08/06/2026
How to make the most of the monsoon rains & why.
Last night we got the biggest rain (on my property) so far this year, .45â. Iâm at 2.76â YTD. Last year we were under 6â. ThatâsâŠnot great, but itâs something. Iâll take every drop. Weâre nowhere near the 8-11â average annual rainfall for our area found across the web & havenât been in years.
My family was out for our evening walk, 8 blocks from home, when I heard it coming from our route home. The kids thought it was a dust storm, but I knew it was a wall of rain heading our way. âUhh, Letâs turn around.â We got maybe 30â before it dumped on us. We ran home, our clothes & the center of the road filling with water.
We know monsoon season is coming. It happens every year. Are we prepared for the next big rain or are we heading out for a stroll with no umbrella?
At todayâs Sustainable T or C meeting, we talked about simple ways to get us better prepared for rainwater, as well as greywater & water conservation on city & individual levels.
A local rainwater harvester spoke a little bit about his harvesting system made from patchwork scrap gutters & barrels in a shed. The system is full. Now what?
That got me thinking about how I could improve my own systems. I currently have gutters going to 2 large trash cans & one rain barrel with a spigot. The gutters are busted & I have to clear out bird nests from them every year, but every time we get a 1/4â or bigger, all vessels fill up. The system overflowed for most of last nightâs rain. It still does go into my soil as opposed to out to the street, which is good, but not to where I need it & when. Iâm gonna need a bigger boat.
I donât have a curb, so much of the water from the street comes into trenches leading to trees, hundreds- thousands(?) of gallons water each year, a steady flow to a percolation pond. Now itâs under my yard instead of rushing to the river or rather sitting in the middle of the street to eventually evaporate.
A lot of the water does go to the streets though, out & away. Our current methods are hydrophobic. Not the slow, spread, & sink I read about in permaculture materials, towards the river as fast as possible, much erosion on the way.
Then drought hits us again & instead of âplanting our rainwaterâ as Brad Lancaster calls it, itâs probably to the Gulf of Mexico or evaporated or being gobbled by the future Meta /Blackstone or Project Jupiter hyper center sites or some other horrific polluting mess of industry by now.
When the big rain comes, weâll be completely unprepared. No systems in place, besides the one street in town with curb cuts & not quite enough plants to soak up the water.
How do we partner with the rain to get the most out of this cycle?
Trenches, half moon basins, swales & berms, one rock check dams, ponds, organic material/compost, mulch, plants, etc. Clever planning & hard work. Hope.
Then, these posted predictions of woe wonât feel so close to home. Theyâll hit somewhere else surely & here too if we donât act while we can, but we need to act.
What are your plans for future rains?
Art by me, June Jewell Designs
