End of Year = 52.96

52.96 inches........of rain during 2016. This is the total for the homestead farm, not the seed farm. The seed farm sees far less. Currently I don't record the amount of rain at the seed farm. 

Much of the rain arrived in dribs & drabs, a few hundreds of an inch at night, sometimes a few tenths of an inch. There was only one extended period of dry weather where the soil dried out enough that I needed to water the garden beds. Other than that, the soil stayed moist or wet all the time. 

124 days had no rain.

8 days it rained more than an inch, thus the vast majority of the rain came in small rainfalls. 

The greatest rain in a 24 hour period was 3.81" on Dec 3rd. 

Taking actual daily readings of the rain is the only way for me to accurately determine how much water I get. Working by gut feeling just isn't good enough..........I could have sworn there weren't that many dry days last year. So without actually recordings, I can easily fool myself. 

I also use a rain gauge that records down to 100ths. The cheap gauges only record at 10ths, and they're often inaccurate. Up until this past year I used the cheap rain gauges, but I'm glad I upgraded to the better gauge. Thus I learned that 128 days the rain amounts never even reached 1/10th of an inch. When using mulches, like I rely upon, that's important to know. 

(Rain gauge sits out in the open, away from the house and trees. Some day I'll get it mounted on a post, but for now it does just fine as long as the cats don't plan on sitting in the same spot.) 

I've also believe in using a rain gauge. Looking into a bucket and guessing the amount of rain is highly inaccurate. On the day my gauge read 3.81", I had a friend look into one of my five gallon buckets an announce that I had gotten 5-6 inches. Buckets are really deceiving. And besides, if they're sitting under the drip line of a tree, they will capture more rain that the rain gauge that is properly positioned. Yup, I use a gauge.