The Subtropics Mean Rain – How Quickly We Forget

By Tom Poland
July 18, 2013 
 

Columbia’s planetary address is 34.0007 degrees north, 81.0348 degrees west. That places it between the equator and the 38th parallel, and that places it well within the subtropics. Besides the Southeast, the 38th parallel north crosses Europe, the Mediterranean Sea, Asia, the Pacific, and the Atlantic creating some of the world’s wetter, verdant places. In a mirror image the 38th parallel south crosses the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific, and South America’s southern end, including the Andes Mountains and Patagonia. Again you’ll find some of the worlds greenest, luxurious places along this parallel.

A map portraying the subtropics in the United States looks a lot like a map of the states in the Southeastern Conference. Some might compare it to the old Confederacy.

We live in the rain belt, though the droughts of the past ten years about drove that knowledge–and some people–out of their minds. Folks got a bit crazy. Over in Georgia Governor Perdue asked the legislature to pray up a storm. And I recall more than a few talking about doing a rain dance. Apart from Lake Murray folks around other lakes were upset people were with low lake levels. Nobody likes a dock that rests on parched earth but that’s minor compared to water restrictions and the stench of dead animals. Out west people are shooting their horses because they have no water for them. 

Up on the wild Chattooga low water levels made some parts of the river more dangerous. I took a bad spill at Seven Foot Falls precisely because low water made snagging rocks easier. Our raft grabbed a rock, sideways we went, and we shot out of the raft as if coming off a trampoline. Today the river is a raging monster and just recently it claimed yet another life. All that water makes its way to lakes downstream along the Georgia-South Carolina border—the Freshwater Coast.

Your author, red cap, is about to go under and be trapped by the raft. (Photo courtesy of Whetstone Photography) 

Drought dropped the Chattooga but that didn’t stop folks from running it. Photo by Tom Poland

Now that our lakes are full pool, all of a sudden people are sick of the rain. How easily some forget. Remember 2003? It was a hot, dry summer, one filled with desperation. As my father lay dying he asked me to water the old oaks that grace the front of our church. Shedding wilted leaves, the trees were in jeopardy. Late evenings I’d turn the hose on them and walk through the cemetery as water percolated onto parched roots. The trees survived but many trees, stressed beyond their limits, didn’t.

But now all the rain comes as a nuisance to many. I’ve heard more than a few curse the rain. It ruins a day boating. It’s depressing. I can’t go in my garden. We had to cancel the cookout. Again I feel like I live in Washington State! And on and on. How easily some forget the recent droughts. If it keeps raining I’m fine with that. Moreover we need the rain and we should be used to it for a simple reason.

We live in a climate historically where rain comes often, though not for forty straight days. Sounds a bit Biblical doesn’t it. I recall a summer from my youth when it rained every day for a long stretch. The grass hardly dried out. What fixes that memory in my personal archives is the tortured cries of our Boston terriers. It rained so much that summer that each dog developed fungal infections on the pads of their paws. A veterinarian advised us to make each dog stand in a basin of diluted bleach. Their immediate reaction was to howl and leap out. We had to hold them in place. It must have felt like acid in a cut. Each time we treated their paws I cursed the rain. But I curse the rain no more. In fact I find it magnificent. Each day I check the rain gauge to see just how much elixir of life has fallen. Each morning I walk the lawns, seeing rich, luxuriant St. Augustine grass that’s so green it’s almost blue.

But recent arid summers have misled many into believing all this rain is an anomaly. Not really. Not in the subtropics. As planet Earth goes we live close to the equator. Sure beats living in an arid region, for the subtropics make for a beautiful land. In a novel I described what a wild mythical subtropical island off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina was like. At 34 degrees, not that far from the Equator with a tropical forest reminiscent of Costa Rica’s, it did heat up like a stovetop, and I knew every day would be hazy, hot, and humid. The island had no choice but to steam when the nearby Gulf Stream, coursing through equatorial waters, would bring storms and their torrential downpours. That majestic river within the sea lay just over the eastern horizon and its warmth flooded the sea and air. We were exploring an oasis of near eternal summer, an island of shimmering heat waves where mirages crawled over dune ridges like snakes in this land of cicadas, cloudbursts, hazy horizons, clouds of birds, and unquenchable thirst.

This summer abundant rain falls thanks to another stream, the jet stream, which has swept deeply into the central United States pumping generous, tropical moisture from the Gulf of Mexico into the Southeast. Evidence of the rainfall is everywhere. Patches of algae have appeared on my driveway. The moss between flagstone walkways makes for a lush soft green border. Hostas, bamboo, and hydrangeas are vibrant. Living things are making up for lost time.

Have you noticed how many spiders spin their silky webs? Most mornings I take a run and the trail I run is crisscrossed with webs. I’m constantly brushing spider webs from my face. And the mosquitoes are out in full force. It’s nigh impossible to grill out, walk the lawns, or cut flowers without swarms of mosquitoes attacking. Evenings the katydids, tree frogs, and cicadas sing their glorious rain songs. All the rain has produced an explosion of insects and assorted creatures.

Water. What a difference it makes. And the scent of rain. What a fertile fragrance. But remember the drought of 2007 to 2009. For the first time in more than 100 years a large swath of the Southeast landed in that category called drought. A major water source for Atlanta, Lake Lanier, nearly dried up. For some eighteen months cloudless skies and scorching temperatures baked Dixie. Famously hot Columbia was infamously hot. Some desperate souls saw hurricanes as a Godsend but none came. Thunderstorms were rarities.

I recall how many cursed the high-pressure systems that dried up the Southland. Heat and drought put ’em in a bad mood. Folks were mean spirited. All that brought Don Henley’s song You Don’t Know Me At All to mind. He sang about a bad attitude and trying to stay sane between the end of summer and the coming of the blessed rains. Henley looked to autumn to bring rain to a parched land, if we take his words metaphorically, relief from a treacherous woman dressed in black if we take them literally. I suspect the coming fall will bring more rain—the literal kind—and even if it makes for a wet football season from Columbia to Athens, Georgia, and beyond I’m fine with that. I suspect too we may have a cold hard winter with some snow. Bring it on.

What matters for now is that drought business is behind us. As sure as the rain falls though another dry spell will come. People will pray for rain and when it comes at last and keeps coming people will curse it in a cycle that reveals the capricious ways of we humans. We like to have things both ways but we need water and we need a full water table so welcome storm clouds with open arms and give thanks for the coming of the blessed rains.

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Tom Poland is the author of six books and more than 700 magazine features. A Southern writer, his work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. The University of South Carolina Press just released his book on how the blues became the shag, Save The Last Dance For Me. He writes a weekly column for newspapers in Georgia and South Carolina about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and changing culture.