Hmmm... The roar of a heavy shower. Like Elijah and Ahab, we experienced the roars of many heavy showers in 2016 as our area received an extraordinary amount of the wet stuff. But we'll get back to discussing that in just a minute. We began keeping detailed records back in 2013 and each year in early January, we compile our records from the year to give us historical data that we can compare to previous years. Click HERE to read last year's post showing our records from 2015. Detailed data helps us to identify trends and better manage the garden and livestock. In prior years we reported our records for several items, but this year we are going to split them up into their own individual posts, starting with rainfall.
If you look at rainfall totals for our zip code, you will find that our average annual rainfall for Jennings, Louisiana is 60.35 inches. If you average 2013 and 2014, the average of 60.35 is right on the money. However 2015 rainfall and especially 2016 rainfall totals have skewed the average so that our average from 2013 - 2016 is actually 67.21 inches of precipitation per year. The record-setting 2016 rainfall total was 79.30 inches or 6 foot 6 inches of rainfall for the year! That shattered the previous years' record by a whopping 10 inches. Check out the table I put together below:
March continues to be our driest month on average and the monsoons that fell in August 2016 made August the new wettest average month. The August rains actually had disastrous effects on the fall garden this year. The fall garden wasn't in at the time that the deluge hit, but that much rain delayed the planting of the fall garden until about a month later than it should have been planted. I think later this week, I will further explain. The rainfall amounts convinced me of two things: I need to raise the level of the garden higher by having some additional topsoil delivered, AND I need to construct better drainage on parts of our pasture and the barn area.
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