Exhibit A:
It hasn’t rained at all since Monday. Sunday and Monday it didn’t rain much. But there’s still standing water in the wash.
This never happens. I’ve never seen it in sixteen summers, except a couple of places far downstream where there are natural springs. Oh, quicksand for a day or two after a real heavy flood, sure. But visible surface water standing on wet mud for several days after light rain? Oh, hell no.
This was a wet summer but not exceptionally so. Last year we got sixteen inches on the year: In 2013 we got 17 inches in two months. My rain gauge says 10.8 for all of 2022. BUT in a wet monsoon most of the water normally comes in scary dramatic thunderstorms that mostly drain down the wash to who knows where. Almost all of this season’s rain has come in light soakers, and it’s been going on from June till October. I’ve never seen it last so long. So, we’re getting a lot more ground penetration than normal which is great for the plants, no doubt. But not so great for Ian’s floor.
Which, yes, has developed some big cracks that indicate not great things happening underneath. I’m surprised because we spent a lot of effort on getting things right before we poured it. But the dome is super heavy, and it’s on variable sand and rock, so…
Ah, shoot, mosquitoes.
Around here that is a sign the soil is watered enough. But in your area not sure if that is the same. But in sand it very well could be true as well. It is one of the reason we got out of sod huts as fast as we could. Water filled soil gets flat out weird some times. Springs pop up up an all kinds of new water flows appear.
Yeah, it’s strange. This morning there was more surface water on that part of the wash than there was yesterday afternoon. So water is rising from the saturated sand with the overnight temperature drop. That might be a normal phenomenon other places but I’ve never seen it do that before.