It's raining - kinda

Well, the summer is about to end as the rains are here again - I think!
Here's the problem. Cayman does get rain - and sometimes lots of it. The problem is that it either comes as a wave that covers the whole island or as bands, that dump rain on a 1-2 mile wide strip and leave either side dry.
So far, the past couple weeks have seen only bands.Last week I measured some of the rain and we had 16" and this week, my total is almost 6". Early this morning, it started to thunder at around 4am and I got up to take a look. Some lightning and cloudy skies but nothing serious.
Right now, it is thundering quite a bit to the south and I went outside to take another look.The clouds are about 2 miles south and about 1 mile wide with rain. A thought came to me. A few weeks ago, the weather bureau was saying that we only had about 7+" of rain all year. What do they say now? A quick check on the internet brings the total up to 16.74" with only 0.37" today (so far).In the past two weeks, west bay has had 22" and counting.
I have decided to make a more accurate rain gauge and record that amount of rain over 2010. I would then compare my results to the weather bureau at 3 month intervals - although I can also do Sept-Dec as a check.
The picture below is a composite of this mornings storm cloud. Please click on it to see a larger picture. A lot of it is hidden due to the picture size.

Rainfall test

I have been home for this week, trying to use up my vacation before the end of the year.
In the afternoons around 1-2pm, we have been getting rain showers. These are local thundershowers that are approx 1-2 miles wide (in a N/S direction) and 5-10 miles long (E/W). This orientation is caused by the prevailing winds from the east and the thermal effects of the island. I have a weather station and on Tuesday afternoon, it registers 3" of rain in 3 hours. Now we do get heavy showers but this sounded as quite a bit. Thinking something was wrong, it registered another 6" on Wed. Wow! What is going on here?
I decided to make a simple rain gauge from some clear plastic tubing, and a funnel and placed it outside as a temporary measurement device to compare against the weather station. I calculated the amplification factor (diameter of the big funnel entrance divided by the diameter of inside of the tube) and waited for the next rain.
On Thursday, we once again had two heavy showers and I recorded 4.7" of rain in a little over 2 hours. The temporary device also confirmed that amount. While this is no world record,it does let me know that the grass will need to be cut every week for the next little while! :-)
On the chicken front, egg production has increased to between 2-3 eggs per day. It seems that the more nesting cubicles we build, the more they lay. It probably does not hurt that I have fed them a bit of Layena to see if that will assist a bit - but only one cup full. I do not believe in turning the chicken into laying machines and disregarding their health.
In the photography arena, I am getting ready for a upcoming trip. I have managed to obtain from the US of A a Canon EF 50mm F/1.8 lens (that the cost of the lens plus shipping was more than buying it here). This is a replacement for the one destroyed in the lathe. It will make a great low light lens for portraits and city scape night scenes and should also come in handy for astrophotography of the night sky. I also have plans for a simple astronomy camera orientation device called a barn door mount. It allows one to manually track the motion of the stars while taking pictures. Yes I can throw everything on one of the telescope mounts and have it the stars accurately tracked for me but there in not much challenge in that! Besides, there are a couple other nuts... I mean persons who are interested in night sky photography and it will make a nice group and learning project.
Looking forward, I have purchased Photoshop CS4. This is for processing all my photographs. It has a large learning curve but with the long winter nights coming up, it should keep me busy!

What's up!

I was viewing the blog today and realized that 3 weeks had past since I had posted anything! While not much has changed, there has been progress.
Chickens - we have built a chicken coop and continue to catch more and more. I currently have 23 pullets and chicks (about 1 month old or less) and 11 hens and two roosters. The 12 Rhode Islands Red layers ordered have not appeared as yet.
Mangoes are all but finished and we are now busy with guavas. So far, there are 15 pints of guava jam and about a square foot x1" thick piece of guava paste, 5 pints and 4 quarts of mango. Enough to give away and still have enough jam for ourselves. We are getting a juicer and will start juicing the fruit (as the guava crop is about 1/3 way through) - something I have never done before but why not try it! If anyone wants guavas, drop by and get some.
It is still hot and there is a threat of rain but it is only local showers spread over various parts of the island.
The news reported that this is the driest year on record. Only 7+ inches of rain all year compare to the average of 24+ . On the other had, the mosquito population is way down.
I have been playing with the cameras and lenses. So far, 3 have been converted and are working well (and the fourth, a 50mm 1.8 got damaged in the lathe). My only problem now is my eyesight. I cannot seem to get the pictures into perfect focus. Lots of close enough but when you increase the picture size to18x24, it really shows up. The auto-focus confirmation beeps but I think it might need a bit of tweaking. I am trying to learn more about how Canon measures exact focus to see if I can come up with a solution.
A couple of pictures are attached for your review. They have been greatly reduced in size. The middle one is of lightning and was taken after the storm had passed us. No lightning bolts but I did get the glow in the clouds.