Friday, July 27, 2012

Photo Quiz

Can you guess what is going on in this picture?


Time's up. If you think that some weird disease is affecting that oak tree, you would be wrong. Here is another picture, taken from a slightly different perspective.


The orange cone behind the tree is sitting on an irrigation head.The green grass receives irrigation, while the tree blocks the brown grass from getting any water. Here is another picture.


You can see a nice green circle that extends 70 feet from the irrigation head. That is because this head stuck on one night about 2 weeks ago. Instead of running for about 10 minutes, this head ran water for about 6 hours.

While I am on the topic of water, we are still experiencing a substantial drought.While areas near Ann Arbor have been getting more rain over the past couple of days, Leslie Park has missed out, for the most part. On July 18th we got 0.08 inches of rain, while just to the south of Ann Arbor got up to 0.75 inches. On July 26th, while some areas north of Ann Arbor got over a inch of rain, we recorded 0.27 inches. I will take whatever I can get, but at this point, it is estimated that we will need between 6 and 9 inches of rain to come out of the drought. For the month, we have gotten 1.25 inches of rain. That seems like a lot, but 60% of that rain came on the 6th in about a half an hour. Most of this water ran into the streams and storm sewer system due to the speed at which it came down. For the year, we have gotten just under 10 inches of rain. In 2011, we got almost that much in July and August alone.

Here are some pictures from previous years. Compare them with pictures from this year. All pictures were taken in July.

#4 in July 2011.

#4 in July 2012.

#15 in July 2010.

#15 in July 2012.

#16 in July 2009.

#16 in July 2012.












1 comment:

Brian Kuehn said...

I did not have a clue about the brown stripe but once it was explained, it makes perfect sense. Duh!

As for the then & now photos, that is a really neat comparison. Thanks.