The Native Iowan

I know, I know… I writing too damn much about the rain. I complain too damn much about the rain. Because we have been getting way tooo muchhh damn rain!

I know that blaming glow ball warming is more of a joke than a fact. I know folks look at a single season of weather and think they can discern a pattern, a change, an effect and often, even a cause. Here I just see weather. It’s been wet for a solid 3years now. It was dry before that. Assume we’d see dry daze soon enough. Droughts are not good either, but…

But that is a different rant, a different tirade, a different discussion.

I am thinking today of my Father, Don.

As an old Iowa-guy/ farmer-by-birth he had a habit of recording all measurable rainfall. He had a “little farmer’s book”, the type given out by seed-corn companies, in which he would record the precipitation he dumped out of his gauge. He always had a rain gauge.

I have seen this same trait in farmers world-wide. It must be something in the genes, the need to know how much rain has fallen in a given period. AND, importantly, to be able to compare the current record with the historic record.

Instead of recording rainfall in a little book, I snap a picture. A visual contemporaneous note. I must be a modern old farmer guy?

I have noted previously the amounts of rain falling in my valley, and noting that the rain has set me way, way behind. Stoopidly behind. But that too is another story…

Today I think of my Iowa-Farmer-Guy father, when he moved to live in Gizo for a full year.

He and my Mother had decided to come live with me and my tribe in Gizo. When they spoke of coming for more than just another visit, come for an “extended” stay, I said they should commit 12 months. Make it a real adventure. And they did.

One of the things my Father did when moving in is set up a nice little JOHN DEERE rain gauge on the porch. It was a little thing, the sort of thing used in Iowa, but unsuited for the tropics. The aperture was only 1inch. The total measurable ability of this gauge was minimal. It filled quickly, too quickly, in the tropics.

Iowa has an annual rainfall of 30inches. The Solomons… well, lets just say the Solos gets a lot more rain than Iowa does… Annual rain fall for Gizo is in excess of 3meters, over 100 inches.

So, where were we… My Father sets up his little rain gauge and is quite excited when it starts raining. Gives him a chance to measure and record. Makes him happy.

Over the next month or so he emptied his gauge and made more notations in his little book than he’d normally make in an Iowan year. Mom laughed when he was trying to not loose the record, meaning the overflowing would give him an inaccurate record, so he worked, rushed to empty the little gauge regularly, often in the middle of a gauge overflowing rain event. Mom laughed when the old-dog would go out, get soaked, just to empty the gauge.

I do believe that after the first month and a bit, he lost his enthusiasm. The little rain gauge was on the back porch for ages and ages afterwards. No one paid much attention to it.

Here, my rain gauge is huge…

Need it with the amounts of precipitation we’ve been getting.

more later

smiles