Summer Drought

Our land is normally quite dry in the summer.  It lies on the lee side of Sideling Hill and consequently gets only a fraction of the rain that falls further to the west.  This year has been a bit worse than normal.  Although nowhere near as bad as the heat and drought hitting Texas this year, the dryness has caused some difficulties in our efforts at developing the land.  The biggest problem has been the dust that is produced when we dig.  In places, the soil has become a two inch thick layer of material which we have been comparing to Moon dust.  Merely walking on it or especially driving the equipment over it produces clouds of dust like a fog.  We have resorted to the wearing of respirators whenever we work on excavation.  Also, the dryness has made it dangerous to have open fires to burn the brush we regularly produce when we cut down trees to clear the land.  I have instituted the rule that we cannot burn except on days after a rain or during a rain.  Since it has barely rained for the past four weeks, we have slowed our brush clearing efforts because piles of dry brush are in themselves a fire hazard.  I really do not want to be responsible for burning down my own forest.  Hopefully as we move into the late summer and early Autumn the rains will come more frequently.

No, this is not the footprint of Buzz Aldrin in the regolith of Mare Tranquillitatis but my own footprint in the dust of West Virginia.

This stream-bed on our land contains a raging torrent of water over a foot deep in the spring, but here, two months later, there is not a drop of water to be seen.