We water harvesters don’t just follow the weather, we’re obsessed with it.
We’re eagerly awaiting the arrival of those above average rains that we were promised, but many of us have been disappointed by the spotty monsoon rainfall.
This episode explains what’s going on, and shines a light on when we can expect El Niño.
Transcript
INTRO: From Tucson, Arizona, welcome to the Water Harvesting 101 podcast. My name is Martha Retallick. I’ve been a water harvester for 20 years, and I’m looking forward to helping you get started.
Before we do that, here’s a little Tucson secret: For most of the year, we’re in drought. That’s just how life is in the desert.
But when the rains return, oh, do they ever. They often bring an unwelcome friend called flooding.
How do we reduce the risks of flooding? We do it with water harvesting.
Water harvesting encompasses three activities:
- Redirecting rainwater away from where it isn’t wanted to where it is.
- Storing rainwater for later use, for example, during a drought.
- Recycling “used” water. At my place, I don’t let laundry water go down the drain. Instead, it’s for the fruit trees.
We’ll be covering all of these topics and more, so let’s get started.
EPISODE: We water harvesters don’t just follow the weather. We are obsessed with it.
Why are we so obsessed? It’s because we want to know when it will rain again.
And the big question for this summer is: Where’s El Niño? We were promised above average rainfall due to the development of El Niño in the tropical Pacific Ocean.
El Niño is a weather pattern that is associated with equatorial Pacific Ocean temperatures that are a half degree above normal on the centigrade scale. If you were writing this out, it would be 0.5 degrees centigrade.
This weather pattern tends to lead to wetter than average winters in the southern regions of the United States. And hooray! We need the rain!
But El Niño is disappointing us this summer because it’s just getting started.
It’s not really going to have a major effect on weather here in Arizona – or elsewhere in the Southwest until the fall or the winter.
So, for now, we’re waiting for the rain to come and fill our cisterns and give our passive water harvesting earthworks something to do. As in, redirecting rainfall away from where we don’t want it to where we do – so we can give our yard plants a good drink.
As for El Niño, it isn’t here yet. And the monsoon season has been spotty here in Tucson and throughout Arizona.
Unfortunately, that is very typical of the monsoon season. It is fickle.
El Niño? It’s out there. It’s coming. Let’s try to be patient.
If you’d like to learn more about water harvesting, sign up for my monthly email newsletter. If you do, I’ll give you a free copy of my Water Harvesting Cheat Sheet.
And if you’d like to support the Water Harvesting 101 podcast, the PayPal email address is info@westernskycommunications.com.
OUTRO: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Water Harvesting 101 podcast. If you’d like to learn more about water harvesting, meet my book family.
First, it’s City Nature, the book that’s guaranteed to look great on any coffee table. City Nature reveals my secrets to water harvesting through my 20-year journey of transforming my Tucson home into an urban oasis. Get the details at CityNatureBook.com.
And if you’re on the go, take water harvesting with you. Water Harvesting 101 is an audiobook and eBook combination that will teach you the nuts and bolts of water harvesting and show you how to put them to work. Available exclusively at WaterHarvesting101Book.com.