I typically treat any announcements of rain chances below 60% with a healthy dose of skepticism. This is Southern California, after all, where you are better off believing it’ll rain only when you see it rain. So when the various meteorological institutions and representatives were saying that there wasn’t much more than a 20% chance of scattered showers expected, you’d expect I’d just laugh that off as sillyology.
Instead, as I looked at the leaden clouds yesterday morning, something made me take heed. Call it intuition, optimism or whatever. But the cumulos nimbusing above were just way too dark and saturated. So I dutifully tarped the tortoise hutch and the hammock, tipped up the various outdoor seat cushions, and set up the backyard precipitometer.
Nothing dropped during the day, but I left everything battened down yesterday evening and sure enough, between lights out last night and this morning, a surprising full quarter-inch hit the deck (click it for the bigger picture):
October 22: 0.25″
Year To Date: 0.4375″