Back to "GO"

Big winter rains do more than get the ground wet …

They rewind the water cycle clock!



In this case, we can rewind the “dry season” clock all the way back to “GO” …

As in the start of November.

(November is the first full month of our traditional “atmospherically” dry half of the year.)


Swamp stage in Big Cypress Nat’l Preserve is still down a half foot from our late summer peak, but its recent rise has splashed waters up above (by a nose) our typically “end of the calendar year” level.

That’s a world of difference compared to a month ago when waters had dropped to a twenty-year November low.




Last year’s “dry” dry season was an uninterrupted plunge to the bottom of the swamp barrel. (Continental fronts were remarkably rainless.)

This year’s fronts in comparison have been accompanied by upper atmosphere instability and moisture-laden air funneled in from the southern Jet Stream.

Minus evaporation (solar heating ebbs in January) means this water could hang around in the swamps for a while, and surely slow the drop.




That won’t make for a “white” winter solstice,

But it will be a “wet” one!

wading birds foraging

"Fake fruit" society

Wading birds were the Everglades’s original rally cry,

Or rather squawk.

(They make a rather inelegant sound).


Plume hunters had decimated most of the major rookeries back at the turn of the century, which is sad enough but all the more so in that it was done in the name of “fashion:”

Hats topped with snowy egrets and other plumage had become all the craze among socialites and debutants up north.

(Quite a sophisticated bunch!)



Park land enforcement officers (the first of the Everglades) and statute-wielding legislatures lumbered to their rescue, but what eventually saved the day came as quick (and unexpected) as a “drop of the hat:”

Or rather, a change in fashion, ever so fickle, followed by a drop in demand.

(Isn’t everything market driven?)


I vaguely remember discovering such a hat, or one similar in nature, in my grandparent’s row house in East Baltimore … Highland town to be exact.

The bowl of “fake fruit” was one thing (one of my prouder moments as a child was convincing my brother the fake peach was real: he bit it – we both got punished),



But a “dead bird” on a hat was something different entire. (That poor bird!),

In a word – disturbing.


The fur jacket in the same closet was of course reserved for exquisite "nights on the town," draped in a mink scarf, which my brother and I were alarmed to find still had a “face” on it (and a rather scary one at that) – and “no,” to answer your question (although it took some experimentation to find out) – Pepper our cat didn’t like the mink (and especially the face) one bit.

It was all topped off with a hat of fur which matched the jacket, and stylishly complimented the scarf.



This wasn’t so much an issue of keeping warm, rather it was a matter of social graces, better known as politeness and silently understood as “being respectable.”

The fur was uttered in the same hushed whispers of vanity as was the household silver and china collections (and possibly the LPs):

It was an essential and well protected part of the family heirloom.



While I can’t bring back that mink, I am happy to report that live minks are running free in the Everglades (although not as common as the otters), and that wading birds are foraging and nesting in the Everglades – at least some of them – in numbers that haven’t been seen since the 1940s.

The funny thing about that is that the “super colonies” of birds were supposed to follow the water, not the other way around:

Restoration water is still years away. (see article)



The trick apparently is that this spring’s record drydown killed back a bunch of the big predator fish that feed on the bird’s food base and are in turn too big to be eaten.

That die-off left the shallows wide open for a feathery feeding frenzy.


It still doesn’t relieve us from getting the water right …

The weather (like "fashion") is fickle you know!

inside cypress dome

Swamp avatar

This journal, I must confess, makes me feel like an avatar of sorts:

All my thoughts on water get uploaded to a server and then funneled through an electronic web of wires …

But I swear, I’m a person in the flesh just like the rest of you reading it,

Or in hydrologic terms, about 60 percent water.


I’ve never understood the fascination with three-dimensional movie effects as featured in this week’s big Hollywood release.

Isn’t it enough to walk around in nature – whether it’s watching water fall or the seeing it swirl – up close in person and first hand?

For me it is anyway!


The one thing about movie making I can related to is “Take Two.”



Take for example the video clip featured above.

My plan was to debut it this weekend to eager water enthusiasts everywhere, displaying in “grainy, narrow screen and choppy” film exposure the current stage of swamp water in Big Cypress Nat’l Preserve.

(The film revolves around one hydrologist’s “early dry season” quest for water, who although daunted at first – as symbolized by the hand scraping of dry blackened earth – forges on to discover water in the inner depths of a cypress dome – followed by the “Eureka Moment” of finding a mysterious cypress knee forest … Quite a trailer, no?).


That was the plan anyhow,

A surprise storm (dropping as much as a foot in places) spoiled the premiere, or in this case “flooding” it out,

Rewinding the water cycle clock by a few weeks and immediately “outdating” the images on the video clip.


Or in other words:

“Take Two!”

Breaking weather

Here's a look at the stationary front
that's been pulsing south Florida with a sequence
of epic dry season deluges the past two days.

Behind it (the black) is cold air.

Bring it on!

change in weather

One slough's two halves

Here’s a look at one of south Florida’s oldest hydrologic data sets.


It shows the annual volume of water discharged under the Tamiami Trail into downstream Shark River Slough from 1940 to present, courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Park Service.


It’s a "tale of two halves:"

Starting in the 1960s with completion of the C&SF Project, the majority of the water was diverted into the sloughs “western" half – through the S12s – for the purpose of putting it directly into Everglades National Park’s original boundary (as established in 1947).


That disparity is scheduled to change now that the Park boundary has been expanded to the east (as of 1989) and a re-engineering project is finally underway.

The goal is to “even out” and eventually “increase” the flow of freshwater south.

Ten year storm

A few weeks ago I mentioned a decadal trend of rising water in an area of the Everglades known as southern Water Conservation Area 3A.


There’s a fairly large dialog regarding "why."

Is it caused by operational changes in the gates that release water downstream, increases in inflows from the north, a decadal-long trend of elevated rainfall, or could other system dynamics be in play?


The only way to know for sure is to dig through the data from bottom to top.

Starting at the top with rainfall I can say, yes, it has been rainier over the past two decades in comparison to the two before.


That doesn’t quite get us to the bottom of the mystery,

But you’ve got to start somewhere!

S-12D

Tamiami triumph

Ground breaking, ribbon cutting … milestone?

When it comes to the long-awaited Tamiami Trail Project all three apply.


It is a “milestone” that literally lives up to its name.

The bridge that will result is one-mile long.


And to call it a “ground breaking” is also factually correct:

The bridge will replace an earthen berm that for decades has blocked water from flowing into northeast Shark River Slough and downstream towards Florida Bay.


But most of all in my mind it is a “ribbon cutting,” which figuratively, can be thought of as a giant pair of hydrologic scissors being used to cut a thin swath in the iconic “ribbon of asphalt” better known as the Tamiami Trail …

For the purpose of sending more slough water south.


You may well remember that it was just a year and a half ago that the same Tamiami Trail celebrated its 80th birthday.

It’s designation as a “trail” is a constant point of confusion for new visitors – perhaps leading them to believe that funny name on the map could be an unpaved footpath. We all know that the name takes historic root from the now century-old rally cry (circa 1915) to bridge the impenetrable and endless expanse of glades and swamps that lie between the south peninsula’s two coastal population hubs – Tampa and Miami.

By that token, the term “trail” is a perfect fit,

Those who built it were pioneer “trailblazers.”


Over the decades, the Trail became more than a path for moving people from coast to coast. People settled along it, and in the case of the Everglades, water works were retrofitted around it.

Starting in the 1950s with the Central and South Florida (C&SF) Project – a 25-yr project to re-engineer water in the Kissimmee-Okeechobee-Everglades flow way – the Trail was transformed into one of its main arterial conduits and assigned a confusing array of numbers along its path.

At the point of the ribbon cutting alone are the L-29, S-333, S-346, S12D, S-355s, L-67 Extension, The Culverts, WCA3A and 3B to mention a few.


Fittingly the project commenced to start last Friday in the shadows of Structure 333.

Yes, it’s the one-mile bridge made the “splashy” headlines in the local newspapers, but the pivotal design feature is much more pedestrian:

Hauling in limerock to raise the road for the other 10-miles two feet higher.

It’s that step that will enable water stage in the canal the S-333 feeds to rise high enough to finally flow south (through the culverts and the new one-mile bridge) into Shark River Slough’s northeast corner and onward down into the estuaries and Florida Bay.


The Everglades is less one big water work than it is a hydrologic machine in motion. Operational rules and infrastructure propagate water through the system in ways that makes the status quo hard to shake.



That makes this more than a bridge or more than a single project:

It’s a “mile marker" on the grassy river of restoration to come.



(The project is scheduled for completion in 2013. Click here to view the USACE press release on the event.)

Naples Beach

looking in the direction of

Key West to the south

"Chilled" but not cold

If Florida is warm, and Naples lies the warmer half of the state (the south), Key West takes the “cake” – or rather “pie” (as in Key Lime) – for being the warmest spot on the pensinsula –

Even if by definition it’s an island.


That, and its position so far south, impart Key West with a uniquely warm maritime climate, even by Florida standards.

The waters that surround it blunt it from diurnal heating and cooling of the peninsula and shield it from the continental creep of cold air from the north.

The result is as "evenly a warm climate" you’ll find in the Lower 48.


Naples, in comparison, is famously mild, but it does have a few cold days each year, as shown by the “cold” and “frigid” coding on the animated graph.

Key West escapes the brunt of those arctic blasts.


About as chilly as it gets in Key West is “cool,”

Which isn’t even as cold as its famous pie served up “chilled.”

clear view

"Black and white" monochrome

Two of the most prominent trees in the Big Cypress Swamp are slash pine and cypress.


It’s a bit of a trick to tell them apart in the summer:

From up in the air the view is “green” as far as the eye can see.


But come winter it couldn’t be more obvious:

The cypress lose their needles and turn whitish-gray.


That sets up a startling contrast between them and the enduring green of the pines, imparting the swamps with the look and feel of a “black and white” photograph.


Why is it then that a “black and white” conversion of a similar cypress-pine mix taken in summer with a color camera comes out nothing but “gray?”

Hint: Think monochrome!

northern winter waters

Kingsville, Maryland

Guilt-soaked sensation of dry feet

A walk in the woods is always refreshing, sometimes intentionally so … other times not.


Maryland in winter is a time to stay on the path, which is usually leafless, but most often well marked.

Contrast that with south Florida’s swamps where you can scamper at will through needle-free cypress … going really wherever your heart wants to roam.


On the latter you’re guaranteed to get your feet wet,

But on the former, you’d be better off not to risk it.


My brother and I were unexpectedly in Maryland last January.

In what remained of the winter-dwarfed afternoon daylight on my final day, we headed out for a hike along the Gunpowder River.

Usually at some point on any hike with my brother he moves ahead – not so much intentionally, but as a natural instinct of him being slightly older and possessing a good stride.


This time, however, was just the opposite –

He got hung up on an unexpected phone call.






I waited around at first – initially becoming captivated by a mysterious foot-wide ribbon of transparent water, which I straddled and watched slide across a bed of fallen leaves (it had recently rained) – but eventually I got an urge to move on:

It was cold (especially for a Floridian).

My brother would catch up.





The trail dropped along a steep grade, dipsy-doodled through a pine flat and passed beside a spooky roofless shanty, until finally I slowed to stop.

It wasn’t so much out of courtesy as it was necessity:

The path was gone!


In its place was a shin-deep freshet of fast flowing ice water, presumably fed from many of the same type of tiny trickles that I’d straddled and stepped over up higher on the hill.


It was not long thereafter that my brother came barreling down the trail.

All in an instant – and before I could say a word – he launched himself into the icy unknown.

Had he sized up the uncertain mix of stone, mud, water and fallen leaves so quickly?






Apparently not –

Two steps in (a good six were needed to cross) he found his foot falling with full weight through a hollow shell of leaves, followed by a “plunk” and a “splash” (and a few well placed “darns”).

He made it to the other side, but his shoes and socks where completely soaked.




He was stoic but steamed (if also freezing) – mostly at himself – but perhaps partly at me for what happened next.

A little ways upstream I found a spot that banked up high enough for me to jump – Tarzan like – to the safety of the opposite shore, arriving shortly thereafter dry toed by his side.


A year later aspects of the episode elude my grasp:

Had I failed in my one key duty of “hiking ahead” – to offer due warning and scope out alternatives for the predicament at hand?

Or was my brother just eager to “move ahead” on the hike (as he always does)?

Or was it as simple of him being preoccupation between two conversations?


Whichever the case, I let him take the lead for the rest of the hike.

I never felt so guilty about not getting my feet wet.

Fakahatchee's
Big Cypress Bend

Holiday plant brings no cheer

Here’s a batch of berries that are turning red just in time for the holiday season.


But make no doubt –

This is one plant (and a bazillion of berries) that illicit no holiday cheer.


Better known as Brazillian Pepper,

Its bushes have an insatiable appetite for sprouting out in every direction, smothering everything in their sight, and spreading across the swamps to their hearts content.

That’s where the berries (literally billions of them) and the birds that spread them factor in.


There’s an old tale here in the preserve about berry-clad Brazillian Pepper stems unwittingly being used as decorative ornaments at the annual holiday gathering.

Those peppers were duly confiscated, and the mistake never repeated.


If it were only so easy in the rest of the swamp!

entrance into
Everglades City