The water cycle begins when moisture evaporates from the land and the oceans and heads into the atmosphere. This warm moist air rises and cools, joining up with dust particles to form clouds. These clouds are rounded up and herded around by the prevailing winds. When the clouds are full and the water is too heavy to be suspended in the air that water heads back to the earth as rain, snow, sleet or hail. This moisture can take one of several trails. It can evaporate before it ever hits the ground or thirsty plants can take it up. It can be corralled in solid form as glaciers or as snow-pack. It can take liquid form in lakes, dugouts or swampy areas. It can mosey or stampede over the land into creeks, streams or rivers. Or, it can infiltrate into the ground.

Most of the moisture held up by trees or taken up by plants, and some of that corralled, will evaporate back into the atmosphere. The water that has penetrated the ground can be stored in the soil or percolate down through the soil until it reaches the water table where it becomes groundwater. That which has been stored in the soil is taken up by plants and then returned to the atmosphere through the plant leaves.

The ground water may be just below the surface or it may move at great depths underground in aquifers. Eventually much of the deep groundwater flows to shallower levels in valleys and in down slope areas. There it can be used by plants and transpired back into the atmosphere. It can also discharge into springs, lakes or streams from which it may evaporate or join the stream flow into
larger bodies of water. Some water makes it to the ocean where evaporation again continues to drive the water cycle.

As of this writing, there’s no sure fire way I know of that will change the amount of rain or snow that falls. We can however, have a say in how effective moisture will be.

When you’re in the middle of a dry spell, every drop counts. Whether you’re hoping the grass gets a good start in the spring, looking for some re-growth later in the season or wanting water levels to recharge above or below ground, getting the most out of the available moisture is the key. For many of us, an inch of timely rain can be the difference between “make or break.”

When the snow melts or the rain comes, we need to be prepared, cause who knows when it will show up again? And we’ve all had those years that once it gets started, you don’t know if its ever going to stop! I’m told that the water we use has been around for hundreds of millions of years and the amount available has probably not changed that much – except of course where humans have gotten into big time tinkering. But for the greater part, water moves around the earth, changes forms, is taken in by plants and animals, but never really disappears – just travels along in one continuous cycle.

Many processes are at work to bring us the water we need and these processes are always at work although I’ve been through some years that I really questioned that. A good rancher friend once suggested that maybe the reason we went to the metric system was so we could get a measure on the miniscule amount of rainfall we’d had one real dry year. He figured the rainfall could no longer be measured in parts of inches let alone inches – we had no choice but to go to millimeters.

Common sense tells us a few good management practices make all the difference in getting the best use of moisture. Keeping the ground covered with growing plants or litter is probably the biggest one above ground, and increasing soil organic matter the most important below ground. According to my cowboy arithmetic, 100 pounds of dry soil (that’s roughly a patch measuring 1¢x 3¢ and 6² deep) with an organic matter level of 1.5% to 2% can hold 35-45 pounds of water, equal to ½ inch to 1½ inches of rain. On the other hand, soil with an organic matter level of 4% to 5% can hold 165-195 pounds of water, equal to 4 inches to 6 inches of rain.