I came across the following website the other day and thought some of you might find it interesting, too.

The site supposedly predicts the precipitation chances for your area for the next 30 days. Just input your town and state and the forecaster will show a bar graph of the next 30 days showing the percentage of risk for rain on those days.

It could come in handy for determining when the best rain-free days are for working in the garden. BTW, the rain forecast for my area shows a rainy month of June. It will be interesting to see if that really is the case.

Here's the link:

DryDay.com

-- Anonymous, May 31, 2001

Answers

Well, they got it right for my area today anyway. They showed a high probability of rain, and we had nearly 4 inches in and hour and a half before daylight. Non-stop lightning too. Really spectacular. Hope we get as much more rain as they think we will. Thanks for the site.

-- Anonymous, May 31, 2001

Wow! Four inches of rain in 1 1/2 hours. If I had that kind of rainfall here I imagine I'd need scuba gear to get to the canning shelf in my basement! (grin)

-- Anonymous, May 31, 2001

Yep, if we got four inches of rain that quick, we would have the kind of flash flooding that happened here about 15 or 20 years ago, do you remember the flash flood that killed all the people along Wegee Creek and Shadyside, Ohio? We are less than a half hour away from there, but much higher up, we are less than 6 miles from the Ohio River, but 800 feet higher up, if it floods here, all of Ohio is under water!

Thanks for the website, Jim!!! But, not happy about all the rain, we need to get the hay in!!!

-- Anonymous, May 31, 2001

I don't like my forecast. Where can I get a refund? >:-( If this is correct, I only have two days to get everything finished and in the garden, unless I want to be planting in mudslide city . . . . Argh!

-- Anonymous, May 31, 2001

Yeah, my forecast sounds like it's pretty similar to yours, Joy. It hasn't rained here yet but it's been overcast and cool yesterday and today. The weather forecast says it won't get much above 65 degrees through early next week. My tomatoes and peppers sure aren't liking this weather too much - I may have to make little jackets and mittens for them...

-- Anonymous, May 31, 2001

Wow. June is typically one of our rainier non-winter months, but this forecast shows very little chance of it in June. If this is true, maybe my corn will come up! Actually, if this is true, I had better hook up my downspouts to the water tank again!

Thanks for the link.

-- Anonymous, May 31, 2001

On my forecast it shows only 8 dry days for June. That's ok with me, I'll take all the rain that wants to fall. I remember 2 years ago when it didn't rain for 3 months, and it was awful, I cryed for all the trees in the forests, so now I never complain that the rain comes. Besides, Kentucky is supposed to be green and wet, last spring and summer it rained every 5 days without fail, and it was a wonderful blessing. We got bucketfulls last night! It poured soooo hard for a long time, it was loud, but no lightning. This spring and last spring came a month early too.

-- Anonymous, June 01, 2001

Well, they've hit the weather for us again today. This is really interesting.

On the 4 inches, it did wash things around a lot. Moved most of my unburned trash pile about 10 feet over. Now I have to recollect it. Oh, well. We have rains like that pretty often here, but we've had more really heavy rains in the last few years than we did when I was growing up. This area is one of hills and bottoms. Everyone knows to stay out of the bottoms when it rains a lot, or better yet, just stay home. The rain flooded our rural road in 5 places. The road is 1.2 miles long. My creek that is normally 3 feet wide and 2 feet deep became about 100 feet wide and I'd guess 18 inches deep over the road. The main roads are built up higher and seldom flood out more than once each year, but still, some of the "creeks" that would pass for small rivers in the west do occasionally close the interstate here. I live in NE TX about 60 miles from Oklahoma, 60 miles from Arkansas and 70 miles from Louisiana. This land is built for floods!! LOL

-- Anonymous, June 01, 2001

Uh oh Jim. Looks like you are going to be cool and rainy all summer.Check this out Climate

-- Anonymous, June 01, 2001

Yep,worked that time.

We have rain and cool this am butI'm not complaining,either.I'll save that for the garden,when I go down and survey the damage done by a coonhound and coon encounter.Nick said my one heirloom bean planting was all but wiped out.See what goes on while I'm gone? Ah well,next year.....

-- Anonymous, June 01, 2001

That is interesting, Sharon, but I wasn't sure I was reading it correctly. Does A = above and B = below, or what? And what does CL stand for?

-- Anonymous, June 01, 2001

Yep, you're right on the A and B designations, Joy. CL simply means they don't have sufficient models for their prediction outlook so there's a 33.3% chance it will be Above, Below, or Normal for those 'CL' areas.

Here's the URL for the Climate Key:

Climate Key

-- Anonymous, June 01, 2001

BTW, it looks like I WILL have to get those jackets and mittens out for the tomatoes and peppers. :-(

Thanks for the link, Sharon.

-- Anonymous, June 01, 2001

What are you going to use, Jim? I'm scratching my head over this too. I don't want to overheat them, but I think some extra warmth is called for. But stuff like Hot Caps and Wall-O-Water get to be too short fairly soon.

-- Anonymous, June 01, 2001

Well, I'm thinking of filling several one-gallon milk jugs with water and placing at least one jug of water next to each tomato plant - surrounding them with water jugs would probably be better, though.

I also have several 6 gallon plastic buckets that are tall enough and wide enough to cover the tomato plants (the tom. plants are about 18- 20 inches tall right now - peppers are about 8 inches tall) so I may cover them in the evening and uncover the next morning if the weather is nice enough.

Beyond that I'm not sure what else to do. Unfortunately this may end up being a poor year for tomato and pepper growing here in the upper Midwest.

I have plans for building removable greenhouses for some of my raised beds out of that heavy duty double-walled greenhouse plastic. I wish I could have done it this year but I just didn't have the money... :- (

-- Anonymous, June 01, 2001

I went to the bakery "trash bin" where I usually get my buckets, but did not find any! I don't think I've tried to get them at this time of year before. They must be "at a premium" now. Dang!

I think I'll have to put everyone I know onto saving milk jugs . . .

-- Anonymous, June 01, 2001

We make grow tunnels out of 10'sections of pcv or fiberglass rods bend over and pushed in the ground and plastic sheets. Like in the float bed plans.Really cheap.Taller too.

Then put in milk jugs painted black,filled with water,caps off.If you leave caps on it gets too much like a desert in there.

We've used this system to put out corn,peppers and tomatoes in early March,for more than 10 years.Works good for the cost involved.Remember to open ends during the day or everything cooks.I do it in abt 16'x 4'sections.Much longer and it doesn't work as well.

Never used wall o water.My sister did and didn't like them much.She's a Hort. agent back home.I have to listen to her,she's older.

-- Anonymous, June 01, 2001