Wet season of '05

Do you remember the 2005 storm season?

It was one to remember. And a season that still haunts us -- in Florida and in communities across the Gulf Coast.

A record 28 storms formed, with a record 15 of those becoming hurricanes.

That kept us on watch all summer, all fall ... and even into the early winter. The last storm didn't run its course until January 6th. It was the season that upended the normal nomenclature of the English alphabet storm-naming system: the Greek alphabet was called in to relief pitch for the uplanned extra innings -- in the form of Delta, Epsilon, and Zeta --- in a season that seemed determined to never end.

In south Florida, 2005 was also a wet season to remember. It started fast out of the gate with 20-30 inches of rain in June. That was over twice the 10 inch average.

And then it ended with an exclamation point at the end of October with Wilma.

All told, over 50 inches of rain fell between the start of June and the end of October (2005) in Big Cypress National Preserve.

That was enough rain to push the wetting front up into the preverve's hydric pinelands for 6 consecutive months, twice the 3-month average.

It was a storm season that many communties along the Gulf Coast -- and nationally -- have stories about, especially the harrowing and heart-breaking accounts from Katrina.

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Even in places that did not sustain a direct hit, the unending parade of storms, and trying to track their ever changing trajectory, made many a soal succomb to various forms of Hurricane Fidget Disease, symptoms of which vary.

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I remember exactly where I was when I caught that syndrome, whatever it is and whatever you want to call it.

It was the year prior, in 2004, when Ivan formed in the Tropics and started its march towards the peninsula.

Charley, Francis, and Jeanne had already made landfall in Florida, each dropping their rains plentiful on the Lake and in the Kissimmee Valley.

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Had Ivan made Florida landfall, which it didn't, it would have set a new record for the most hurricane-strength storms to make landfall in Florida in a single year. Instead, it drifted further to the west where it eventually made landfall in Alabama, somewhat weaker than its early fury signaled, but bringing a good dose of rain to the panhandle.

When I was recently in southeast Texas, I was surprised -- and at first in disbelief -- to hear them recount harrowing tales of hydrologic havoc and forest-toppling winds from a storm that had pretty much slipped my consciousness, called Rita -- and also a storm of the 2005 season.

But I would have to forgive myself, there were simply too many storms that season to keep track. And with storms, we tend to remember the ones that hit closest to home.

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All over southeast Texas, in the Big Thicket, mature forests of Loblolly, Magnolia, and Beech trees that once arched up in a cathedral-like canopy of shaded light and greenish sunbeams were replaced with toppled tree stumps and a less interesting view of open sky.

Then there were the streams. It was hard to fathom on the day that I was there, but certain stream reaches rose 20-30 ft above stage, overflowing their stream banks and touching up against the edge of the 100 year floodplain.

There is a rule in south Texas:

Don't build on the 100 year floodplain.

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Or let me restate that.

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There should be a rule about building on the 100 year floodplain, wherever you live ... and in the event that you do build on the 100 year floodplain, the corollary piece of advice is to build your house on stilts.
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The same two pieces of advice apply when building along the coast in Florida.

Big Cypress rains

Here's an update on rainfall in Big Cypress National Preserve through the first half of the wet season.

About 20 inches of rain has fallen since the start of June.

Do you remember 2005 when 20 inches of rain fell in June alone, ... some stations recorded close to 30 inches?

June, July, August, and September are our 4 core wet season months: each averaging between 8 and 10 inches.

Tropical rains can also fall in October, essentially extending the depth and duration that water stays in the wetlands ... but those storms are hit and miss from year to year. The preserve's long-term average for October is only 4 inches.

And after October, from November to April, its back to 2 inches per month.

But that's looking way ahead:
We're not even done with July.

Battle of the Hoovers

Here's an update on the Battle of the Droughts between the Hoovers:

Herbert Hoover Dike's Lake Okeechobee has begun to rebound out of its record low territory. Yes, it made it a full 500 days (and running) below 11 ft above sea level. But that streak could be days away from coming to an end.

As for Hoover Dam's Lake Mead, out at the Arizona-Nevada border, it continues to drop to new lows. It's currently just above 1100 ft mean sea level, continuing its decade-long 100 ft plummet.

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That's surprising considering all the talk I've heard about the record snow up in the Rocky Mountains.

All I can figure is that the Burea of Reclamation must be filling up Lake Powell (behind Glen Canyon Dam) first. Glen Canyon is the dam that feeds water down into the Grand Canyon.

It's interesting to note the difference between a Florida drought and an American Southwest drought.

Out West they have a ton of places to store water, but not much rain (4 inches per year at Lake Mead). And without much of a snowpack, Lake Mead has had no place to go but down: dropping around 10 ft per year over the past 10 years.

Over here in Florida, we have lots of rain (55 inches per year), but not much place to store it. All it took was two years to drop from a fairly high level in Lake O into our record drought. But that was only a 7 ft drop ... total.

I'll have to look into the Lake Powell situation to find out more.

Carnivorous plants

What happens when you get lots of rain, all year around, that just sits there, until it slowly percolates through the soil, leaching away the nutrients, and creating hard clay at the soils surface, plus a regular fire regime?

That's how you make a carnivorous plant garden!

Or at least, that's what you get up in the Wetland Pine Savannah's of Big Thicket National Preserve in southeast Texas along the Sundew Trail.

These are flat areas, not directly connected to lowland drainages, but which are regularly flooded from the 55-60 inches of pure rain that falls pretty consistently throughout the year.

The ground-hugging sundew is one of the harder ones to spot, unlike the pitcher plant that really stands out (and up, standing tall).

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The steady diet of insects gives the plants the nutrients they need, and that the soil doesn't have.

Interestingly, I noticed earlier this summer that carnivorous plants were prominently featured in floral shops in Belgium.

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They don't grow their natively, or at least I don't think they do, but they are right at home with all the house flies buzzing in through open windows.

It makes me wonder why there aren't carnivorous plants in south Florida. We have fire and nutrient-poor soils.

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I'll have to check up on that one.

Neches River Saltwater Barrier

The Neches River has an impressive saltwater barrier near its mouth at Beaumont, Texas.

Saltwater historically didn't reach that far up into the river, but construction of a barge canal between the Sabine and Neches, providing access for large ships from the Gulf of Mexico, opened the door for the saltwater wedge to reach farther inland.

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Even then, saltwater intrusion only seasonally becomes a problem when the freshwater flow in the Neches starts to bottom out. I don't know the exact flow rate when that happened, but it was probably around a few thousand cubic feet per second, a condition that most typically occurs in the summer and fall.

That puts industrial water users, the city of Beaumonts water supply, not to mention the ecology of the river and its riparian corridor at risk.

I was amazed by the diveristy of wetland habitats along the riparian corridor just upstream of the barriers, including sloughs and canoeable cypress forests.

A temporary barrier, put in and taken out seasonally, had been used to correct the problem for the past few decades, but finally in 2003 the new permanent structure was completed, in cooperation between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Lower Neches Valley Authority.
Could such a structure be in store in the future for the Caloosahatchee in response to sea level rise?

Lake takes high road

Lake Okeechobee did it:

500 days below 11 ft above sea level!

It seemed like a no brainer that it would make it to 500 just a couple weeks ago ...

But talk about making it by a hare -- and yes, that's the correct spelling.

After two and a half years of The Tortoise leading the way across the water cycle, The Hare has burst back on the scene in a big way.

As of yesterday, the Lake was at 10.5 ft above sea level and rising.

At it's current rate of rise, its days of under 11 ft are truly numbered.

I wouldn't give 600 days a chance, let alone 510.

But as usual with the water cycle:

It's another we'll-have-to-wait-and-see.

But at least for now, the Lake appears to be taking the high road.

The Lake rebounded out of the 2001 drought by rising from 9 to 15 ft above sea level between late June and early November.

Compare that to 2007, when from the same starting point, the Lake took the low road, rising less that 1.5 ft between the same time span.

The Lake already has 2007 beat in that regard.

Which path will the Lake take from here?

That's anyone's guess, but at last peek, with the Kissimmee flowing in at over 2000 cfs, the Lake is on track to keep rising.

Photos were taken earlier this summer in eastern Belgium

Town Bluff Dam

Here's a few photos and some data on Town Bluff Dam.

The Dam is located in southeast Texas on the Neches River at the headwaters of Big Thicket National Preserve. The pool of water behind it is called the BA Steinhagen Reservoir.

The name of the Town -- Town Bluff -- is a dead give away to why they built a dam there.

The high bluffs that rise up on either side of the floodplain made it a strategic local for plugging the river.

But the Lower Neches has a broad floodplain: so this isn't your narrow Hoover Dam type gorge.

Town Bluff dam is over a mile long.

What I find really exciting about the dam is that the US Geological Survey has been monitoring flows in the Neches at downstream Evadale since the 1920s, and in a downstream tributary of the Neches -- called Village Creek -- since the 1940s.

Town Bluff dam didn't get built until the 1950s.

That means the data set can give us a peak into how the dam altered flows in the Neches River.

Among other things, dams tend to dampen the amplitude of peak flood events.

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We can see that for Town Bluff Dame in the graphic below. It shows the peak springtime flow measured in the Neches at Evadale and, for comparison purposes, also in the dam-less Village Creek that feeds into the river.

Prior to the Dam, the Neches regularly peaked at over 30,000 cfs, even as high as 80,000 cfs ... but has rarely exceeded that level over the past 50 years. In comparison, the un-dammed Village Creek shows no difference in peak flooding events over its period of record.

Peak springtime flows play a vital role for maintain and replenish oxbows and sand bars, critical ecological components of the riparian corridor. That was the reason that they momentarily opened the spillways on Glen Canyon spillways earlier this year, in attempt to help rebuild sand bars along the banks of the Colorado River in Grand Canyon National Park downstream.

It rains in SE Texas

When does it rain in The Big Thicket?

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That would be all year, ...

and lots of it:

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55-60 inches per year.

That's very much like south Florida.

It's that abundance of water explains the similarities in wetland communities between south Florida and southeast Texas, particularly the cypress.

But unlike south Florida, the large majority of wetlands in The Big Thicket run along and are connected to riparian corridors.

I'm talking distinct riparian channels ... with bank to bank measureable flow ... and with sandy oxbows that hide bayous around their corners.

As usual, the US Geological Survey has been monitoring flows going back decades. That makes The Big Thicket another fascinating place to track the water cycle.

The story this year so far has been the absence of rain since the start of July.

That has rivers and creek corridors running at 10 year lows.

And in The Big Thicket, summer is typically the low-water time of year.

That's the polar opposite to south Florida, where the late summer is rising-water and high-water season.

The Neches River, for example, averages a flow rate of around 12,000 cfs during the spring compared to only a 3,000 cfs flow rate during the late summer.

It's current flow rate is around 2,000 cfs -- thanks to discharges from the upstream BA Steinhagen Reservoir, maintained by the US Army Corps of Engineers for, among other things, water supply for downstream Beaumont.

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But the summer isn't always low.

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Just last July, a year ago, the river was flowing at 15,000 cfs.

Peak flow events -- and high ones, the kind that overflow into the adjacent floodplain, are always just a heavy rainstorm away in east Texas.

That could have been Dolly, but word from the forecasters is that its steering further south.

Cypress stumble hazard

Here's an up-to-date graph showing location of the wetting front in Big Cypress National Preserve relative to last year, the 10-year average, and some recent years of note (2005, 1998, and 1995).

It's only July and the pinelands have already gotten had their feet wet for a half month.

If that seems early, think back just a few years ago in 2005 when 20 inches of June rain pushed the wetting front up into the pinelands for 6 consecutive months, from mid June to mid November.

That made 2005 an early, long, and deep wet season ... capped off with an exclamation point of Wilma at the end.
During the typical year, the wetting front moves up into the pinelands for about a 3-month span, usually between August and November.

When that happens, the wet prairies are over ankle deep in water, the tall cypress are shin deep, and the sloughs are at or above the knee.

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Swamp walkers should take extra precaution:

watch out for potholes, watch out for floating logs, and watch out for cypress knees.

All will trip you up, but the submerged cypress knee will leave you with a pretty good shin bruise to boot, adding insult to injury, ... or in this case, just the opposite: adding injury to insult.

Henderson Creek

The recent storm momentarily turned Henderson back into a roaring creek, at least at the tailwater pool of the structure.

What's interesting is that water is flowing in from all directions; from both Henderson Creek Canal -- over its spillway and through its gate, and also from the Tamiami Trail Canal, especially from the east.

That makes me wonder if and how flows can be monitored during such an event. My understanding is that the rating curves are based on flow going over the spillway and gate.

But I may be wrong: I'll have to double check with collegues on that.

And as for the bubbles. That's from all the turbulence churning up the water, probably not unlike what you see at the seashore. But the presence of bubbles, especially ones that hang around, is also an artifact of the chemical composition of the water. I'll have to do some more research on that too.

This video -- or at least the version I uploaded -- is a little grainy, and I was hoping to put a more thorough video together on it to show the water from all angles, but this will do for now. I shot it on Friday.

Waiting out the storm

Fourth horseman rides into southwest Florida

Rain Or Shine Report for July 18th

After being away, out of south Florida, for the past couple weeks, I was eager to get back and crunch the data to see where everything was at.

At least that was the plan.

But by Monday morning I saw that the sky had something else in mind. Namely, lots of clouds, all day, and a thorough drenching … for four days straight.

Here in southwest Florida it hasn’t stopped raining since our plane landed in RSW Airport.

So what’s the saying:
Waiting out the storm.

That’s exactly what I did. There was no sense in talking about last week’s data – or even the last 3 weeks for that matter – when the current week was already shaping up to be a game changer.

The weather finally started to break by Wednesday evening, and by Thursday morning, with the reappearance of our traditional blue morning sky of the summer here in southwest Florida, it seemed safe to say that the storm had passed …

And even gave way to our typical pattern:
Sea breeze fed clouds rose out of the Everglades by the afternoon.

But we’ve said it before that our annual rain allotment is delivered by the stampeding hooves of the Four Horsemen, not one, and the enhanced sea breeze (our old faithful) just can’t pull the wagon itself.

Which horseman was this most recent storm?

Chalk it up as Horseman #4: the Tropical Tempest.
No, it didn’t have rotation, or not much, and could not muster much wind, or thunder, let alone lightening … but chalk it up as a rainmaker to remember. And now it’s headed up north toward Lanier. When it’s all said and done, it could kill two birds (i.e., end two droughts - southwest Florida and southeast US) with a single stone. That’s a bad saying, but you know what I mean.

We’ll have to keep an eye on Lanier to see if it gets a boost.

As for Lake Okeechobee, it’s now risen above 10 ft, but it’s still below 11, and from the looks of it, it appears safe say that the Lake will make it to 500 consecutive days below the 11 ft mark.

The shame of it is that I won’t be here to celebrate the milestone: I’ll be in southeast Texas where incidentally, just like south Florida and just like the Hautes Fagnes of Belgium, it also gets around 55 inches of rain per year. The rain in southeast Texas is spread out pretty evenly throughout the year, unlike here, but their rivers there peak in spring thanks to the continental source of its headwaters.

But back to south Florida.
Do you remember the meager dry season of 2 inches per month rains, with 3 inches considered wet, at least relative to the dry season average.

Compare that to the recent turn of events, or flipping of the switch as we say.

The southwest coast, from Naples to Ft Myers, has received almost 20 inches since the start of June, with 5 inches of that coming over the past 4 days. Big Cypress National Preserve is not far behind at 18 inches, with over 3 inches over the past 4 days.

Marco Island momentarily returned to its access-by-boat-only days of yore, sort of like Chokoloskee pre 1953 before the causeway.

Jolly bridge was closed for a time until water on the road receded. The Marco rain gage recorded a whopping 6 inches of rain on the final day of the storm, and 11 inches total over the past 4 days.
Compare that to the Kissimmee, and the Lake, and the east coast that have been in wet season mode, but not the chart topping rains we’ve seen on the southwest corner of the peninsula.

I’m eager to see how much the rain raised water levels and increased flows … but that will have to wait until next week.

The photos of water flowing are from Henderson Creek Canal where it spills over the final weir before heading to Rookery Bay. Water hasn’t flown over the spillway since Ernesto swept through in late July of 2006.

But all streaks eventually come to an end.
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Please take note, if you haven’t already, that I’ve changed the Journal around a bit. I’m trying to streamline it so that it is an easier tool for accessing water information.

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Towards that end, I’ve added links to other water blogs and links to handy water data sites right on the front page of the journal, including the Watershed Windshield database maintained at Florida Gulf Coast University.

I’ve also made changes so the journal will be easier to maintain. I’ve overhauled the Wet off the Press newspaper links so that it’s always accessible from the front page of the journal, and also added the relatively wordless Photo of the Day feature, which replaces the wordier Liquid Lens postings. Let me know if you have any photos you’d like the post.

1 week from 500

There's been some fanfare surrounding the Lake's rise back above 10 ft. (view article)

But the bigger news to me -- or at least the one that I've been eyeing for the past half year -- is the Lake's close in on 500 days below the 11 ft mark.

The Lake is now one week away from making it to 500 days below the 11 ft mark.

What's the significance of 11 ft?

That's the level below which most of the wetlands inside the interior walls of the levee go dry.

Below 10 ft, even the deeper potholes go dry.



So yes, the rise above 10 ft is significant; especially with it coming so early in the wet season.

Last year, it took all the way until October -- the very end of the wet season -- for the Lake to squeek above 10. The talk of the peninsula was that it could drop below 8 feet, even lower, before the wet season was throught.

But that dire prediciton never came true:

The Lake flat-lined at right around 10 ft for the next 6 months, until early May, thanks to a surprisingly wet dry season. I say surprising because the La Nina was supposed to make it a dry dry season.

How does this the Lake's current streak below 11 ft compare to the 2001 drought?

In 2001, the Lake fell below the 11 ft mark for just over 200 days. That makes the current streak already twice as long as 2001, not to mention longer than a full calender year.

It will be interesting to see how much rain the Lake gets out of the depression that's dropped so much rain in southwest Florida over the past few days. The forecasters mentioned it could pass over the Kissimmee Valley as it moves north.

You can view a historical calendar of Lake stage, color coded relative to its position in the littoral zone, from the 1930s to present.

Back to the grindstone

There's a saying that all good things must come to an end.

And sadly, that's a saying that especially applies to vacations ...

and also when visiting with family and friends.

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But, thankfully, it is also a saying that does not apply to the water cycle:

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The water cycle just keeps spinning from one season to the next, and then next, and from year to year to year.

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Before you know it 10 years have gone by.

That's how long I've been in south Florida.

Looking back, I can't decide which goes faster: the water cycle or vacations.

In any event, so ends an all-too-brief sojourn through the bucolic countryside of Belgium's eastern realms.

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So yes, vacations eventually erode to their final day, and yes it can be heart breakingly sad (plus triste) to say good bye ... until the next time of course (la prochain fois), especially when travel distances and times are so far (and these days also so expensive).

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But when it comes to the water cycle you can really throw that saying out the window.

The water cycle -- no matter where you are or where you go -- is the show that never ends.

Each day, come rain or come shine, the water cycle is there all around us. It's part mathematical and part mystery, part predictable and part you-never-know-what-you'll-get-next, sometimes boring, often times exciting, but most of all its 100 percent fun and downright infectious to track.

Whether in Belgium or south Florida, or anywhere else for that matter, tracking the water cycle is as good a way as there is to stay connected to the places that we live and work and try to make sense of.

But let's also be truthful.

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The water cycle is just funner to track in places that get the most rain, such as Belgium -- up on the Hautes Fagnes -- and during the summers in Florida, when 10 inches per month is a routine occurrence.

The Sonoran Desert's 10 inches of rain per year seems to pale in comparison.

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Unless of course its monsoon season, which is exactly what season it is now, from July to September, when storms sweep up from the south from Sea of Cortez, dry arroyo beds rumble alive with rolling water fed from the foothills above, and riparian river beds fill to their banks with mountain charged groundwater seepage where once was just a trickle.

That's another great thing about the water cycle:

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It's customed tailored to each place it calls home, whether desert, mountain, river, or swamp.
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In any event, it's good to be back home to the water cycle I know best.

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Back to the grindstone!

Coastal plain willow

The only willow that naturally occurs in south Florida is Salix caroliniana, a wide-ranging species found throughout the southeastern US . Willows in south Florida barely lose their leaves in December before the catkin inflorescences (female above, male below) appear and the new crop of leaves burst forth.

Coastal plain willows are small trees growing in hydric habitats. Like most hardwood species, willows are capable of sprouting back after fire.

Rule of the right

It turns out that The Gileppe has a twin just a couple ten kilometers away: Le Barrage de la Vespre.

It’s about 50 years old, young compared The Gileppe, but still old in water years.

And it is a more modern style concrete arch dam, unlike the earthen fill of The Gileppe.

Fortunately, we were with a savvy driver, who was able to weave us into obscure roadlets with better-than-we-bargained-for views that a fresh-off-the-boat tourist would never manage to find … at least intentionally. As much as I’ve enjoyed riding a bike in Belgium, I would be very hesitant to drive there.

Yes, drivers generally move faster, and more aggressively, especially during straight-aways, and the roads – and the lanes – are much narrower and curvier (thus explaining the penchant for speeding up for straight-aways).

And yes, in terms of navigating on a road, you don’t so much head out in a direction as you go from point to point.

And yes, above all it’s unfamiliar terrain – despite the wise tale that says you are most likely to get into an accident within a 2-mile radius of your home.

But none of those reasons bothers me much.

But “The Rule of the Right” does.

The primary rule of engagement of the roadways is an unintuitive principle called “The Rule of the Right.” I should probably rephrase that: the rule was unintuitive to me, as I think it would be to most non-Belgians. But for Belgians, it’s hardwired in their driving DNA.

The corollary to the rule is that there are no stop signs in Belgium.

But who needs them with “The Rule of the Right.” So long as you know (remember, detect) that at the intersection of any two roads, no matter how big small or hard to see, the vehicle turning right always has the right of way … then there really is no reason to stop.

Not only is there not a reason to stop, there’s also a disincentive to not stop, or even slow down.

The Rule of the Right originally came with a caveat that if you stopped or hesitated, or in some inner circles of aggressive drivers, even blinked you eyes – you forfeited your priority to turn.

Over the years, this hesitation caveat inspired drivers to be even more aggressive in order not to lose priority. The hesitation caveat also tended to make fender benders more difficult to resolve (did he pause or didn’t he), not to mention making the roadways considerably more dangerous: a flinch from one car would be answered with an acceleration from the other, or alternatively, encouraging drivers to blind turn to the right without consideration that the on-coming straight-away car (or truck or tractor) may not even see them.
Fortunately, law makers stepped in to save to the day with recent elimination of the “no pause” rule. (It’s the talk of the town). Now, even if you pause, you still retain your priority to turn right – if you dare.

I’m sure I could master the Rule of the Right for a short simple trip, from point A to point B; but during the course of a longer trip, or if I lost my way and way trying to find a particular spot, I’m sure that I would lapse into straight-away priority mindset: and what to they say about accidents … it only takes one accident to erase a thousand did-it-safelys. (Actually, I just made that up).

But even if I did eventually get the Rule of the Right down pat, there is the constant threat of the road detour arrows.

In fact, the road detour arrow is a ubiquitous feature of the roadway, as common as stop signs in America.

You’ll rarely find a flagmen in Belgium waving an alternating flow of one-way traffic by the construction zone: they just detour you a country mile (in this case a country kilometer) around the work through a labyrinth of winding roads, never without a good half dozen arrows, on a scenic tour to see more cows.

That’s easy – if also annoying – for the locals, but for an out-of-towner (or even further away) like me, it takes a couple ten detours to get the mental map reoriented again.

If only those cows could tell directions.
And then finally the detour arrows spill you back on the main route … and remember, your Rule of the Right priority fully intact.

Just in time for another rotary!

Did I mention the rotaries?

Traffic engineers love rotaries: they are an efficient and self-regulating way to maintain orderly traffic flow at multi-road intersections, particularly where traffic volumes are higher, … and without the need for stop signs.

As you can imagine, rotaries are a common sight in Belgium, with an extremely tight radius for turning.

And rotaries are the only place that the Rule of the Right does not apply.

And did I mention you cannot turn right on red at a stop light, not even if you stop.

Go figure.

The Gileppe

The source of the Nile? That would be Lake Victoria.

The source of the Meuse? That would be the Hautes Fagnes.

Whenever you have high ground with lots of rain or snow falling on it, it is the headwater source of the springs, creeks, and rivers that flow in the valley below.

In the case of the Meuse, the term “source” is a bit of a misnomer. It’s recharged with water along its entire watershed – through groundwater seepage and tributary channels – not just conveying water from some upstream font.

And where the plateau drops into valleys is often where you find some pretty steep crevasses, which from a water supply standpoint are strategic places for building dams.

The Gileppe is one such dam. It is located at the edge of the plateau (of the Hautes Fagnes) meets the valley below, just uphill of the small Belgian city of Eupen. What’s incredible about The Gileppe is not that it is 1 kilometer wide, or 2.5 kilometers thick, or that it has a sculpture of a giant lion that sits at its rim overlooking into the valley below, or that it has a +200 ft tall viewing tower overlooking the reservoir and dam (sadly the viewing tower was closed on Mondays, which was the day we visited): But that it was built in 1867! *

I’m no dam historian – or barrages as they call them in Belgium, but 1867 pre-dates the Hamilton Disston’s inaugural drainage of the untamed Everglades.

Even the dams in Europe are ancient!
* The barrage was enlarged in the early 1970s to its current dimension.

Hautes Fagnes

You always hear that there is only one Everglades, and yes that is probably the case.

But the Hautes Fagnes, like the Moors of England, and other wetland systems throughout the world, have their similarities … and are each unique in their own way.

The views from the Hautes Fagnes are spectacular: and you don’t need a viewing tower to see them.

That’s because they are located on the highest point in Belgium, and – as I mentioned before – its wettest.

They crest in height at the Signal de Botrage, located at 694 meters above sea level. That’s a big leap up from Florida’s 1-3 meters above sea level marshes. Not only does it offer scenic views, the high plateau is the “rain maker” of the Hautes Fagnes. The high plateau is the first topographic obstacle that coastal storms encounter as they flow onshore across mainland Europe. That orthographically forces the clouds to move higher in the sky, where they cool and condense, bringing 55 inches and over 200 days of rain to the Hautes Fagnes per year. If you add in cloudy days, you can count your lucky stars to catch a glimpse of blue sky up the high fens.

The dominant grass is purple-moor grass. It out competes other specialized species, forming a monoculture of hummocky and rolling prairie. Sounds sort of like the Everglades’ sawgrass.

The dominant tree is spruce, and it also forms a monoculture of its own kind. But don’t confuse it with the slash pines of the Everglades, because spruce is not a natural tree for Belgium, let alone the Hautes Fagnes.

Spruce was brought in generations ago for its agricultural yield as a timber crop, and in the Hautes Fagnes, that involved drainage.
Now that does sound like the Everglades!

A big part of managing the Hautes Fagnes is keeping them free of spruce: not only in terms of their footprint, but also in terms of their impact on the natural water cycle of the adjacent fens.
Controlling the spruce is probably not unsimilar to our efforts to keep maleleuca out of the Everglades. But in this case, the spruce are still retained for commercial timber production, right next door to the fens on the other side of the drainage ditch.

I’d like to find out more and spend more time roaming aimlessly on the open tranquil pathways of the Hautes Fagnes. Cobble paths of what I assume is native stone gives way to winding rail-less wooden boardwalks … probably made from the nearby spruce, but that’s just a guess.

Why do my most memorable hikes always involve rain: and not being adequately prepared, but forging ahead any how?

In this case, with storm clouds rolling up the valley in waves – unleashing their rain as they rise to the top, the prudent decision was to turn back … especially without proper rain gear.

Yes, if you want to be truly beautiful, you’ve got to walk through the rain, but not a cold wind-driven Belgium rain on the Hautes Fagnes! For that you need good rain gear from head to toe, and something “more substantial” than an order of frittes in your belly.

Everglades of Belgium

Here’s a quick comparison of average rainfall in Belgium versus south Florida.

The Belgium data is for the whole country, as listed on a tourism pamphlet … so it’s not definitive – and probably for Brussells, but it provides at least a nice ball park comparison.
Belgium’s rainiest month, on average, is August, with just under 4 inches. As for its lowest month? That’s hard to discern – an average of 2 and 3 inches falls every month.

That’s a big difference from the bimodal pattern in south Florida: around 8 inches during the summer months and around 2 inches in the winter months.

But hold the press!

There’s one spot it Belgium that rivals Florida rainfall with a whopping 55 inches of rain per year.

And don’t forget the difference in latitude in terms of sun strength.

That means that quite a bit more of that 55 inches in Belgium stays on and seeps down into the watershed, as opposed to the high evaporation losses in Florida.

It’s called the Hautes Fagnes (High Fens)

… and sometimes called the “Everglades of Belgium.”

By the way, some Belgians refer to the Everglades as the “Hautes Fagnes of Florida.”
More on the Hautes Fagnes later.

Belgian rains

Turns out that I’ve under estimated Belgium’s water cycle.

Yes, Florida has its four horsemen – and yes they are scary – and yes they delivery more rain over the course of the year than in Belgium. And yes, I also mentioned (now I know mistakenly) that Belgium's rain delivery wagon is pulled by the equivalent of ponies in comparison.But if we have our umbrella season, typically around 4 months long; Belgium has its umbrella year.

On any given day it can rain, and the rain – when it comes – can come out of nowhere, and rain in cold torrents. That’s a big difference from the well telegraphed storms we see in south Florida, the ones that you can see coming from miles away.

And then when you’ve pretty much given up on the day – and called in a “rain out” – and sought refuge at a nearby House of Frittes*, the clouds part and an incredible sky of blue shines through, at least for the moment.
(*Frites are French fries, but I’m constantly reminded around here that it’s Belgium, not France, that is famous for its fries, and by most accounts invented them. Frites stands are all over the place, and they come in all shapes and sizes, and are most popularly eaten with mayonnaise.)

And the toughest decision a Belgian faces each day?

That would be what to wear!
But part of that is a recent wrinkle to Belgium’s weather chart.

A decade ago rains were more telegraphed – the classic cirrus, stratus, cumulus transition that gave you a solid few days of rain. Thanks to a shift in the Gulf Stream, those fabled “Belgium rains” been replaced in part with “England style” rains where waves of clouds and patches of blue sweep through at a harrying speed … and leave you guessing all day long what it will do next.

The saying: “if you don’t like the weather just wait 5 minutes … because it’s sure to change,” applies no place better than Belgium. Especially when these depressions move through.

And after 2 weeks of very warm days – and granted, I call them warm, but I’ve been wearing long pants every day: the past week has been sweater and jacket weather.
As 10-year veteran of south Florida’s climate, I’m inclined to borrow from Mark Twain’s famous quib about San Francisco summers, that “the coldest winter I’ve spent in 10 years is a summer in Belgium.” Even on cold winter days in south Florida I usually end up in shorts by mid day.

And as for the storms not being strong: I have to scratch that assumption off the list as well.

A cold front moved through from the west and brought with it booming thunder that rattled windows, and filled the rain barrels up on short order. And did I mention the wind. That’s what you need the jacket for, because it will blow right through a sweater, not to mention when the sweater is damp with rain.

And did I mention when that cold front started to overtake the sky that I was a good ten to twenty kilometers from home, on a bike, without a cell phone, and no map, and not even sure if I was in Belgium – Germany and Netherlands are nearby.

The good news is that there are lots of train tunnels to take refuge in … or should I rather say: car tunnels under a train overcrossings. That would be just down right silliness to hide in a train tunnel. And there were enough patches of daylight inside the waves of rain clouds to get me home at least partially dry.

But mostly wet!

You can’t understand Belgium until you’ve gotten soaken wet in its rain. That’s a nod to the famous Belgium saying that “if you want to be truly beautiful, you’ve got to walk in the rain.”

I’m not sure if it also applies to bike riding.

Le Canal Albert

Here is a photo of one of the two big rivers in Belgium – La Meuse – taken from a bridge in the city of Liège.

It flows to the north and discharges into the sea in the lowlands of the Netherlands very close to the mouth of the Rhine.

The other big river in Belgium is called L’Escaut, whose mouth is near the major industrial port of Antwerp.

For generations visionaries had dreamed of connecting La Meuse and L’Escaut – and in 1939, about the same time that the US Army Corps of Engineers in Florida were wrapping up the Herbert Hoover Dike around Lake Okeechobee and the Bureau of Reclamation had clogged the Colorado with Hoover Dam, that vision became a reality:

Belgium celebrated opening of navigation between the two rivers via Le Canal Albert.

The canal is 100 km long and cuts across some incredibly hilly terrain: making it an engineering endeavor of great prowess, and an economic juggernaut to the country.

To be sure there is a lot more I have to learn about the canal.

The good news is I have an excellent text book on Le Canal Albert – given to me by a colleague at the University of Liege.

The bad news is that it is in French.

The consolation?

Fortunately there are plenty of photos, maps, and figures.

That will at least get me started.

USS Pensacola

This American Flag is an original from the USS Pensacola.
The owner of the place we are renting over here in Belgium served in the Belgian Navy – and since retiring has stayed active as a volunteer, and during a good will visit to the Norfolk Naval Base was bestowed an American Flag from the USS Pensacola.

He hoisted the flag all day on the 4th of July in commemoration of our US holiday.

It was my impression that he did it every year, but was especially pleased this year to have visiting Americans – from Florida no less.

(Eyes light up around here when you tell them you’re from Florida.)

He is of the generation of Belgians with vivid memories of American GIs liberating the country during World War II – The Battle of the Bulge to be specific. He mentioned that it was American GIs that first introduced him as a boy to chewing gum and to white bread, and that the Americans provided medical services in the wake of devastation from the war.

He also expressed concern over the plummeting value of the US Dollar – some of which he owns as part of his financial portfolio.

“Not to worry,” I said – “my financial portfolio is 100 percent US Dollars. My recommendation is to buy them now while you can because the long view is their value is sure to rise”.

Buy low, sell high: that’s an axiom, like many, that’s easier said than done.

In the meanwhile I’ve been trying to buy as little as possible because the weak dollar makes everything 50 percent more expensive than the price tag reads in Euros. Of course there is no escaping drinking water, but I’ve been drinking for free from the tap.
And there is no mistaking good hospitality: this year’s 4th of July will be one that I will remember fondly and with special meaning.

Henri Chapelle

Not too far from the US Mail mailbox I found an arrow sign demarked with “US Cemetery.”

It had no mileage on it, or in this case kilometers, but I followed the arrow sign until I came upon another, and then another and yet again another, all the while climbing up higher and higher and higher.

A good hour of pedaling eventually led me to my destination:

The Henri Chapelle American Cemetery.

The cemetery and memorial are dedicated to 7,989 US Soldiers, most of whom died while liberating the hill top on September 12, 1944 during German counter-offensive in the Ardennes popularly known as the “Battle of the Bulge”.

To my surprise, the cemetery is maintained by the US Government: the American Battle Monuments Commission, which was established by law in 1923.

The cemetery lies on 57 acres.

That’s a deceptive number, however.

The site actually appears to be much bigger than that because it sits on the top of a ridge crest.

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And the spectacular and expansive view of the Berwinne stream it overlooks.

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The memorial contains a museum and chapel on respective ends of the memorial; and the cemetery is overlooked by a “bronze statue of the Archangel bestowing a laurel branch upon the heroic Dead.”

The pillars of the monument “are engraved with the seals of the wartime 48 states, 3 territories, and the District of Columbia”.
Florida was easy to find – it has a very distinctive seal – but my native state of Maryland proved to be the hardest. I almost gave up trying to find it, but vowed not to stop looking until I succeeded, even with rain clouds gliding in across the Berwinne Valley.

This was an instance where a glimpse did not serve me well. My initial quick glances gave way to incremental cross elimination of each pillar. Even then I had to go back and inspect each pillar separately.

Until finally – Eureka! – after staring at a seal that had no state name designated on it at all, but was rather inscribed completely in Latin, I spotted the unique Maryland Flag within the seal … no other state has such a distinctive flag in my opinion.

But back to the engraved seals. All the other states and territories had their names clearly spelled out around the rim of the seal.

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I’m still not sure why Maryland was different.

Anyhow, it’s the 4th of July – my first such 4th not on American soil.

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But in walking the open air hallway between the pillars, each engraved with a state seals, and the American flag flapping overhead, I felt strangely at home among the other European tourists, and honored to be there.

US mail

About half way between Lontzen and Montzen, not too far from the German border -- on a mapless bike ride over the hilly terrain of eastern Belgium, I caught a glimpse of this mailbox out of the corner of my eye.

To be sure I circled back around.

And yes, I was right -- or rather the corner of my eye was right:

The shiny silver mailbox read "US Mail" with the American bald eagle on it.

It's amazing what we can see, with such accuracy, in a glimpse.

As it turns out, the mailbox is situated on the rolling hills where the Battle of the Bulge unfolded, a major turning point in World War II.

It's been a week of non-stop sun in Belgium, much like shown in these photos. Today was hot. Not Florida hot, but maybe Boston summer hot.

And I've noticed the water line in the rain barrels has been steadily dropping.

But there's news of a change in the weather to the colder and wetter, including a thunderstorm.

Average start out of gate

June rains mostly average
Rain Or Shine Report for July 1

Have the Four Meteorological Horsemen of south Florida’s atmosphere “gone out to pasture”?

It’s still too early to tell:

But word in from the wire is that this year’s June rainfall totals is … we were right around normal for most basins.
The Enhanced Sea Breeze typically does “go out to pasture” – at least to a degree – once we move solidly into July. That’s a result of more homogenous air blowing into the upper atmosphere off the Bermuda High and the westerly blowing Jet Stream moving farther north.

So June is a critical rainfall month – especially coming off of an extended drought – for getting a “fast start out of the gate” to the wet season.

Big Cypress National Preserve lead the way with 10.6 inches of rain, and the southwest Coast was also above 10 inches for the month, which may seem like a lot; but keep in mind that both areas average right around 10.5 inches of June rain.
Compare that to Lake Okeechobee that only received 7.1 inches of June rain.

That would be down right droughty for June in The Big Cypress, but not for The Lake: the 10-year June average over Okeechobee is right around 7 inches.

Why the drop off over the Lake?

The land surface heating and convectional updraft of air that is the basic building block of the Enhanced Sea Breeze is dampened by the cooler temperatures of the Lake’s surface.
But to answer the original question:

No, the horsemen are not out to pasture.

And the horsemen are not ponies (as shown in the photos)!

At least in Florida they are not … but in Belgium, maybe rains are a little more like ponies.

When it rains in Belgium, it’s generally just another gloomy (boring) day that you’re stuck inside, and even when its not raining there are enough clouds in the sky to keep you on the inside looking out.

But when one of the Four Horsemen rides across Florida: I wouldn’t classify it as a gloomy affair, it’s down right scary. The sky blackens, winds swirl and lightening crashes: you don’t so much “go inside” as you “take cover”.