I have been writing about how hot and dry it has been. Last week A coarse polvo seeped into the house and covered everything every day anew. I swept up sandpiles and wrote with my finger in the dust on the coffee table before wiping it off, again, every day. People in our Colonia have been complaining about the heat.
On my way home from dropping Jim at his bamboo classes, I tuned into a discussion of the state of the weather on Radio Más, the official Veracruz station. The guest was an expert on cattle and was discussing precautions ranchers ought to take before the dry season annually since droughts like this year's occur over the winter with some frequency. He was talking to small-scale ranchers who are just learning better commercial practices, telling them about the need to stockpile hay and to store water for the health and thus the saleability of the animals. He said this year's drought was nowhere near a record drought, and in fact was similar to what seemed to occur on a five year cycle. He mentioned, however, that though the averages seemed more or less normal for the dry season, the high temperatures were higher, the lows, though not this winter, lower, and the rainfall came in big downpours rather than spread out, all of this being possible signs of global warming.
Water shortages this winter have been marked, occurring even up here in the cloud forest, and not just in the lowlands. This is because the few sudden, intense downpours just wash away in torrents instead of soaking into the ground like the soft, misty chipi-chipi that used to be common. In our colonia, normally there are days during the dry winters when it is the habit to turn off water on a rotating basis to parts of the neighborhood for a day or so. This year we were spared because of the spring water that is now being pumped into our system. It is not a powerful enough stream to completely supplant the original flow, but it allowed us to have some water every day.
Things are changing, though. Over the past few days we have had some long-lasting, powerful thunderstorms that have flashed over the sky with lightening and filled the air with booming, cracking thunder and poured down sheets of rain. These aren't the summer rains which come up from the south as the doldrums move north, but rather a tail-end of the season norte that has some staying power. According to the forecast, we can expect cooler temperatures and some rain through Tuesday which is almost time for the summer rains to start. Here is a picture looking out our window at the waterfall during the rain yesterday.
Right near us there have been neighborhoods with no water at all where people have depended on trucks to bring them their supply. Here is a photo from Diario de Xalapa today showing people bringing every manner of container they could find to the trucks.
If you want to practice your Spanish, you can read the whole story about water problems in Jiltopec here.
Some of you have been to or through Jilotepec. It on the road to Naolinco near the main highway to Mexico City from Veracruz, the one that goes through Xalapa.