He\u2019s baaaaack!<\/p>\n
I\u2019m referring to the TV weatherman who constantly tells us, or reminds us, that the Berks County area is in a drought.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s a shapeshifter, too. The other morning, he took the form of a young woman.<\/p>\n
The recent rainfall will help, she said, but the Drought Monitor map as of Thursday placed Berks, southern Schuylkill, Lehigh and Northampton counties within one of two \u201csevere drought\u201d zones in Pennsylvania. The other covers Adams County and parts of two other counties that border Maryland.<\/p>\n
The description doesn\u2019t seem to fit, at least in early March when you need to have a towel handy to wipe mud from your dog\u2019s feet after a bathroom break.<\/p>\n
We should see cracked mud on the exposed bed of Blue Marsh Lake around Bernville, as we did during past severe droughts.<\/p>\n
Also, what about all of the snow we\u2019ve had this winter? I\u2019m still chipping away at the snowbank along my curb from two storms ago. I\u2019m betting it will last until May.<\/p>\n
A little perspective is required here.<\/p>\n
The \u201csevere drought\u201d classification is in the middle of the drought-severity classification continuum. The scale ranges in urgency from \u201cabnormally dry\u201d to \u201cPack up the RV and head to Minnesota ASAP\u201d (\u201cexceptional,\u201d officially).<\/p>\n
Since Jan. 1, Berks has logged a total of 4.26 inches of precipitation, according to National Weather Service data based on totals measured at Reading Regional Airport. That\u2019s about an inch more than last year\u2019s accumulation for the same period, but about 1.5 inches below normal for the first two months of the year.<\/p>\n
Until a real soaker comes our way to turn the deficit into a surplus, you can expect to hear the word \u201cdrought\u201d mentioned with nearly every wet \u2014 or even dry \u2014 forecast.<\/p>\n
Remember, we can use the rain.<\/p>\n
Adjust your clocks<\/p>\n
Mark my words \u2014 someone will pull into an empty church parking lot on Sunday and wonder where all the people have gone.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t be one of those people. Before you go to bed tonight, turn your clock ahead by one hour. Sunday begins daylight saving time.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not a fan of the clock manipulation. I\u2019ve heard arguments for both sides, but those who support it seem as if they\u2019ve traveled back about 150 years to a time when the majority of Americans lived on farms and children walked on gravel roads to one-room schoolhouses.<\/p>\n
Why does it matter that it\u2019s dark when you get up for school or work? Have you looked at a school calendar lately? Kids are coming home most winter weeknights from games, band practices, theatrical activities and other events.<\/p>\n
Also, what if I decide to go to bed at 9 so I can get seven or eight hours of sleep, like they say I\u2019m supposed to? I\u2019m darn sure I couldn\u2019t fall asleep on a late-June evening when the sun is still shining brightly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He\u2019s baaaaack! I\u2019m referring to the TV weatherman who constantly tells us, or reminds us, that the Berks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,1559,56385,28,128,130,129,1015],"class_list":["post-133356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-opinion","tag-opinion-columinists","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-top-stories-mer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}