Excessive rain

I was going to start the next post on the construction of Windigo lake, but because our weather has been so bizarre lately, I thought you might be interested in its impact on our local environment. As I mentioned in an earlier post, spring last year began with a drought that extended into September.  The trout pond looked like this in August 2016. It was down 8 feet from spring time high levels. You can see the bottom of the pond in the picture at the 6 foot level at the back of the pond.

This spring began the same way with 35°C, which is pathologically warm for April. I suspect, however, that someone with a significant influence on Mother Nature must have been doing a rain dance or sacrificed a goat to prevent a repeat of last year's pattern (and overdid it), because the weather suddenly changed to endless rain and cold days (highs of 6-7°C). Tonight and tomorrow night it is supposed to freeze, and its May 7th. The volume of rain and its unrelenting daily occurrence has been unreal. For example, we have had over 5 inches of rain in the past 5 days, and the people "down stream" from us are in big do-do. Apparently those near the flood plains of the Rideau and Ottawa rivers cannot find enough sand bags to save their homes. This is obviously not a new occurrence around the world when you watch the weather channel, but is very rare in this part of Ontario. Manitoba gets it all the time on the Red River, so Canada knows about it too, but not us in the 50 years I have been in south eastern Ontario.

Nancy and I live in a privileged area here in Due North as we are located at the height of land, so the surface rain water moves horizontally very slowly both to the north and south of us. Actually the land appears nearly flat when  you look around, but it is not. If we were downstream of higher elevations, we might expect things like big time hydrostatic pressure from differential elevation, but we are not. Thus the water moves away from us at a fairly slow pace. But then look at the video of our well-head yesterday, where the capped 6 inch pipe is artesian!!




Can you imagine the pressure that is necessary to push water up that 6" pipe to its capped top, which is 4 feet above the ground (I said 3 feet in the video, but it is actually 4'), when there is NO land higher than us within 50 miles! Very impressive. Needless to say, it quickly refilled Emerald pond (seen below) and then some, so that the 4" overflow pipe in Emerald Pond was shooting water like a garden hose into Windigo Lake for a distance of about 4 feet before landing.

I suspect that rototilling the various gardens around the yard won't happen for a few more weeks, since the vegetable garden is still surrounded by water. And the west field in which that garden resides in largely under water. This doesn't seem to be bothering the pair of geese and wood ducks though, as they swim, feed and groom in that saturated field.

Later in the evening last night, in the field above, there were 5 turkeys waiting for the right time to roost in the adjacent poplars, 3 black vultures feeding on an old raccoon carcass, 2 pairs of wood ducks feeding, a pair of geese, 1 hooded merganser just hanging out and 3 deer at the corn hopper. Wouldn't Walt Disney be excited at the filming opportunity. It was a little too dark for a picture though. Next time maybe. 

The title on this morning's (May 8th) Ottawa Citizen newspaper was the "War Against Water," much as I described briefly above.  Today it is snowing....😞.  The next day (May 9th),  the paper heading is "The 100-year Flood ... This is Historic". Apparently several people have died. Ugh. Enough about our new 'water world', although I may have seen Kevin Costner go sailing by on the Rideau river near Kemptville at noon.

In the next post, I promise I will describe the construction of Windigo. Have a good day.