Anonymous Prophets of Drought

 

When people can't afford to water their yards, they often neglect to cut their weeds.  Grants Pass depends on citizens to report property neglect, but few do so.  We had two decades of drought until the eruption of Hunga Tonga, an underwater volcano in the South Pacific, blew its top on January 15th, 2022, sending 150 million tons of seawater into the stratosphere, though the flooding of California and other places started in September of that year, and continued through winter and spring.  Fall to late spring rain and flooding around the globe are expected to continue for another two years.

In 1986 in Grants Pass, we were told that we would be in drought that year, so “Don’t water your lawns or wash your cars.”  We had 103 days without rain that year, 97 days the next.

 In 1986, we first started hearing a new meme in the media: “Fresh water is a scarce and precious resource!  Only 2 percent of the water on earth is fresh water, and it must be conserved!”

 Interestingly, no one stepped up to write a book about it like Bill McKibben did about carbon dioxide and global warming.  This was because the movement to ration our water by rates, the way electricity and natural gas have been rate-rationed for over 50 years, required rationing of water to provide evidence for global warming.  

Water vapor is the most abundant and powerful greenhouse gas, but it also cools and thus moderates temperatures.  Their push to tax carbon dioxide has always been noisy; rate-rationing of water has been very quiet.

Building water treatment plants allowed cities to bring clean water to every building and fire hydrant, protecting both the cities and the surrounding countryside from wildfires, using irrigation and evaporation. 

But rate-rationing of city water has stopped our rain, because not enough people are watering.  Please bring back the rate system that will give us cheap water to use again.

                                            1-7-2026 2-minute Speech to Grants Pass City Council

Published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com and shared on Facebook, Nextdoor, and X

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 Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener      541-955-9040           rycke@gardener.com

We need sprinklers to make rain in summer

I came to Grants Pass in the fall of 1984. Water and sewer utility bills had $25 for base rates: $20 for water; $5 for sewer. Units were literally pennies on the dollar. Come July and August, our utility bill rose to just over $26. We had thunderstorms nearly every weekend in the summer of 1985. 

I love thunderstorms, but I wondered: “Why only on weekends?” If it looked like rain and I didn’t water, it did not rain enough to make a difference. A Grants Pass gardening superstition was born; “If it looks like rain, and you don’t water, it won’t rain worth a darn.” 

Sixteen years later, in Landscape Management class, I learned that most residents of Grants Pass didn’t have automatic sprinklers and watered only on the weekends. Our teacher also told us, “Sprinklers evaporate half of what they throw before it hits the ground--and evaporation is waste.” 

But evaporation is not waste; it is the first step in the water cycle: evaporation; condensation; precipitation. Without enough sprinkler evaporation and transpiring plants, we get no rain in summer; the last three years excepted because Hunga Tonga threw 150 million tons of seawater into the stratosphere on January 15th, 2022. It’s still coming down. 

11/5/25 

Published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com and shared on Facebook, Neighborhood and X

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Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener           541-955-9040         rycke@gardener.com

Hunga Tonga Heat

 

 Last meeting, I talked about how Hunga Tonga has made fall through spring wet, and the rain was early this year in mid-August.  But seawater in the stratosphere doesn’t only make clouds and rain; it also makes heat, because water vapor is the most powerful and abundant of greenhouse gases, and in the stratosphere, it has few molecules in the way of infra-red heat reaching the ground.   

The first two years after the volcano blew 150 million tons of water into stratosphere, we had much hotter 100-degree-plus weather in July and August. But that heat showed up only on clear days, which one would expect.  This year, it happened on partly cloudy days most of the summer.  It reminded me of the weather in Arizona during monsoon season, and we have been getting more monsoon weather coming from the Southwest this year.

This makes me think that there is a bell curve to the amount of rain coming out of the stratosphere, and we are in the middle of the curve, if scientists are right that Hunga Tonga weather effects will last only five years.

The forecast for this winter calls for a warm winter with a lot more rain.

 

9-17-2025 2-minute Speech to Grants Pass City Council

Published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com and shared on Facebook and Nextdoor

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 Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener           541-955-9040                rycke@gardener.com

Hunga Tonga

           

 Eruption touching space, 1-16-2022

Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai is an underwater volcano in the South Pacific.  It was 450 feet underwater when it started to erupt December 8, 2021.  It built a cinder cone that reared up over the waves.  January 15, 2022, it blew its top 450 feet under water. 

It scattered the cinders as it threw 150 million tons of seawater up through the troposphere; the stratosphere, and punched the mesosphere, touching space and leaving a visible hump that is on the NASA website.  Search NASA, Hunga Tonga.

That water in the stratosphere has been slowly falling into the air where weather is made, which was first noticed on our West Coast in September of 2022, causing flooding and mudslides in California, according to the Los Angeles Times.  December 31, 2022 is when Wikipedia says it started flooding California.  It continued through spring 2023.

Wikipedia blames it all on climate change, though it mentions some unnamed scientists saying it could have other causes.  It doesn’t mention the underwater volcano that sent 150,000,000 tons of seawater into the stratosphere, a nameless one-day wonder on the evening news, a bit of video showing the blast expanding as it neared the satellite directly above it.  It will be affecting our weather for a several more years.

 9-3-2025 2-minute Speech to the City Council

Published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com and shared on Facebook and Nextdoor

Like Ratepayers for Fair Water and Sewer Pricing on Facebook

 Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener           541-955-9040                rycke@gardener.com