A Dry Year, But Good One

BY: Edwin B. Petersen

HELLO FOLKS! — The year 1963 will go down in history as one of the driest years on record, as well as one of the biggest in harvest. The hay crop was not the biggest but our rains came at the right time to make corn and soybeans.

According to my records we have had 19.5 inches of moisture this year. What the rest of December will bring we of course don't know, but had the rains came at any other time than when they did we would not have had nearly as big a crop.

Had the bulk of the 19 inches of precipitation come early in the spring, with more this fall there would have been a near crop failure.

The 19 1/2 inches of moisture this year is a real contrast with the precipitation of last year. During 1962 we had nearly double what we have had this year. My records indicate that we had 37.4 inches of rain and snow that year, most of it coming in the form of rain; with only about one inch as snow.

We went into the spring with an abundance of subsoil moisture which complemented the timely rains. For next year we will have to depend on rain or snow entirely as the subsoil is negligible, except where there have been fall rains.

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The RUN-DOWN by moth read like this:
April—3.3 inches.
May—2.9
June—3.1
July—5.3
August—1.6
September—1.7
October—0.2
November—1.4

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THIS JOSEPHUS whom I mentioned the other week gave us an insight of many things that the Bible barley mentions. For instance he describes what the tower of Babel was made of and how the people were able to build such a tower.

He also enlarges our knowledge on a man whom the Bible barely mentions. This man is Nimrod. Today's hunters are call nimrods. This is in reference to the man whom scripture refers to in Genesis as a mighty one in the earth, and a mighty hunter before the Lord.

It seems that Nimrod, who was a grandson of Noah, was one of the greatest politicians the earth has had. He did not hold the priesthood, therefore could not legally lead the people. However, he had personality and persuasiveness and he gathered around him a tremendous majority of people. This put him in direct conflict with the Prophets. The prophets tried to get the people to spread out and settle in the low valleys where there was an abundance of food and water. However, Nimrod, seeing a chance to gain from the natural fear the people had of low places, due to the memories their grand-parents had of the great flood, encouraged them to build the tower. This they did with great zeal; thus the tower became very tall, very quickly. It was built of brick and porter and sealed with bitumen.

So, as with all politicians, Nimrod's empire came to an abrupt end, and he ended up just a poor man anyway. As I recall, Josephus says that the bitumen eventually caught fire and destroyed the tower.

UPDATE

Minnesota WeatherTalk Newsletter for Friday, October 28, 2011

On a statewide basis this has been a very warm October, warmest since 1963 and probably 4th warmest in history.

Grandpa was right, 1963 is a threshold for weather Minnesota still uses today!