A Perspective on Our Drought
Dell Hood
Hays County Master Naturalist
Throughout this summer various reports on precipitation in the greater Austin area have indicated that we are receiving only a few inches less rainfall than normal, with totals through the end of July from four to five inches below average. At the same time, we see maps showing the extent of moderate, severe, extreme, and exceptional drought shifting from month to month across the Hill Country, seeming to reflect a rainfall pattern which is more beneficial, or less drastically severe, than what I see actually happening on our little patch of this land.
An early drying grape festoons escarpment live oaks and agarita at the Hoods’ gate.
Dell Hood wonders if his prickly ash, one of two native to Texas, will revive in the spring.
Our five acres, with more than 95% of all the vegetation being plants native to the Edwards Plateau, divides about equally between open grassy areas and small to moderate-sized groves of trees, the majority of which are escarpment live oaks (Quercus fusiformis), cedar elms (Ulmus crassifolia), Texas red oaks (Q. buckleyi), and cedars (Juniperus ashei).
February’s ice storm destroyed this big Ashe juniper…
…but Dell uses the cedar limbs to slow runoff on a caliche slope.
This trumpet creeper, a bignonia, is heat loving, but obviously drought intolerant.
Extreme weather is taking out some of our most iconic Hill Country plants. Dell and Gerin fear for their fine old escarpment cherry tree, which is browning out high in its canopy.
In the more than 40 years we have been part of this landscape, our only management has been to vigorously and persistently remove non-natives and to introduce native grasses—big muhly (Muhlenbergia lindheimeri), inland sea oats (Chasmanthium latifolium), and eastern gama grass (Tripsacum dactyloides); several native flowering species; and mountain laurels (Sophora secundiflora) and golden ball lead tree (Leucaena retusa) from seed.
Eventually, this leaf litter will build new soil to help rain infiltrate, replenishing the aquifer.
Until 2020 I mowed the grasslands once a year in January and left the rest of the land to change as nature intends. As a result there is abundant leaf litter under the trees or decomposing grass almost everywhere on the thin, rocky soil.
This is a rain stick on the Hood’s porch post. It’s a folk way of measuring humidity in the surrounding air. When the air carries significant humidity, moisture is absorbed by the twig, making it expand and straighten. It is charming and effective, though not quantifiable. Dell does not use the rain stick, but…
For more than a year I have measured precipitation using a CoCoRaHS gauge, which allows measures as fine as 0.01 inch. From January 1 to August 31 of this year, I have measured a total of 16.29 inches. Bad but not disastrous according to the averages, only four inches below what we should have in eight months.
However, examined closely, each measured precipitation event strongly supports that we are in extreme to exceptional drought.
Of the twenty-five measured events, 13 were drizzles or short showers producing less than a half inch of rain; there were 10 events from a half inch to 1.5 inches. The other two events gave us 2.05 and 2.67 inches.
Where there is plant litter on the soil, a drizzle of rain measuring less than a few tenths of an inch rarely wets the soil at all. After several such quick showers in April and June, I brushed the litter aside and stuck an index finger in the dirt and felt no moisture below the depth of the first joint.
What this demonstrates is that, at least on our land, over a dozen rain events of a quarter inch or so show up in the rainfall statistics as three or more inches of rain, but nary a drop of that amount reached the root zone even of bluebonnets, much less any of the shrubs and woody species.
Worst of all, the last rain event of one inch or more was on May 24. So even with that little 0.29-inch shower on August 22, since June 9 I have measured a total of only 0.73 inches of rain over a period of 80 days. Many hardwoods are shedding desiccated leaves and some will not recover. They are dying.
And should you ask why not rake away the litter on top of the dirt so that even the slightest rain can wet the soil, remember that in the lifetimes of our grandchildren one inch of that native plant detritus is well on the way to adding rich topsoil for whatever species may follow in this rapidly changing landscape.
Dell J. Hood
1999 HCMN Class of Roadrunners
Meet Master Naturalists Dell and Gerin Hood
Gerin and Dell
Dell Hood
Gerin and Dell Hood, both members of the 1999 Hays County Master Naturalist founding class, have been married for four decades and finish each other’s sentences. Dell will take it from here:
I grew up in Boerne, Gerin in Corpus Christi, Missouri City, and Beaumont. We met at UT Austin. Gerin’s parents had moved to this five-acre Wimberley property in 1970, when the Green Acres subdivision went on the market. After the Peace Corps, I was in the U.S. Foreign Service with the U.S. Information Agency, which did the government’s public diplomacy (public libraries abroad, the Voice of America, cultural exchange programs, presenting American speakers for foreign audiences...).
Later, Gerin and our two girls would accompany me on all nine foreign assignments, many in Africa and South America. During one of my Washington assignments, Gerin was a volunteer at the National Zoo and at the national office of The Nature Conservancy.
Later, back in Texas, we joined the National Wildflower Research Center (now the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center). And by the time we retired in 1995, Gerin’s parents had moved to San Marcos and we had bought the Wimberley property.
When Billy Kniffen organized the Hays County Master Naturalist program, we enthusiastically enrolled in his first class, 1999—Roadrunners!—and have benefitted beyond all measure ever since. We also remained active volunteers at the Wildflower Center up to 2019, and Gerin was the second volunteer to reach 5,000 hours there. Both of us are still active volunteers at the Wimberley Village Library, and we’ve also volunteered with Keep Wimberley Beautiful and the Wimberley Players.
We work almost daily trying to keep our bit of Texas as free of non-native plants as possible and to support high quality habitat for all critters that cherish, as we do, a Hill Country place of their own.