110 and Counting

It's true: it has been 110 days (and counting) since the last measurable amount of rain in the metropolitan Phoenix area (where I live). Every day is a new record, besting the previous record of 101 days set back in the 1999-2000 rain season.

Of course, that is not a record for a city in America. The now-gone city of Bagdad, California went without rain for 767 days between 1909 and 1912. Wow! That's more than two entire years! (Which is perhaps why it is now a ghost town.)

So, I guess that means we have 658 more days to go until we hold the American record.

The illustration is by famed naturalist Charles Harper.