Rain ???

[FarmRanger]

Don't know what the moisture situation is where the rest of you live, but we could sure use a good couple of days rain here.
Hopefully we aren't heading into another drought situation.
Having said that it will likely rain for a week and spring work will be set back !!!

[FarmRanger]

Hate to respond to my own post but we got a nice rain overnight here and a good steady rain this morning. Looks like it is socked in for the day.

Grass should grow after this.

[les]

where do you live?

[cakadu]

We had a pretty good thunderstorm last night, which brought a bit of rain. It is welcome because it is dry, despite there having been water laying all over not all that long ago. We are overcast today and forecast for some showers, so maybe it will come down our way emrald. Here's hoping!!!!

[cakadu]

I think that most of West Central AB. got a good rain. We got an inch here.

[cowman]

3/4 of an inch in the rain gauge this morning. Hoping for a little more!
Really came down in Innisfail last night...coming up out of the storm sewers!

[cowman]

They cancelled Highway Cleanup in the Evansburg/Edson area today due to the rain.

[cowman]

emerald: I saw some kids out picking up garbage along the highway east of Red Deer yesterday. I assume they were 4H kids or something?
Who pays for this and how much do they get?
Personally I think a better idea would be to let the garbage break down in the ditch and therefore be recycled rather than pay a bunch of money out so it can clog up the landfills, but I know you aren't too keen on that idea?

[cowman]

cowman, cowman, cowman !!!! Pray tell me how inner tubes will break down in the ditch...rubber boots, old shoes, a million plastic bags, beer cans, bottles etc ????

In my past life I was a 4-H Beef Club leader and cleaned many miles of ditch...you would NOT BELIEVE what these kids pick up !!!!!

Yesterday on my way to town I saw what the kids had piled along the shoulder of the road for the highway contractor to pick up and none of it would ever break down in the ditch.

4-H clubs, youth groups etc. do the highway clean up once a year and are paid so much a kilometer by AB. Transportation.
There are very stringent rules in place to ensure that every two kids has an adult supervising them and the younger members are always cleaning at the fencelines not near the highway etc.

And cowman, the sad part is that less than an hour after the kids are done, some ditches are full of garbage again. I think that anyone caught throwing their non-decomposable garbage out of their vehicles should have to clean a mile of highway immediately !!!!!

A lot of what is found in the ditch would be a hazard during mowing operations, so someone would have to clean it up. I think that paying young people's organizations makes more sense and is a lot cheaper than paying highway crews to pick garbage.

In some areas inmates are used to clean ditches. When I was on council we looked into geting them to clean some of our local ditches and the cost is astronomical !! The guards are paid, the bus driver is paid and the bus is paid for, plus meals have to be provided or paid for etc.

I go out and clean the ditch along my farm and don't mind a bit...but the garbage isn't significant, at least not since the old batchelor down the road passed away. He used to leave a trail of beer cans up one side of the road and down the other on a daily basis !!!

[cakadu]

I've talked with some of the people who clean the ditches and they say that by far what they see the most of in the ditch is coffee cups, followed closely by dirty diapers. I think a diaper takes a very, very long time to decompose if at all. We have become a throw away society and the ditches can speak volumes to that.

Look at the number of people out there still looking for cans, bottles etc out there in the ditch. Some of them look pretty loaded down when they hit the end of their run.

Many years ago there was talk of having the inmates do garbage pick-up along the ditches and you should have heard the hue and cry about how terrible and degrading it would be to have them working in this manner. It would be a violation of their human rights to "force" them to be out providing a service to the community. It was unbelievable the number of people who did not want this to happen. Also bear in mind that the guards who have to be out there minding these guys are not armed in any way, which clearly presents a danger not only to them, but to the general public as well.

As for rain, we got very little out Caroline way and we need it. We got some, which is a start, but we could use a lot more to have things take a good hold. We have two factors that work against us when it comes to conserving moisture in this area. Number one is that when any storm threatens, they seed the clouds, which takes a lot of the moisture away from us. I know that they are doing it so that the severe weather doesn't do any damage, but that is for the benefit of the insurance companies, not us. There is getting to be enough population throughout this area that they really aren't doing anything to alleviate the threat of hail damage, just spreading it to a different area.

The other thing that really hurts us moisture wise is that they continue to dig drainage ditches to channel the water away. Once upon a time that may have been the necessary thing to do, but for right now, they should be looking at letting some of the water stay to recharge underground water and surface water. There is a reason why when they dig water wells, they have to dig several times to get water with any kind of flow. I don't understand why they need to keep doing this century old practice when it doesn't do too much for them right now. We maybe don't need to do away with it entirely, but for a couple of years it wouldn't hurt to let the water table come back up.

[grassfarmer]

Cakadu are you serious that they seed clouds at Caroline?? Why - to stop Red Deer getting hailed out? I thought there was a great misconception about cloud seeding and that in fact it was only used occasionally to protect Calgary.
We got 3/4 inch of rain on Friday - if only the weather forcast had been accurate I could have been spreading 46 instead of 34 on Friday! Oh well better safe than sorry.

[cakadu]

We hear the plane out seeding during a storm all the time Grassfarmer. It actually happens about 10 miles west of here around the Raven area. How much good it does is anyone's guess. It would be interesting to see the results of cloud seeding because there are times when we still get hit hard and others when we can watch it go around us - follows the lake - and then we hear of bad weather east of us.

I recall hearing that they did a study that showed that there is an area around Sylvan Lake and south and then east towards Red Deer that ranks right up there with the most lightning strikes in North America.

The insurance companies are THE driver behind cloud seeding.

[cakadu]

Linda, I did think that Tim's were doing their bit to deter folks from throwing coffee containers in the ditch by their Roll up the Rim campaign,until I won a darn muffin and found out that you only need to take in the little tab to win, the rest can be tossed wherever the individual feels like it !!!

[cakadu]

Again, I apologize for adding to my own post but anyone driving the Parkland Highway just west of Edmonton may have seen the new landfill. There is garbage piled up against the fences all along both sides of the highway and dump trucks lined up turning into the site all day long.
It is a holy mess, and an eyesore. Have to drive in past there early in the AM and I bet that even if the highways were cleaned yesterday there will be piles of stuff lying around that location again.