is all downhill from here."



This particular Halfway Creek is a backdoor into the Big Cypress Swamp.

In the Days Before Roads, watermen dubbed it as such in recognition of its location at the halfway point between Everglades City and Turner River …

Or at least that’s one theory.

Honeybell season

draws to a close

Net rain

Rain may not always put us in the best spirits,

And on occasion may dampen our day,

But is it appropriate for me to describe it as “gross.”


What I mean to say is that the water cycle is all about budgets – and not all that different from the way we balance our bank books with inflowing money and out.

Gross is what we earn;

Net is what makes it into our pocket books
(not to mention all the bills we have to pay).



Meteorologically speaking,

Gross is the total amount of water that lands in the rain bucket,

Whereas net is what makes it down into the water table below.



The hot sun, desiccating wind and thirsty roots all nibble away at the gross.

We call that evapotranspiration.




What happens when evapotranspiration exceeds rainfall?

The water table falls …

Or in other words, a “negative” net.

will the real low-lying tree

please stand up

Pine lowlands?

Yes, the cypress look like hills,

Especially during the winter when their branches are bare …

Even if – as anyone can attest whose slogged through the swamp – they are the lowest lying part of the swamp instead.


The last time I flew however – and for the first time – I was struck by the observation that the pine islands served as willing co-conspirators on this most mesmerizing optical illusion of the swamp mosaic.

Nestled in the sea of gray,
the patches of pitch-green pine
looked as low as the cypress are high …


At least from some angles.

evaporation standstill

Tortoise and Hare

If south Florida’s water cycle was a fairy tale,

Which parable would it resemble best?


The story of the Tortoise and Hare fits pretty good.


Imagine the Hare as rainfall:

It sprints off to an early lead all summer wet season long …

Racing swamp stage up into the pinelands for an early fall peak.


That’s where the Hare falls asleep,

Or in other words – the dry season begins.


Now enters the Tortoise (evaporation).

That shell-covered competitor has been slowly inching along all summer long,

But it’s only now – with the Hare asleep – that he can finally catch up …

(In the form of the winter dry season during which swamp stage steadily drops).


The story this year has strayed from its traditional course:

The Hare (rainfall) has only slept lightly this winter thanks to a regular series of drenching "El Nino" rains.

On the other hand, the Tortoise (evapotranspiration) has been practically stopped – frozen it his tracks – thanks to those few solid weeks of cold in January and February.


That has me wondering whether Humpty Dumpty may be a better fit.

beach bird

Adrift at sea

Here’s where a rip current carved out a canyon in Naples Beach,

Or presumably so.


I only saw it when it was already dry.


While I myself have never been caught up in such a current,

I did once lose grip of an inflatable “smiley face” beach ball that – in the moment that I did – drifted just a foot or two out of reach. My initial attempts to reclaim it with a few lazy lunges rapidly evolved into an “all out” free-style as fast as I could go …


Before long I finally gave up,

Defeatedly I watched the current and wind ride it out to a speck on the horizon.


As bad as I felt about the lose,

Being back on shore – as opposed to being that ball – brought a "smile" of relief to my face.

big sky over little cypress

Winter T-Shirts

I’ll admit, it’s been a cold winter in Naples …

But let’s not kid ourselves either.


A cold day in south Florida ...
Is downright balmy for Fargo, North Dakota!


Still, a balmy winter day in Fargo ...
Isn't exactly T-Shirt weather either.

free
water
to tide

Here's a cup on me

Is filling up a cup of water from your tap free?


On the one hand, no:

Our monthly water bill for 6,000 gallons comes in at just under $100.

Some fraction of that is for drinking, right?


At that rate, filling a gallon jug at the start of the day will "lighten my pocket" by $0.016,

Or in coinage, just around 2¢.



In comparison, throwing back a single cup on the spot, say, to quench my thirst on one of Florida’s hot and humid days, will run my bill up by $0.001.

That’s a price that would leave me scratching my head how to pay:



Anything under a penny is pretty much as good as “free.”

fire in the pines

Highlands of the hammocks

Pinelands aren't the only high ground in "town" ...

Or as is the case here -- the swamp.


Why some of the swamps tiny islands high ground is dominated by densely-vegetated groves called hardwoods hammocks while the larger upland tracts are sparse-covered pinelands cover instead is another mystery of the swamp intricate mosaic of plants.


Fire frequency is partly in play (the pines more regularly burn),

But so too is the hydroperiod of the lower lying wetlands that surrounds the higher ground. The tinier the island and the deeper (and longer) the swamp water that around it ...

The less likely it seems that fire will find its way in to rewind its ecological clock back to zero.


When that happens the slash pines move in.

road
less
taken

Generation gap

Old growth slash pine

Future growth slash pine

100 percent Gum Slough

90 days of 200%

Rain is measured in inches,

But we commonly think of it in percentages …

Or at least you hear it said that way.


That can be confusing here in the sunshine state since the normal allotment of winter rain varies from north to south.

The panhandle is wetter (and cloudier),

Whereas down on the peninsula – especially its southern tip – is sunny and dry (and warm) most all winter long.


That raises the question:

Have the El Nino rains evened out the spread?

In a word – no … at least, that is, if you measure by inches.


In terms of percentages it’s a different story.

Pensacola may have “out precipitated” Naples by a good twenty inches over the past 90 days (I can’t say rain since the panhandle had to dig out of a paper-thin powdering of snow last week) …

But in terms of percentages both metropolises are at around 200 percent above normal.


That raises an even cloudier question of what exactly is “normal?”

While El Nino winters may be cloudier and rainier,

The normal winter day in the Everglades is sunny and dry.


I’m not even sure we can lay claim to El Ninos bringing more fronts.

Rather the ones we do get have more rain with them.

(Last winter’s fronts were cold but rainless.)


What we can say – especially for south Florida – is this:

El Nino brings a chance for a higher frequency of rain events, even if as a “percent” those days still lie in the minority –

And of course sunny skies remain the “norm.”


As for the Panhandle, it’s cloudy and wet – and downright cold – all winter long,

Which, from the look of the map, appears to be “100 percent normal” …



If not 200.

not
650 cfs

Caloosahatchee gets help

A new round of Lake releases is underway on the Caloosahatchee.

This one is a double and expected to last two weeks.


Work is also in motion to build a 170,000 acre reservoir along its banks.

Its goal is to divert water away from the estuary during times of high flow and to have it ready on hand for a “sunny” day (aka the dry season) when too much saltwater is creeping up into the river from below …

Not to mention ensuring the supply of non-salty water to the intake pipes at Olga.


At 265 square miles, it will be one big reservoir –
About a quarter the size of horizon-stretching Big Cypress Nat’l Preserve.

And giant still compared to the two weeks of water being released through the S79, which at 650 cubic feet per second equates to around 250 Fenway Parks downstream (as filled in fair play to the top of the Green Monster).


On the high end of the spectrum, the tables are turned:

We’re always one major storm away from overwhelming all the inland storage we have here in south Florida.


Case in point was Fay in August 2008:

It sent in excess of 10,000 cfs per day through the S79 for two straight weeks at its peak, which by themselves – and not counting the rest of the wet season to follow – would flood the reservoir 20 inches deep.


I’m not sure how much water it can hold in total, but in flat Florida you can never go too deep …

The clouds of course know no limits.

cypress cones

Cypress mulch to the rescue?

This week's freeze won’t come close to matching the 11-day epic express of polar air that opened up +85 sinkholes back in January.

To be fair, it wasn’t the cold that sunk what – in central Florida – has been tentatively relabeled “Terra Infirma” …


But rather unprecedented pumping of water from the Floridan Aquifer below instead.


By my estimate strawberry and citrus farmers pumped in total 451 Fenway Parks worth of water (stacked up to the top of the Green Monster and fair play only) in their bid to save their crops back in January.

That’s more water than the Corps of Engineers sent down the Caloosahatchee to battle back the saltwater tide …



But it worked,

Thus making the Floridan Aquifer the unsung hero of the freeze.


Upon reviewing the reels of video I shot during the January freeze, I came across a similar styled hero here in Naples,

In the form of our beloved cypress tree.


Or in this case, bags of it … mulched.



The much more desired state to see it of course is whole and standing, preferably in a shin deep sheet of water. Cypress trees are protected by law in Big Cypress Nat'l Preserve

Snow
piles
in
Naples,
Florida?

Not quite a snow-nami

Still no snow in Florida …

But we are in the midst of our second coldest week of the winter.


Granted, it doesn’t come close to touching the epic 11-day freeze that swept through peninsula at the start of the year.

(On that one a stone in the form of a high pressure cell got stuck in the westerly stream of air that blows across the continent over Greenland – an unusual occurrence for winter. That detoured the jet stream south and with it the Canadian air.)


And yes, it’s barely news worthy – even here on the peninsula:

All eyes are on last week’s snow-nami – or double blizzard – that struck the mid Atlantic seaboard last week … with more snow possibly in store this coming week. “I Told You Sos” everywhere and armchair meteorologist to boot are claiming it as proof that alternatively either global warming doesn’t exist or the El Nino is to blame;


Both incidentally are an emotional overreach of the data ...

Or so I’ve read in the newspapers.

(Although personally I’m still nursing a theory the active Pineapple Express cycle is to blame ... even if more probably the moisture was from the gulf and nor'easter circulating low.)

Below is an animated map of the continental snow events from October to present.



Still, by Florida standards this is a solid week of winter …

Or in other words:

Seven days straight days below the frigid 70º F mark.

panther crossing