Meteorologic "near miss"

Ever been on the outside looking in?

Yesterday Nicole dropped lots of rain on the east coast, but here in the middle of the peninsula at Big Cypress Nat'l Preserve it's been a mostly rainless day.

To the east (towards Miami), clouds were a thick gray stew.

To the west (towards Naples) skies were bright and blue.

Or in other words, a very near meteorologic miss.

All roads lead to rain?

View of Tropical Storm Nicole as seen from along the Tamiami Trail in Ochopee looking east towards Miami (top) and at the same spot looking south (bottom).

Pump-induced headwaters

Is Okeechobee still the headwaters of the Everglades?

A glimpse of the hydrographs would appear to say no.

After all, as a rule “downstream” Loxahatchee is higher.

It ranges in elevation from 15 and 18 feet above sea level. Compare that to the Lake which has safely stayed below 15 ft since the start of 2006. True, the Lake showed flashes of its former self with a couple hurricane induced spikes above Loxahatchee, but those only lasted for a few brief weeks which, fast forward a few seasons later, was followed by the Lake’s epic 5-11 day drought that dropped Lake stage below the 11-ft threshold of its innermost (and lowest) wetlands …

Or about 6 feet lower than nearby Loxahatchee’s stage.


That created the peculiar situation of Lake Okeechobee lowering itself all the way down to the level of the Big Cypress Swamp.



Did that make water start flowing north instead?

Hardly, gravity only gets you so far in flat south Florida. For the rest we need pumps.


That’s how Loxahatchee gets its water!

Breaking weather!

What was Tropical Depression #16 and then turned into Nicole, just as quickly died on the vine. But it did bring us some rain.

Here's a look at 3-day rainfall accumulations.

No namers deserve names

September procrastinated all month, putting us (as of Monday 9/27), back against the wall, in the proverbial rainfall pickle:

How do we make up for a 3-inch rainfall deficit in as many days?



Answer:

That’s a cinch here in the Everglades.

All we do is call up some tropical moisture from the south!

High cloud at low tide

Water cycle instructional kit

Is the water cycle dead?

I wonder sometimes when I see “still life” images of it.



The trick is in getting it to "spin."

You see, as much as it’s a universal image – after all, isn’t it instantly recognizable to people of all ages and cultures on all corners of the globe? – it has a starchy and static and sort of abstract quality, as if it with its stuck-in-place arrows it's trying to say “yes, this is how the water cycle works, but don’t bother with the exact numbers or where all the water is 'now as we speak' because it’s too complicated to know.”

And so it goes: Weather people stick to the sky. And the water suppliers focus on what’s coming out of the ground, home owners on their sprinkler heads, and gate keepers on their individual gates.



What if we could unite the water cycle and all its pieces back together …

And watch them them spin around in real time?

Trust me,

It’s harder than it looks.


If you aren't careful all the water runs out!

Wooden pilings

Fragile as glass

The gulf was absolutely glass like.

An easterly breeze was cancelling out the waves,

If also fueling the clouds!



Although it didn't rain on the beach ...

At least not while we were there.

Slow slog through Gum Slough

"Water logged" road

You’ve heard of a wooden bridge over water,

But how the curious case of a timber trail intentionally built under it?



Better known as a corduroy road,

Back in the day it made for a bumpy ride …



But it was better than the alternative:

Getting stuck in the mud!

Top to bottom swamp

Oil by the "lake full"

Not that we’d want to fill Deep Lake up with oil …

But had we the chance to divert the full 5 million barrels of the oil that ruptured up from the depths of the Macondo well, we would have needed about 14 Deep Lakes in total to hold it all.


That surprised me considering Deep Lake is barely a “speck” on the map.

Keep in mind that at 90 feet down (some say bottomless), it’s south Florida’s deepest lake. Even deeper than mammoth-scale Lake Okeechobee which only plumbs down to a maximum of 20 feet (and that’s on a high water day), and that oil spreads out in bubbles and sheens and deeply submerged snarks which are hard to count.


As for the total amount of oil down there?

Estimates range from 50 to 100 barrels, which puts it in the range of the daily worldwide production of oil – around 85 million barrels per day. So in other words, the reservoir holds about one day’s worth.


What’s 85 million barrels per day added up for a full year?

That equals 4 million acre feet, or in south Florida hydrologic units, about one full Lake Okeechobee worth.

Now that’s a lot of oil per year!

Forest of giant marsh flag

Deceptively tall

From 500 ft high in the air everything looks small ...

Even the cypress domes and tall pines.


On the ground it's a different story.

Turns out what looked like an easy walk through a "bucolic meadow" was instead an impenetrable slog through water 2 feet deep and alligator flag 10 feet high ...

Pond apple forest

Fine hydrologic line

Are Florida’s Lake Okeechobee and Colorado River’s Lake Mead comparable?

After all, a Hoover Dam (or dike) surrounds them both.



Lake O bounces from deep drought to levee-lapping flood stage from one year to the next. We’ve had two deep drops into drought this past decade: the first in 2001 and the second (and longer one) in 2007, plus those couple high years during the hurricane frenzy of 2003-2005.

Keep in mind the difference between extreme drought (9 ft above sea level, 1.7 million acre feet) and extreme flood stage (18 ft above sea level, 5.3 million acre feet) is less than 10 feet.



Compare that to Lake Mead’s decade-long decline:

In 1999 it was flush at over 1200 ft above sea level high and holding 28 million acre feet of water, but has steadily dropped ever since.

Current stage is around 130 feet lower and only 10 million acre feet (and dropping). Here’s a recent article describing how water planners are trying to cope.


Why the difference?

Flat south Florida is rain rich but storage poor, while the arid West has storage galore (with its deep canyons) but not much rain …

And more recently, hardly any snow melt either.



“The drought can’t last forever,” Western water planners seem to think/hope.

Here in Florida, as much as we like seeing those storms veer away “safely out to sea,” the Lake is a couple more near misses and a dry (and warm) La Niña winter ahead from a plummet into spring time drought.

On the other hand, all it takes is one big "rain maker" to send us up into flood stage.


Florida walks a fine line between flood and drought.

Pond apple and water

Florida summer pushes on

Summer is over …

Long live Florida summer!


September 21st marked the official end of celestial summer. That may mean something to aficionados of fall fashion up on The Continent, but for us south Floridians down here on The Peninsula it’s just another non-descript day on our hot and humid “wet season” calendar …

The wet season marches on.


When will it finally end?

Cypress-enclosed marsh

Assorted cypress views

Inside cypress dome:
18 inches deep


Outside cypress dome:
100 feet away


Cypress domes in the distance:
As far as the eye can see.

Afternoon "sea breeze" showers

Early morning rain

Afternoon showers are the "summer staple" in the Big Cypress Swamp,

But we get morning clouds on occasion too.


They line up in a high-altitude boat brigade along the coast and are quite dramatic to see.

The condition develops anywhere along the coast where the prevailing direction of wind (on this day, up from the south) collides with the “towards the coast” blowing land breeze. The land breeze is the nocturnal twin counterpart to the “inward blowing” afternoon sea breeze. Miami is famous for its morning rains because the local “land breeze” and prevailing winds (Easterly Trades) so often collide head on, and additionally are supercharged over the Gulf Stream cauldron-hot current just off shore.


As big and billowing as they were,

We didn’t get a drop of rain on that particular morning.


Not to worry:

The sea breeze picked up the slack with 3.4 inches around 3 p.m. (as measured at the Ochopee rain gage). It can get pretty darn dark (with rain by the buckets full) underneath those puffy white billows!

Bermuda Grass

Safely out to sea?

Stranded out in the middle of the Atlantic,
Bermuda always struck me as a peaceful place to live …

Just not during hurricane season!


The Giant Pitcher in the Sky has been hurling us a steady clip of Cape Verde “curve balls”since the start of the September. Here in Florida we breathe a big sigh of relief to see them “curve north” out to sea.

Of course “Whew, out to sea” in Floridian lingo translates to “Oh no, here comes another one” in the native Bermudian tongue (which is English if I am not mistaken) –

The tiny island is brushed
or hit once every 3 years.


On the positive side is its "pin prick" size:

Direct hits are rare.

(Plus storms tend to weaken that far north.)


In fact, only a handful of storms have brought Category 3 winds or higher to the island since the mid 1840s, as shown in orange on the time line. Not that there weren’t notable storms in between (smaller black dots), plus plenty of near misses and scares.


Hurricane Igor no doubt has the entire island boarding up and hunkering down and for whoever has them (presumably everyone) …

Latching down those Bermuda Shutters!

Eden Mill Dam

Flow rate in time

Usually I see a stream in an "instant" (and then leave).

Always left lingering for me is much it adds up to over a year.



In this case, at Deer Creek in Harford County, Maryland, the answer is 80 cubic feet per second (as filmed on June 29th) and 23 Empire state-sized barrel full per year (assuming that constant flow rate).


I know what you're thinking:

There's no holding that water back.


Actually, there is, or rather at least there once was.

Just a few miles upstream is Eden Mill Dam. It used to provide electricity to the Dairy Farmer's just across the border in Pennsylvania. Now its a scenic spot that attracts hikers, historians and an occasional hydrologist.


As for the water, it just sort of slides on by.

Slash pine and sky

Florida's biggest rain months ever

Is September Florida's wettest month?


It is the last pure month of the summer "wet season." Hurricanes can still strike the peninsula in October or November, but baring an El Niño in the air, those months tend to lump in the dry season.

Most water bodies "peak" in September as a result.


But to answer the question:

Scanning through the historical record, September does lay claim to two of Florida's three rainiest months on record:

September 1979 and September 2004.


The other is August 2008 ...

Better known as rain maker extraordinaire TS Fay.

Pond apple and sky

Swamp's deepest holes?

If pinelands are the highest,

Does that make cypress the lowest?


Almost, but no:

Even deeper than the cypress are the more diminutive pond apple forests.


Ankle deep water in the pinelands means you can count on sloshing around knee high among the pond apples. Usually the fruit are out of reach, but if you’re lucky you’ll hear one “plunk” into the water.

It’s obligatory for any swamp aficionado to hear that sound at least once per wet season.


But even deeper than the pond apple are the dry season refugia pools which – during the wet season – have no banks …

Not that you need the banks to see them.


They are easy to recognize because they have no trees or emergent plants …

Just open water, a good five feet deep.