Rains from Fay came as blessing to dry South

Malcolm Cutchins
Columnist
Published: August 28, 2008

In late July, an unusually beautiful rainbow stretched from horizon to horizon over our twin cities. Lately with all the rain, one had to wonder if the Biblical rainbow-promise was to be tested.

Hurricane/Tropical Storm Fay confounded the path-predictors and dumped huge amounts of rain on Florida, Georgia, and Alabama (and other states). The storm’s center even made landfall four times in Florida. When we cannot even predict much about one storm, how can we gullibly swallow the claims (and the extremely high tax-costs) of those who think they can control/predict global weather?

Meanwhile, what a good thing the rain has been. These three states each have areas between 50,000 and 58,000 square miles. On Monday, virtually 90 percent of Alabama was under some kind of tornado (or flood) watch or warning, essentially the only such area of the United States. In light of our recent drought conditions it is interesting to consider the impact of Fay’s total rainfall.

If one hypothetically considers one inch of rain falling on one square mile, that converts to 17.4 million gallons. The combined total of Auburn’s Lake Ogletree and Opelika’s Lake Saugahatchee is 866 acres or 1.353 square miles. But that is just the surface area of the lakes at normal pool level. The drainage basin areas from which rainfall drains into the lakes are much greater.

If we very conservatively assume that just one third of the land area of each of these three states received five inches of rain during Fay, that would give a total of over 4.7 quadrillion gallons. Based on the three-state population of approximately 30 million, that’s almost 157 thousand gallons per person, an amazing number for such a short period of time and for such conservative assumptions.

Needless to say, our southeastern states, so ravaged by drought, have really been blessed by these heavy, steady rains. We take our life-giving water supplies for granted, but there is no way man or government could provide this much water over three states, let alone come up with such a surprising, unpredictable plan to do so.

* * *

One of my favorite radio programs is “Riverwalk Jazz,” Saturday nights at 7 p.m. on 89.9 FM (Troy). In last week’s program, Johnny Mercer tunes were highlighted and an interesting sidelight was mentioned.

Mercer’s father lost a lot of money in the stock market crash of 1929 ultimately leading to his having to declare bankruptcy.

When the son later made a lot of money in the music industry, he repaid all of his father’s debts, even though legally he was not obligated to pay them. That’s a very good definition of character, one needed more often these days when people who misuse funds (like credit card debt larger than $10,000) are too often treated like victims.

Dr. Malcolm Cutchins is an emeritus professor of engineering of Auburn University and writes a weekly column for The Opelika-Auburn News.