Drought Buster?

September 17, 2009 at 7:01 am · Filed under Uncategorized and tagged: drought, flood, rain

The past three weeks have brought lots of rain. Things could not have changed any more dramatically than they did. Before this cycle of storms moved in trees were dying, the grass was completely burned up, and the pond was little more than a mud puddle. Stengl lost many mature pine trees during this two year drought, initiating a survey to be repeated by a UT Field Biology class next weekend. The lawn area near the residence had become a sandbox. The pond shrank to an area the size of a parking space and was only 6-8 inches deep. The few fish that were left had been scooped out by hungry raccoons.

Then the rain came. It started in small showers. Then a week of light, but steady rain. After two weeks Stengl had received nearly 4 inches. That’s more rain than we’ve had here in the past year. Still, the pond remained unchanged. I guess the ground was so dry and the rain so spread out that it all just soaked in. Friday, everything changed. In less than 12 hours over five inches of rain fell. I have two rain gauges, both stop at 5 inches and both had overflowed. Saturday morning I walked down to the pond hoping to see some change. Change indeed, the pond was completely full. Overnight the pond had filled to within 2 feet of breaching the dam. From drought to flood, trees are still struggling. The saturated ground caused several mature post oaks to fall over, due to the unstable substrate. The grass is doing wonderfully. Once barren sand, the Bermuda grass has returned and had quickly shot to knee high. It’s now gone to seed and once those are dispersed, I’ll mow it again. Things should really start looking good around here again. I hope we’ve reached the end of this, the worst drought in the recorded history of Bastrop County.

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