Conspiracy Theory

So there seems to be a bit of a conspiracy going on now. Last summer, we had an extreme (or whatever the worst condition is) drought. According to the weather folks, we never fully recovered from that drought, although all the surrounding counties have lifted all watering restrictions and bans. Go figure.

This year, despite the 7+ inch deficit from last year, we are doing better. My understanding (again, according to the weather people) is that we are still below where we should be for the year but that we’re not too bad off. We are in ‘moderate drought’ stage now, but most likely headed to ‘abnormally dry’ by the next official drought index. To that end, I have been tracking the rainfall amounts because I am obsessive in that way like to keep up. I like to know these things. In fact, it’s something I check first thing every morning once a day. I pull up my one of my favorite websites (The Weather Channel) and click ‘yesterday’ to see the rainfall amount and current total.

Here’s where the conspiracy comes into play. Although I was not home last Saturday to witness this (July 5th), there was a picture in the paper that showed ankle-deep water from flooding rains that day. I came home Sunday and it rained all evening. I don’t remember if it rained Monday, but it poured on Tuesday. When I checked the rainfall amount Wednesday morning, it showed we’d gotten 1.15” of rain Tuesday (which seemed pretty accurate…it rained a lot and for hours). Our total for the month was about 2.63” and it was only the 9th. I was pretty excited about that. (I know…get a life. WHATEVER! You have your obsessions and I have mine.) It rained a bit Wednesday, so I checked Thursday to see if there was measurable rain. When I checked, I saw “THEY” had changed Tuesday’s rainfall amount from 1.15” to 0.35”! Um…WHAT? How did that happen? Did all that rain suddenly evaporate while it was raining again on Wednesday? By my count, we should have been over 3” by the end of this week and yet, today, it says our monthly total is 2.13”…and that INCLUDES the rain from Wednesday AND Thursday! (BTW – it rained yesterday, too, but apparently it was not a measurable amount).

The funny/odd part of all of this is that, as I said, there are no watering restrictions in place anywhere. Granted, we’re not in as bad of shape as we were last summer when, to the best of my memory, it rained MAYBE twice (I remember because the kids LOVED the fact that we could go to the pool EVERY day); however, every day, the amount of rain we get seems to lessen.

Thoughts?