March Evaporates Into April

March is now gone and good riddance - only one minuscule rain event here during pre-dawn hours of the 8th, with a total of only 0.07". No meaningful rainfall since end of first week of January 2016. A quite dismal March, which comes in as second driest in my 17 years of record here. The worst March was 0.03" in 2013. The three driest years for March here have occurred during the last 6 years, while the three wettest Marches occurred during the the first 5 years of my record.

The GEFS from last night at 06 UTC continues to increase chances for a rainfall event during April 7 to 8 period. The plumes above show that all 21 members of the ensemble (i.e., an ensemble POP of 100%) now forecast measurable rain in that period, however amounts have a large range. Note that the operational member (blue line) has now reverted to it's typical very dry position within the ensembles.

We have a modest solar panel array on our roofs - shown above is a google-eye view of the 16 panels in our system - most on the main house but with another 5 back here on the book casita. The daily output of the system for March is shown below. It illustrates nicely how dry and clear a month it was. Total output during the month was 663 kWh - last March was also dry and output total was at 632 kWh. Certainly Arizona is a good location for local solar generation, if only our power companies, state legislature, and State Corporation Commission weren't trying to put a damper on what could be a booming industry here.