For some, Florida drought is getting very "extreme"

[Silas_Sancona]

1 minute ago, flplantguy said:

I will upload a closeup of one later and again when it blooms so it can be IDed correctly.  Seeing your attachments i think its pilosior which would make sense.  I did not find that as an option when i looked the first time but it is the local speices and fits the description better in form.

Regardless of the sp. finding any Lupinus growing on your property is a great find.

When ready, like most sps. seed should be pretty easy to germinate.. Might recommend collecting a little soil from near the root zone of established plants though to inoculate the soil you'll germinate seed in.

 Found this article from the FWF that breaks down current understanding of the unifoliate Lupinus sps there pretty well..  https://www.flawildflowers.org/lupinus-updates/
 

[flplantguy]

5 minutes ago, Silas_Sancona said:

Regardless of the sp. finding any Lupinus growing on your property is a great find.

When ready, like most sps. seed should be pretty easy to germinate.. Might recommend collecting a little soil from near the root zone of established plants though to inoculate the soil you'll germinate seed in.

 Found this article from the FWF that breaks down current understanding of the unifoliate Lupinus sps there pretty well..  https://www.flawildflowers.org/lupinus-updates/
 

Interesting you mention that, i have been adding native sand into different pots for that reason.  My thought was of they are going in the ground they need to be introduced lol. Lots of nitrogen fixers in the sand here too so i think the soil is full of microbes. The dead roots under the soil are also breaking down fast and i get muchrooms and chonchs. I love how much is going on once you get away from the disturbed city lots.

[Silas_Sancona]

2 hours ago, flplantguy said:

Interesting you mention that, i have been adding native sand into different pots for that reason.  My thought was of they are going in the ground they need to be introduced lol. Lots of nitrogen fixers in the sand here too so i think the soil is full of microbes. The dead roots under the soil are also breaking down fast and i get muchrooms and chonchs. I love how much is going on once you get away from the disturbed city lots.

Aside from being the perfect and cheapest inorganic option to add for drainage, likelyhood if inoculation w/ native Myco flora is big reason i'll collect grit from washes and / or  add a pinch or handful of mesquite leaf / leafstalk duff to pots / mix in with soil for new stuff   ..and avoid all synthetic ferts.

I chuckle whenever people assume that because it's so hot / dry here that mushrooms won't grow anywhere in the desert..  So far from the truth.

While they may not pop up all the time, rains enough for long enough and you'll see plenty pop up out of seemingly nowhere along some otherwise inhospitable looking roadside slope, or sandy flat that barely has anything growing on it, or in your favorite neighborhood " rock garden "  Obviously, more shade = more types of mushrooms but  there's at least a handful of sps that can pop up in areas that bake in full sun every day, all year.

Since i leave a majority of what grass gets clipped / fallen leaves / other duff that blows in when i cut the lawns, and apply no chemical fertilizers, i get a decent variety of  'shrooms that pop up at various times of the year..

[Looking Glass]

Finally getting some rain today.   Light and steady.  Hopefully will soak in.   

 

[flplantguy]

It looks like the pattern wants to set up just in time for the rainy season, hopefully it keeps up. We have a random storm over the inland areas here near the airport but the coast is beautiful with a nice sea breeze.  Hopefully in a month its in full swing here and im not dragging hoses!

[SubTropicRay]

Not good....

 

[flplantguy]

5 hours ago, SubTropicRay said:

Not good....

 

I would hit like but thats not likable lol. Not surprising for May though at least for florida.

[kinzyjr]

Looks like all the rain in the area over here is up by the Green Swamp tonight.  Hopefully tomorrow brings some down this way.  Further up I-75, looks like The Villages and Wildwood are getting some rain. 

30% chance tomorrow night?  We'll see.

[SubTropicRay]

Feast to famine is unfortunately the Florida way 

[SubTropicRay]

May is doing it's thing.  No surprises for the hottest month of the year.  The map is getting colorful.

 

 

[SubTropicRay]

Here's the rainfall prediction center's forecasted 7 day cumulative (inches). It's feast and famine on one map.

[kinzyjr]

On 5/10/2024 at 5:51 AM, SubTropicRay said:

Here's the rainfall prediction center's forecasted 7 day cumulative (inches). It's feast and famine on one map.

Already up to 6 days since April where the chance of rain 48 hours before is >= 50% and none shows up.  Hope we don't end up with another hot, dry, inconsistent summer.  That last one sucked.

[SeanK]

Will it rain, Tampa?

[SubTropicRay]

On 5/14/2024 at 8:18 AM, SeanK said:

Will it rain, Tampa?

Not yet and I'm not super optimistic.  It's rained all around me so I can drive to see it 🙃.

[kinzyjr]

Ended up with just north of an inch of rain today, thankfully.  The plants in the garden look totally different today after the rain.  Unfortunately, I did have one casualty to drought.

[flplantguy]

About a quater inch today after a slightly less amount yesterday. A good start i hope. Just fewer broken tree branches too please.

[D. Morrowii]

Hasn’t rained in a month but we got .28 here  today. 

[SubTropicRay]

wooo hooo 0.10" of rain almost fell today  Lots of hype when 1-2" were expected.    The drought is holding strong.

[SubTropicRay]

It's growing like a monster and yesterday's mist did little to help...

then there's this

[flplantguy]

The hadley cell expansion i think is driving the dryness here and the heat in the tropics. The time of year is dead on for heat and the rainy season should be starting soon, i would get very concerned if this was late june or july.  Bad enough now, but a repeat of last year is the possible start of a trend i dont want.

[SubTropicRay]

Pessimist me expects a repeat performance until it doesn't happen.  There are already too many similarities to how it started last year.  Only difference is now the folks east and SE, swimming this time last year, are complaining about being below their 3000 inch a year norm.  Cry me a river and welcome to the club.

[kinzyjr]

8 minutes ago, SubTropicRay said:

Pessimist me expects a repeat performance until it doesn't happen.  There are already too many similarities to how it started last year.  Only difference is now the folks east and SE, swimming this time last year, are complaining about being below their 3000 inch a year norm.  Cry me a river and welcome to the club.

Crossing my fingers over here, but the way they have predicted high rain chances and/or higher rain totals only to have the systems fizzle out before it actually rains thus far this spring, a little less optimistic.

[Looking Glass]

5 hours ago, SubTropicRay said:

Pessimist me expects a repeat performance until it doesn't happen.  There are already too many similarities to how it started last year.  Only difference is now the folks east and SE, swimming this time last year, are complaining about being below their 3000 inch a year norm.  Cry me a river and welcome to the club.

There’s plenty of dryness this way, most years.  The year before last, was the wet season that never came.   Last year was a whole year of wet season and almost too much, but mostly a great year for the irrigation bill.   This year again sucks so far, though the last couple days it seems like the rains are sputtering and wanting to start up.  

Values can have a lot of random variation over short time frames, but “mean reversion” normally happens over longer time periods, and returns things to the historic averages.   You’re due to revert to a wetter year to average things out.   

[Steve the palmreader]

We got lucky and had 1 inch on Pine Island yesterday

[flplantguy]

Surprise downpour today so i guess im on the edge of the heat dome this time.  Thats three days in a row, a first since i have lived here since last summer was a bust.  3/4 of an inch between the three so not a huge amount but enough to start off.

[kinzyjr]

2 hours ago, flplantguy said:

Surprise downpour today so i guess im on the edge of the heat dome this time.  Thats three days in a row, a first since i have lived here since last summer was a bust.  3/4 of an inch between the three so not a huge amount but enough to start off.

Received a much-appreciated and not predicted ~0.2 in. of rain here today as well.  Parts of Orlando received rain as well.  Somewhere between 1.25in and 1.5 in in the last 3 days should get everything started.  Looking toward the future, Sunday looks promising:

[bubba]

Humidity back big-time. Dry season over?

[kinzyjr]

1 hour ago, bubba said:

Humidity back big-time. Dry season over?

I think we're all crossing our fingers we don't get another "summer dry season" this year.  Especially where @SubTropicRay is located.  Here, it would rain 6 inches and then not rain for 3-4 weeks.  Over in Tampa, they had native trees dropping leaves since they didn't even get the deluge - just hot and dry with no clouds and temperatures closing in on 100F.

[flplantguy]

Last year was the worst, summer is long and hot enough!  The long range does look promising, many more rain opportunities that this time last year.

[bubba]

This is a very interesting phenomenon that has been experienced by Ray and many primarily around the west coast area of Florida. I question whether this may be more of a norm rather than some kind of out of the ordinary occurrence. Look how long this thread has been going!

In southeast Florida, we have had a very wet "dry season" compared to normal (super El Niño?). I have seen Ray speculate that his location opposite the Tampa Bay may be responsible for this lack of rainfall compared to the remainder of the area. I do not understand how this could affect Lakeland and other areas close by. Are you obtaining major deviations from what is normal in your area?

[kinzyjr]

2 hours ago, bubba said:

This is a very interesting phenomenon that has been experienced by Ray and many primarily around the west coast area of Florida. I question whether this may be more of a norm rather than some kind of out of the ordinary occurrence. Look how long this thread has been going!

In southeast Florida, we have had a very wet "dry season" compared to normal (super El Niño?). I have seen Ray speculate that his location opposite the Tampa Bay may be responsible for this lack of rainfall compared to the remainder of the area. I do not understand how this could affect Lakeland and other areas close by. Are you obtaining major deviations from what is normal in your area?

The dry season here was damper than normal with no freezes.  From what I've heard from longtime growers, that's typical of an El Niño year, same as the erratic summers.  The story of this summer is yet to be told, so not sold on a long-term trend just yet - and hopefully it won't be one.  Being spoiled in previous years with daily evening rain didn't help either.  The overall rainfall total for last summer here was normal, but they way it arrived with very long hot, dry, windy stretches made things difficult for palms from tropical areas like Veitchia.

That said, it was not near as bad as what Ray put up with last summer.

[SubTropicRay]

Where have I seen this before 👎 

 

 

[D. Morrowii]

37 minutes ago, SubTropicRay said:

Where have I seen this before 👎 

 

 

That map makes it look like I’m getting drenched over here. We got .03 so far 😂

[D. Morrowii]

I stand corrected, 20 min later we finally got a good shot of rain 1.25”. My humble gratitude to the rain gods. 

 

[bubba]

Ray,

Has this been limited to this year or has it been multi-year? What is your annual rain average and how dry has it been this year? What does this drought in your area portend?

[Looking Glass]

Spent hours hand watering everything today, and just now caught this tail of costal instability that managed to give a little needed water too.  

[kinzyjr]

On 5/17/2024 at 8:28 PM, kinzyjr said:

Received a much-appreciated and not predicted ~0.2 in. of rain here today as well.  Parts of Orlando received rain as well.  Somewhere between 1.25in and 1.5 in in the last 3 days should get everything started.  Looking toward the future, Sunday looks promising:

In classic form, 80% chance of rain and didn't get a drop (Day #7 >=50% + no rain).  The NWS was nice enough to amend it after the fact like Weather.com though

[SubTropicRay]

On 5/18/2024 at 8:21 PM, bubba said:

Ray,

Has this been limited to this year or has it been multi-year? What is your annual rain average and how dry has it been this year? What does this drought in your area portend?

There's always some grumbling (mainly by me) that we don't get enough rain here.  Excluding last year's 32" yearly rain total debacle,  Tampa gets about 50" of rain a year.  The drought of real concern began last spring and has had more staying power and severity than any drought in my lifetime.  Spring droughts are common but usually quickly relieved by the summer rains.  We'd never appeared on the mid summer drought index until last year.  Of course, there's a first time for everything.  The persistence over all 4 rainy season months was unsettling because of the potential long term ramifications.  I hope my rambling is all for not. 

[SubTropicRay]

From the NWS Tampa discussion today:

 

"Early next week, ridging aloft looks to extend across the S Gulf
while broad troughing over the E U.S. extends S into the N Gulf
states, with surface ridging setting up E of the state in the
Atlantic. This would favor the potential for increased moisture
working across the state with deep layer westerly flow, with
scattered showers and storms likely focusing toward interior
areas and E FL with lesser chances toward W FL and coastal areas."

 

[SubTropicRay]

"The surface ridge gradually shifts E into the Atlantic over the weekend into next week which,
coupled with the troughing aloft, will favor deep layer W-SW flow setting up over the area next 
week supporting an increase in moisture over the state along with higher rain chances, highest
toward the interior."