By the time a new day begins, it looks like over 4 inches of rain will have fallen at the airport in the 24 hours making up this calendar date. Over 3 inches of it had fallen by 2pm, causing Indian River to swell, but nowhere near what happened during the intense rain which caused the landslides last month. One of these days maybe I’ll sit down and do some back-of-the-envelope math approximations to get an idea of how much water needs to flow out of Indian River to keep up with different rainfall rates, but it is interesting to me how much rain can fall without actually make the river flood (even though levels rise up significantly).
I spent very little time outside today, between classes, calls for work, and recording a conversation for a future radio show, I just had a chance to look around briefly as I was moving between locations. I did stop by Indian River briefly this afternoon and the levels were near flood stage. From the stream gauge I could see the water rose another few inches later in the day, but I’m not yet sure how high. The current forecast for tomorrow is a much lower chance of rain with cloud covers below 100%, so I imagine the water levels will drop significantly once the heaviest of the rain stops late tonight (unless the forecast is wrong, of course).
Connor reported seeing a Townsend’s Warbler today. It seems like it’s getting on towards the end of their time here, though it’s by no means a late date for them. I’ve been seeing at least one male Anna’s Hummingbird and another (probably Anna’s) hummingbird visit the feeder regularly. The junco flock continues to grow, and Connor let me know he saw both White-crowned Sparrow and Golden-crowned Sparrow juveniles visiting the yard.
This afternoon I was able to speak with Noah Siegel and Alissa Allen and record a conversation for an upcoming show. Noah is in town to give a talk (which took place this evening) and Alissa will do a mycopigment workshop this weekend. The talk was about fungi of Alaska and I found it pretty interesting. It was also pretty fascinating to see how many different colors various mushrooms could dye wool or silk. Another tidbit of information I learned (that I don’t want to forget) is that the fungal species in a forest can be very different as forests go from young growth to old growth. I think it would be interesting to learn more about that.
