It turns out that the remnants of Hurricane Tammy were just what I was looking for to help relieve the drought. Chez Turner got about three inches of rain over the last four days.
On Friday, I pulled a receipt out of my raincoat that was dated June. It made me think: had it really been that long since we got a good drenching?
By conincidence of scheduling, we had our long-time grading problem fixed on Thursday. Water had a history of ponding up in the corner of our yard, but no longer. A new drainpipe, a few dump truck loads of dirt, and a bit of grading moved the water correctly from one end of our yard to the other. Kelly and I gleefully waded out in Friday night’s rain to watch the water drain. The things that pass for entertainment nowadays, huh?
Now to seed our newly-reclaimed yard and put even more water on it until our grass is back to normal.
Actually Tammy never became a hurricane, and it’s path ended up taking it nowhere near us. While it’s possible the rain we received came from the tail end of Tammy, more likely it was from a long cold front that stretched from Canada down to the Gulf (where, yes, it interacted with Tammy).
While it’s true Tammy wasn’t a hurricane, I never said Tammy got here. But storms don’t have to come near us in order to affect us. Tammy had the effect of sucking lots of moisture from the Gulf and dropping it in North Carolina. Just what the doctor ordered!