March 17, 2021
My first two summers here didn’t impress me. When the rains began, they’d be heaviest at night, then in the morning, the street would be an inch deep with flowing water. There was no dryer in the house, so air drying clothes could take days. I got used to damp socks. And whenever the annual Fiesta of Maria Magdalena came, on and around July 22, visitors knew they had to bring umbrellas.
Last summer, I wondered where the storms were. Sure, it rained, but not torrentially. We had occasional downpours, but only on one or two mornings did I have to play hopscotch over the cobbles in the street. The corn crop, oddly, was plentiful, pushing down prices, but the underground aquifer here was not fully replenished. There is a rudimentary piped water system in place, but most of us still order a truckload of water for washing purposes a few times a year. Since the piped system doesn’t yet run up to our little street, which lies above much of the village, a water-truck isn’t a rare sight.
At the start of March, the warning went out that people needed to conserve water. Some parts of the hills were declared off-limits because of the fire risk from people leaving bottles that might concentrate solar rays, or even discarding cigarette butts.
This house has a system for capturing rainwater, and there’s been no need to top it up since the rains ended at the start of November. But with last year’s low yield, I’m finally down to eight or nine inches of water, so today I ordered a tanker-load. Evi, who coordinates the deliveries, says Ruben will come with the water tomorrow.
Usually, placing my order with Evi at the village hardware store is straightforward, but this time it came with caveats. I mustn’t use water on plants, and of course there’s to be no topping-up of swimming pools. A pool I don’t have, though I will have to watch some plants wilt over the next three months before the new rains (hopefully) start. They’ll have to manage with the rinse water from when I hand-wash my socks.
Predictions that I’ve read about La Niña and El Niño events don’t seem to explain the fluctuation in the rainfall pattern that we had last year (meteorologist readers, please clarify this if you can), so I don’t know what we can expect in summer 2021. Oddly, when I was bemoaning the streams running down our main street in 2010 and 2011, northern Mexico and the southern US were experiencing drought conditions, due to a prolonged La Niña event. Most things I read online only refer to Mexico as a whole, which doesn’t help, since the country’s weather zones are very diverse, and don’t fit into one single pattern.
But like anyone who ponders possible climate shifts, I wonder how, if and when we’ll see a long-term shift to drier (or, even, wetter) summers. With no vast network of northern Canadian rivers and lakes to draw on for water, we know that here a prolonged drought would cause not just a need to let the garden shrubs die, but many other unpleasant effects to follow.
Mexed Messages 