Happy and hydrologic new year wishes

Usually when I see "fireworks,"

I think Fourth of July.




But that's because I hail from The Continent.

Down here on the south Peninsula, New Year's Eve is the big night. For one it gets dark earlier, but the bigger reason is the cool (yet warm by Northern standards) weather plus the low chance of rain, i.e. it's our meteorologic dry season.


Does Naples have fireworks on the Fourth of July.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure. The past couple summers we've been away, but even if we weren't I'm not sure I'd want to go with it getting dark so late, the high chance of summer rains, plus the inevitability of those dastardly mosquitoes, too.


Have a happy, healthy and hydrologic 2012!

Sun sets on another year

As seen at Naples Beach

Hydrologic resolutions

Does anybody make new year’s resolutions anymore?

Mine this year is to drink less water.

Who will get the water in 2012?
This alligator is making a claim.

Okay, I phrased that wrong:

I meant use less water.


After all, it is the winter dry season in south Florida.

Reunion in the swamp

A student from my alma mater recently spent a season in the swamp:
Lafayette college senior (left) and Class of '92 Lafayette Alum (right)

Hydrologic rivalries heat up

Take a look at northern New Jersey on the map below (scroll down):

The purple splotch equates to 70 inches of rain.

It was a big flow year on the Delaware

The result?

For one, the Delaware River recorded its biggest flow year, by far, in ninety years of record keeping.  The cause was a higher than normal spring peak (presumably from ample winter snows) and a brush with the Tropics in the form of Hurricane Irene.


Why my fascination with the Delaware?

For one, I went to college just next door, or rather just downstream, at the scenic confluence of the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers.  I ran into a recent Lehigh College graduate at Naples Depot, who upon introducing myself, commenced into gloating to me about his college, located just upriver, had beat my alma mater, Lafayette College, for four years straight.  "Yeah, but Lafayette is located at the confluence of two major rivers," I lectured him, "you can never take that away ... plus, I don't know if you noticed," and I knew that he hadn't, "both the Lehigh and Delaware recorded their highest flow years on record, in nearly a century of record keeping."


He shook his head unknowingly, but also tried to shrug it off:

"Hey, I'm just an electrical engineer."

Confluence of Lehigh (right) and Delaware (left) Rivers,
as seen in Easton, Pennsylvania, looking downstream towards Philadelphia.

That's New Jersey in the background on the left.

With a smile and a firm handshake, I wished him a healthy and hydrologic new year.

"Don't worry," I assured him.  "I'm happy to be able to inform a Lehigh grad."

Answer: Olympic Peninsula as usual

Upper Delaware River and Lehigh Valleys
(purple spotches in PA and NJ)
also had record wet years

"Year in rain" across USA

Here's a look at monthly rain totals across the United States for 2011.

The epic April deluge on the Mississippi Valley and the Irene's August path up the east coast in particular jump off the map.

Monthly rainfall in inches


Can you see which region was the wettest?
Answer: Tune back in tomorrow at 2 p.m.

The big month in Florida was October ...

Especially on along the Miami Coast and inland on the Kissimmee.


Are there any other precipitation events that jump out?

End of year approaches

Remember when this tree looked far away?

Florida's only rain gage?

If Florida had a single representative rain gage ...

Below is a chart of what it would read for the past year.

The problem is that the panhandle and the peninsula have distinctly different regimes thus making a state-wide average not representative of either one.

The primary difference is the winter.


On the panhandle regular doses of continental fronts bring waters to an annual peak but, under normal conditions, tend to stall to the south.

That leaves the peninsula – and more so the farther you go south – with a dry winter and spring.


Fortunately for us, Florida has more than one rain gage.

But come to think of it, having just one gage would simplify the math.

"End of year" sky

The dry season has clouds ...
just not much rain.

Old habits are hard to break!

Do you ever find yourself going through the motions but your heart really isn’t into it, but you do it anyway because that’s what everybody expects?

I’m talking annual rainfall totals.

Calendar year rain totals usually fall somewhere
between forty and seventy inches

The newspapers make a big fuss about tallying annual rainfall totals in accordance with the calendar year, as measured from January 1st through December 31st …

But how much does it really mean?


Up on The Continent, your true blue hydrologists tally rainfall from October 1st through September 30th, better known among us “insiders” as the water year.

The rationale?

River systems typically reach their annual ebb during the fall.

The calendar year usually ends on a dry note

But here on the south peninsula, the Continental Water Year is useless, too. The swamp reaches its annual ebb in spring, not fall.

Thus, after very careful thought, I have become a stickler (and what we call in the profession as an over-zealous advocate) for computer totals for the region from May 1st to April 30th, the first six months of which match our wet season and the six months after that our dry season.


I am also aware that some habits are hard to break:

And thus, for that reason, I posted the bar graph above.

Obey the signs!

Entrance to Naples Pier

Chunk of limestone from Santa?

Did you ever have a year you thought you were being really good ...

Only to wake up on the big day to find nothing but a chunk of rock under the tree?

This chunk of rock is on display
at the Palm Cottage

The chuck of limestone shown above is called Tamiami Tabby.

The original settlers of Naples didn’t have any cement mills, but with plenty of sand and water and shells they were pretty well set. Mix them together in a broth over the high heat of a buttonwood fire, and then let it dry, and tabby is what you got.

Palm Cottage is the oldest house in Naples, Florida

Not as strong as modern cement, but good enough:

They used it to build the Palm Cottage – Naples oldest house – which, just a few blocks from Naples Pier, is still standing.  At least, that's what I read on the sheet of paper above the rock.


There's a side of me still thinking that somebody was a really bad boy.

Oldest house in Naples

Palm Cottage is a right down the road from Naples Pier

Through the looking palm

Who doesn’t love the holidays?

And isn’t it true we all greet them with a different approach?

Can you see the multi-colored lights?

Some people are uncontainably joyful while others look within and close the gate, some people get merrily lost down the secular side streets of distraction while others feel a well spring of spirituality and rejoice, others can’t count down the days fast enough while others are drawn back incessantly (and hopelessly inescapably) into a remembered past, some people double down on their importance while other people try to play it down as just another day, some people surround themselves in song and conversation while others get lost in the silence while staring at the multi-colored strands of twinkling light.


I’m not saying I’m any of those people,

But maybe I’m all those people at once.


Merry holiday season to all!

Christmas train

As seen at Naples Depot

Midway between Naples and Miami

Miami and Naples are easy to find,

Although granted, caught in traffic within either one, it's easy to get lost.

Can you see Midway Campground?

Compare that to the midpoint between them:

It's called Midway Campground in the middle of the Big Cypress Swamp.


Most people drive by it not even knowing it's there.

Answer: Naples Depot

Santa Claus is coming to town!

Stocking stuffer "puzzler?"

There aren’t many similarities in these two photos ...

Other than they are of the same exact spot.

Inside Naples Depot, 2010

The one above is from 2010 and the one below is from sometime in the 1940s.

Outside Naples Depot, circa 1940s

Can you find the hidden clue that gives it away?

Airboat on Lake Trafford

Everglades sleigh

What is the best ways to travel in Florida?

Some would say by "air" while others would say by "boat."

Or if you're out in the Everglades, the answer would be airboat.

Real winter

Fargo's yet to have a bitter cold
"red dot" day so far this winter.

Their warm is our cold

There's "Naples Florida" cold ...

And then there is really really cold.

Recent warm temperatures can't be good for the ice?

For the latter we can take a look at the daily high and low temperature chart for Fargo, North Dakota. This is the time of year that the Fargo residents can expect, on average, daytime highs to climb into the 20s and nighttime lows to drop to zero.  By the way, that's zero as in zero, not thirty two.

The good news is that Fargo has been going throw a bit of a warming spell.


Over the weekend a daytime high rose into the 50s.

That's one of the very cold days (blue dots) on the Naples graph below.

Seventy degrees cold!

The blue dots show days when daytime highs
didn't break above 60 degrees:

That's a cold winter day for Naples.

Weather outside is frightful!

Highs in the mid 70s and lows in the 60s ...

That doesn't sound so frightful.

This chart shows daily high and low temperatures
for Naples Florida

You know it's cold in Naples when the daily high temperature doesn't break above 70 degrees.  At least as measured at Naples Airport, that's yet to happen so far this winter.

That is, if in fact Naples has a winter.


That's a topic for another debate.

More Dahoon Holly?

One thing is for sure:
That's slash pine in back.

Naughty or nice?

Has Brazillian Pepper intruded this deep into the swamp?

The red berries gave me a fright!

No, that's just Dahoon Holly ...

A native.


The red berries just sort of look the same.

Scenic swamp

Into the Wild

Readers of the “Into the Wild” everywhere …

This hydrograph is for you.

I wonder if Jon Krakauer would considering
using this hydrograph in future editions
of his book?

It shows the fateful "fall and rise" of the Talkeenta River in Alaska where Chris McCandless – also known as Alex Supertramp and eulogized with great poignancy by Jon Krakauer – crossed the river but couldn’t cross back.

The reason?


For one, the protagonist was a Continentaller. He probably assumed that the river peaked in spring and slowly ebbed through the summer, only to bottom out in fall. But Alaskan streams are snow-melt fed. That gives them a trademark summer peak of roaring and frigid water (as the author points out and that the protagonist was astonished to see) which pumps up the flow volume “nine or ten times” above the baseflow recession of the still frozen spring he crossed.

What shocks me about the hydrograph is its tightness: Unlike precipitation fed rivers whose hydrographs are “spiked” with rain storms and variable depending on seasonal and annual rain patterns, snow melt is a steady and very predictable producer. As August progressed, Alex noticed a chill in the air and rapidly declining daylight hours, or in other words – an end of Alaskan summer, and so with it, a rapid recession of the ephemeral raging river back down to its creek-like winter state.

Continental streams typically recede through the summer

This book haunts at many levels:

Who in their youth was not a bit rebellious and equally touched by a Utopian disgust of a world gone wrong which, with vision and conviction, we set ourselves out towards restoring, if not in whole then only (and ultimately) as some small but significant vindication of who we ourselves aim to be? I too am on a search of sorts for a perfect hydrologic world – of which I attempt to plot with scientific rigor and aesthetic flair – and which in great fervor, with said hydrograph in hand, I set out in mind and body to those distant shores to touch whatever of its silky waters I may find and to splash its wetness on my face (or alternatively just take a few photographs instead).

Usually I’m not too far from a U.S. Geological gauging station when I do (which is where I got the data to plot the hydrograph up top). Had only Alex Supertramp known the same (that’s a hint to read the book – I don’t want to give it away), he would be alive and well, although quixotically with the result that his story, as retold by Jon Krakauer, may have never been born.

As a reader, “Into the Wild” leaves me with so many questions, among the top is which one he would have preferred.

F L O R I D A

The Florida landmass starts
on the other side of those shells.

Florida draws line in sand

When do the gulf waters end and the Florida landmass begin?

According to this arrangement of seashells, the answer seems to lie somewhere between low and high tide.

Florida stakes its claim midway up the beach face

Or for better precision ...

We may need a licensed surveyor.

Apple tree ladder

As seen in Belgium earlier this year

Step stool into the swamp

Water is slowly starting to drop down the swamp ladder.

More accurate is to call it a step stool instead.



This video explains why:

Hint: The difference between the top rung and ground is only 3 feet!

Ave Maria Chapel

Ave Maria Chapel facing southeast
towards Bear Island

Urban fringe on the move?

The swamp doesn't end at Big Cypress National Preserve.

The photo below was taken in a helicopter at about 500 feet in the air near the preserves northwest corner and looking northwest and shows just that: It's cypress as far as the eye can see.

Bear Island below and Ave Maria University
off in the distance on the right.

Or is it?

At some point the swamp runs into civilization at a line in the sand called the urban fringe.


Is it me or, over time, has that line moved?

Data source for the hydrograph

Can you see the dual reporting:
Feet above sea level (left) and
water depth in swamp (right)?

Two-year hydrograph at Corkscrew

About a month and a half into the dry season ...

The water level in Corkscrew Swamp has already fallen a foot.

Can you see what habitat type
the water surface is dropping down into?

That puts the swamp at the same level as just before it received an October boost.

In fact, if you compare the blue line against the dotted white line, i.e. the long-term median stage, on the hydrograph above, you can clearly see that for most of the summer wet season, swamp stage was unusually low.

It's unusual to have October be
the rainiest month of the wet season.

The reason for that is shown in the rain chart above.

Click here to view a rain chart for your basin.

Up around the next bend

As the saying goes:
You never know just what you may find ...

Hydrologic ax knows no bounds

Corkscrew swamp famously escaped the saw …
That means its giants have roots reaching hundreds of years down.

(And, yes, they are tall too!)

Just using the eyeball test:
This tree looks to be around 500 years old.

But did its hydrograph also remain similarly unscathed?

Here’s a comparison of hydrographs, color coded with regard to statistic categories (i.e., 0th, 10th, 33rd, 50th, 66th, 90th, and 100th percentile) and habitat types (i.e., dry season refugia, pond apple, tall cypress, marl prairie, and pinelands) for the fifteen year period of 1960-1975 and 1990-2005.

Whoa! What caused this hydrograph to change?

The hydrograph looks more or less intact:

Seasonal trends of the summer wet and winter dry area easy to see.

However, decades ago (left) the swamp seemed to show a more predictable pattern: Yes, there were flood and drought seasons, but the darker band between the 33rd and 66th percentile is much tighter (on the left) than what’s seen on the modern day hydrograph (right). Particularly noticeable is the wider range of fluctuation and deeper drop of the modern day (right) spring drydown. Less obvious, but also present (if also counterintuitive, although also explainable), is the modern day’s higher wet-season hump.

I took this panoramic photo
standing at the long-term staff gage

What’s going on?

Climate could be in play. We’ve had some wet summers in that period (1995, 1999, and 2005) plus a big drought during 2000-2001. Also a factor is the landscape around Corkscrew which, unlike the sanctuary, and despite the great success of the Corkscrew Swamp Regional Ecosystem Watershed (CREW) initiative, conservation efforts have tended to focus on low-lying wetlands (i.e., in the adjacent Corkscrew Swamp Regional Ecosystem Watershed) whereas uplands have been converted into agriculture or urbanized.

All things being equal (meteorologically speaking), that leaves less land for the same amount of water; or in other words, higher peaks in the areas that still hold water and lower dry season drops due to the spatial loss of upstream storage.

Boardwalk at Corkscrew Swamp

Hydrology Lesson No. 12:

The next step in wildlands conservation is protecting the hydrograph, too!

Sign at Carnestown

Tamiami Trail is one of my favorite roads

Loop in the trail

Here's a view of Tamiami Trail looking east.

Can you see Monroe Station a few miles ahead?

Looking west down Tamiami Trail
November 2011

That's where Tamiami meets Loop,

Here's Monroe Station as it looked a couple decades ago.

Nearby Loop Road is "pool" spelled backwards.

Here's a look at the intersection of Loop and Tamiami from the ground.

Actually I was standing on top of my truck.

Loop Road is on left, Tamiami on far right.

I was sort of hungry at the time.

The BAR-B-Q would have hit the spot!

Deer Creek, Maryland

When the same sound
never sounded so good

Maryland My Maryland

Did you ever have a situation not go your way ...

Or something for some reason just drags you down?

Sometimes in life you just can't catch a break:
Even a trusty bench lets you down.

It isn’t a question of if, but probably how many:

And more importantly where do you go to regroup.


Some chose the swamp, others maybe the beach, still others may hop on the plane and run all the way home to the safest and truest spot they know. I’m not saying I’m running away from my problems …

But sometimes you’ve got to get some distance in space in time to clear your head.

That's when it's time to light out
for the beach, deep nature, or somewhere far away

For that and other reasons it feels good to be back in Ye Olde Mudderland.