SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- We are less than a week away from October, which means we’re close to the end of the year. Well, I should say the water year.
The Hydrological Year usually starts on the first of October.
Much like why we have meteorological seasons start before the astronomical season, the water year starts in October because at this point in time, most of the precipitation, either snow or rain, will be affecting next year’s soil more than this year's, so the water accumulation is grouped together starting when we could first start seeing snow.
Accumulation for this water year in South Bend has been just a little bit below average. Including Tuesday’s rainfall, we’re at 32.98 inches of accumulation, while our normal is 38.32.
If we look at an area in Michiana in moderate drought, like Warsaw, accumulation since last October is closer to 29.85 inches, where the normal is at 40 inches.
Of course, late season rains like this one are a mixed blessing, as Jim Hess from the Elkhart Soil and Water Conservation District tells me:
“We like to, like to have a dry fall for harvest, but we like to have that that's our recovery period for going into spring and kind of being able to hold and absorb the moisture, much like a sponge. We got to have some moisture in there to help hold the water, because if it's a dry sponge, it just runs off, and that doesn't do the farmers any benefit, because it's all in it becomes a flooding issue.”
A wetter end to September is a fairly good thing, with the drought conditions we’ve been seeing, but also because with a dryer pattern returning, it shouldn’t affect the harvest season either.
Hess said, “We've been very dry for the last month, month and a half, and we've noticed the rivers and streams have been extremely low. And so, I don't think normally this time of year, when we get three inches of rain, it's very detrimental to being able to get into our harvest, get crops out. But I think at this point right now, it should not phase us. Too bad.”
Hess tells me that even as we get close to harvest, the rain we’ve seen these past couple of days shouldn’t put a damper on any plans. In fact, it's a good thing we haven’t gotten too far into harvest season because more vegetation on the fields means less runoff.
Though water going into our streams and rivers would be great, the ground needs it to recover from the drought conditions we’ve been seeing.
“If we don't get the precipitation catching up in this fall and this winter, it will, we'll have some drought issues next spring, if we don't get recovery because the soil profiles, we've pulled here this fall...We're dry two to three feet deep, and it takes a lot of moisture to build that back up and be able to recover," said Hess.