Northern Idaho | WJKEIGER - 5/27/2010 07:08
Great pictures !!! You mentioned 30 inches of rainfall. Does that fall evenly through out the year or seasonally ? I see what appear to be permanent grassed waterways, are rain events heavy enough to cause erosion concerns ?
It is seasonally. We have wet winters and springs and then every year about mid June the rain stops and the sun comes out and often July and August will have almost no rain, September can go either way but usually it rains enough then to sprout crops in the head and germinate newly planted fields so we try to get harvest done by early Sept. Our precip is very gentle and spread out over many days here compared to the eastern U.S. It is rare to get more than an inch of precip in 24 hours but it can rain for days and days just little showers and 1/4 to 3/4 inch rains that keep our shallow soil fully saturated.
Because of our gentle rains erosion is not much of a concern on hillsides like it would be in the midwest but the draws where you see grass waterways have seasonal creeks running down them, especially when the snow melts in the spring so gullys would form without the waterways.
I have recorded rainfall at the farm for many years and compared to nearby longterm weather stations this is our average precipitation, note that much of the winters precip is in the form of snow and melted down to water to get the numbers shown.
Jan Feb March April May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec
3.84 2.96 3.17 2.92 3.07 2.33 0.78 0.72 1.65 2.47 3.82 3.72 31.43- annual
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Crop and scenery PICS north Idaho
