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

Drought: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

 

In 1986, we were told in late spring that we were going to be “in drought” that summer, so “Don’t water your lawns or wash your cars.”

I bought that story, not realizing that Oregon declares drought if there might be insufficient snowpack to water the city because of a warm, wet winter.  A foggy winter, which is dry after the sun burns through the fog, also triggers a drought forecast, as fog in the valleys doesn’t contribute to snowpack.  1985-1986 was a foggy winter, with fogs that lasted for weeks.^*

We had 103 days without rain that summer.  I was not surprised, as a drought had been declared. 

I left Grants Pass in the fall of 1986 and didn’t know, until the Daily Courier in 2018 published a list of years close to 100 days without rain, that 1987 was also a drought year, with 97 days without rain.

I eventually realized that a drought declaration before the fact is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Rivers depend on springs more than snowpack to keep them running, as we could see every time we’ve had a summer without rain in the last 20 years.  Springs depend on the water that is pushed out of the mantle of the earth; they don’t depend upon snowpack.

 

*  Eager: The surprising, secret life of BEAVERS and why they MATTER, Ben Goldfarb, “drought, wet” pgs 100-101. Published 2018.

 

10-15-2025 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