Rain!

We haz it. I stop by my house and park the truck overnight quite a bit if it isn't too far away. It's one of the perks that my company gives me (and other drivers as well). It saves me a ninety mile round trip with a fourteen mpg pickup, so I appreciate it.

So, Saturday I needed to take the truck "home" for the weekend routing of washing it for the next week and any other work that needed done, which this week included the ten thousand mile service. However, when I woke up, it was raining.

Yes!!!

I had to take the truck back - but driving it on a dirt road during a rain wasn't in my plans. As a rule, until the road has a chance to "settle," one does not want to take any sort of heavy equipment over a freshly drenched road. You can really tear the road up - opening the road to ruts that hold more water if it rains more and makes the road harder to get over for all vehicles. Makes ya real popular with the neighbors, if you know what I mean (and I think that you do).

But, I got a phone call. The trailer I was pulling was scheduled to go out Monday with a load and they needed it back ASAP.

So, away I went. Max velocity - twenty mph. It was for sure greasy - the road had a firm bottom, but it was entirely too easy to slide around. If I was gonna get stuck, it would be from slipping into a ditch.

There is even some standing water in the fields! Outstanding!

Even water standing on ground with cover! Woo Hoo!

I could see the ruts I was leaving far better than the ol' Droid could.

I dunno how much we got. This morning it was raining again. Nothing heavy, just a bit over sprinkling, but you could just about hear the slurping sound of the prairie drinking. It may only be an inch or even less, but I'd bet what we got was more than the total amount of moisture in the past six to eight months, period. That wouldn't take much when the other instances of water from the sky might total in the whopping hundreds of an inch. Or even as NOAA puts it - a "trace."

It's too cold now for the toads to break out in song at night. Toad serenades are a pretty rare event and I've sorely missed their throaty calls of love. This rain isn't "enough" by any means. Wheat planting has already started - farmers have been "dusting the crop in" - meaning there wasn't enough subsoil moisture to start germination, but they gambled on having it show up later. It will take far more to obtain "a good stand of wheat."

This rain might not be all that, but it sure as hell beat the alternative.