Here we go again!

Today starts the 2010 Hurricane Season:

It runs until November 30th.


Last year we got off easy …
at least relative to the active epoch we are in:

Its 9 named storms were the least since 1997.


Compare that to hyperactive 2005
when 28 names storms came alive in the tropics.


Will this year be an unwelcome repeat?

The old metric – drawn with pinpoint precision on the map – was the Russian Roulette Wheel of where the hurricanes made landfall, and at what strength.


This year the metric has undeniably changed:

It’s whether and how close and what happens when the tropical systems – both storms or hurricanes – churn up the waters near the spill of the Deepwater Horizon instead.


All of a sudden 2005 doesn’t seem so bad.

hill-top view from Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery and Memorial

If these hills could talk

What looked like any other hill at first
(I was in search of a short cut back to Lontzen),





Turned out to be a Rosetta Stone instead:

A compass at its crest pointed – with arrows – in the direction of various points of interest along a 360° view of the rolling horizon.



One such arrow pointed to the Henri-ChapelleAmerican Cemetery and Memorial to which – the previous year – I had biked.



Talk about an uphill pedal for the ages!

I inched up a mountainous road in first gear (I would have gone lower if I could) for what seemed like a good half hour straight, but well worth the delayed gratification too:

• The monument was magnificent, and
• The return home 100 percent downhill.

(Although at one point I got lost and at another I sought refuge in a torrent of rain under the cover of a railroad bridge.)





Thus, a year later – from the vantage of that compass – I was not surprised to see it perched on the sweeping horizon’s most cloud-bound arc.


This, of course, is not the Everglades I am talking about
(despite Florida’s State Seal being on the monument in prominent display),

But rather Belgium instead.


Or to be more precise –
The hills where the “Battle of the Bulge” was fought.



Happy Memorial Day

Tamiami Trail

Crunch, crunch, crunch

Usually you have to "stop and listen"
to hear nature's tell-tale sounds.

Not so in the swamp with its dry season.



That tell-tale sound is the "crunch"
of your shoe soles on top the desiccated
stubs of the dried out marl prairies.

Plus in the case of this one it had been previously burned.


As for what you hear when you actually "stop and listen?"

Answer: "The absence of crunches."

5 feet above sea level

Twenty feet above the sea

How tall is the Everglades?


If you include the Kissimmee River,
it's a respectable 60 feet tall.

But subtract it out of the picture (leaving behind only Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades) and it's all under 20 feet high.


Or in other words,
Shorter than the top of my single story house ...

If also infinite as far as the eye can see.

inside cypress dome

Inside out dome

Inside dome looking out


Outside dome looking in


Inside dome looking in


Way outside dome looking back

wet season cloud

Better late than never?

Here's the 5-month weather chart
for Naples, Florida.


It's been a hot May:

Day-time highs and night-time lows
have both been above normal.

That, plus no rain, has water levels dropping fast.


Turns out we got our dry season after all ...

Albeit a "short one" (and a bit late).

inner "pond apple" swamp

Wet season "waiting game"

Don’t look now,

But in a week’s time – if nothing changes – swamp stage will be lower this year than last.


Hard to believe, right?

Despite last year’s record dry down,

Waters had rebounded with fervor thanks to a late May mid latitudinal cyclone.


We’re still waiting for this year’s signature
“Welcome to the Wet Season” storm.

With a week still to go, May is making a bid at accumulating the lowest "monthly total" of the dry season.


I hesitate to say “least rainy” because quite a few "spot showers" have been popping up here and there …

Some of which have registered local-level deluges (our rain gage at Monument Road teeter-tottered back and forth 319 times on May 19th – that’s 3.19 inches of rain):

There just hasn’t been a regional-scale soaker yet.


Still, that doesn’t diminish
what a wet winter and spring it’s been ...
the true metric of which we call “hydroperiod.”


The inner "pond apple" swamps have been
shin deep or higher for 12 months (and running).


Wednesday at 2 pm:

Tune back to see a panoramic photo
of one of the swamp's most scenic spots.

Engine No. 2 The "Deuce"

Slumping liquid arc

Grab some popcorn!

Here’s a short video clip of that flowing well.



I was surprised to see its liquid arc
to have ebbed since I photographed it last
in October 2008.


I wrote that off at first as the disparity
between wet and dry seasons:

Wetland water levels just upstream across the levee were almost 2 feet higher then than now.


The water release point – S12A – is currently closed,

And will remain so until the start of July:

It’s currently holding back 1.5 feet of water behind its gates (even if, to the side, there's at least one "known trickle" of water percolating its way through the limrock levee).


How much any of that matters I’m really not sure.

You see, the water from the well is not of Everglades origin,

But rather on slow-motion train from somewhere up towards central Florida instead.




As far down as the well is,

That 600 feet is the shortest
and quickest part of its journey …

(Just not as quick as it was).

ground water gusher

How the mighty has fallen

How mighty is the Mississippi?

Not only is it the Gulf’s
second biggest flow maker …

It’s a distant second one at that.


Even more humiliating still?

It loses out to a lowly “stream.”


Although it's not too shabby
when you consider it’s the Gulf Stream!

The Gulf Stream flows at the mind dizzying rate of 30,000,000,000 gallons per second. That’s 4,000,000,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) …


Or in lay terms, enough to fill up your bathtub really fast.

Florida’s big bathtub is of course Lake Okeechobee.


That raises the question:

How long would it take the Gulf Stream to fill Lake O up?

(“Let’s see: that’s 5.5 million acre feet of water, divided by 43,560 square feet per acre … carry the one … plus some other clicks of the calculator”)


Answer: About 1 minute.


By day’s end, that gives you 1,440 Lake Okeechobees.

It’s a spigot that never turns off.

Shells of Paradise Coast

Known volumes

Not that anyone’s thinking about
freshwater flows into the Gulf these days…


Here’s a look at some of the numbers:

(Plugging the “oilcano” and trying to corral its plume,
plus tracking when and where the Loop will take it
has been the Gulf Coast’s front page news
since it started on April 20th.)


Calendar year to date,
The Mighty Mississippi has sent
200 million acre feet into the Gulf.

That’s 50 Lake Okeechobee volumes to you and me.


Compare that to the Apalachicola,
Florida’s biggest river which is running high
at 12 million acre feet so far this year.

Or in Okeechobee terms, about three.


Those two rivers both dwarf
South Florida’s flow king pin in comparison.

The Caloosahatchee has tallied
0.5 million acre feet to date …

Which is an unwelcome big flow spring for the coastal estuary.


Even more unwelcome is that oil …

Not that we know what its volume or flow rate and fate might be.

Silver
River
State
Park

Tarzan of the springs

So close yet so far …


I made it as far as the Silver Springs sign,

But that was as far as I got.


Between parking and admission,

It was over $40 to get in.


“It’s well worth the money,” I was assured and to which I didn’t for a second doubt:

After all, Johnny Weissmuller starred in 6 Tarzan movies there.


Not having more than an hour or so to spare (I was in transit from Gainesville to Naples), I opted for nearby Silver River State Park instead, to which I had a free pass, and from which I figured I would find an alternative route to the spring:

I didn’t. (What was I thinking?)


Instead I found my way to the banks of the river, upstream from which – perhaps just a twist or three around the bend – lay its source:

Silver Springs, one of Florida’s
biggest ground water gushers …

Bubbling up at 516,000,000 gallons per day.


That’s 798 cubic feet per second if I did my math right.

And judging from what I saw I think I did.



As to what I didn’t see:

Besides the spring I also missed the monkeys.

Stragglers or ancestors of stragglers left behind from the Johnny Weismuller days, monkeys are regularly seen climbing in the cypress trees across the river from where I stood.

“We saw them up there yesterday,” a couple assured me.


Judging from my luck
I could only figure they were back at the spring.

I’m assuming they get in for free!