Fire and Drought

It's odd to think about drought when you live on an island surrounded by water, but it happens. This has been a bad winter for us. Almost no rain, and everyone's "lawn" (mostly a collection of stiff grasses and weeds) is dead unless they water it. We have a nice little green circle going on our back yard because of the sprinkler I use to keep our garden alive.

This was more impressive a couple weeks ago - it was literally a green circle in all dead brown grass.

I remember our first winter here was full of freak, short lived thunder storms. I remember having to brave one for a dental appointment one time. I couldn't find the umbrella, so I bundled Oscar in the jogger with its weather shield, put rain coats on Wyatt and I, and then we ran as fast as Wyatt's five year old legs could manage. It's maybe a five minute walk, but we were soaked when we got there. I went inside long enough to find out the flight had been diverted due to high winds and the hygienist wasn't there yet. I walked back outside to sunshine.

This winter, though, nada. Every time we get a little shower, I pray it keeps raining for awhile, but it never does. The last couple days, it was all clouded over, and we even got some thunder, but the rain stayed away. I seriously could not have picked a more opposite place to live weather-wise from Washington State if I'd tried! I can fully appreciate a nice cloudy day here.

All this drought has lead to some problems, as you might expect. Andros has a lot of fresh water, and actually imports quite a bit of it to Nassau, so I'm not worried about that, but all the dry brush has meant a lot of fires. Every few days, I catch a whiff of smoke and know something is burning somewhere. About a week ago, I left to go pick up Wyatt and nearly choked on the smoke outside. There's very little in terms of fire fighting equipment in the communities here, so as long as homes aren't threatened, they let them burn.

We could really use some rain.