The use of superlatives in our world has reduced their original impact to the mundane; neither a pizza nor a sandwich will ever be: ‘epic’. Very little that happens on a daily basis is ‘unbelievable’ any more. One word that does seem to be holding up, either as an adjective or a noun, is the word, extreme.
With less than 22” of rain in my gauge, half my annual average, over the last eleven months there is no surprise that we have moved from ‘severe’ into the ‘extreme’ portion of the state drought map. We are far from alone. Lakes, rivers and reservoirs across the USA (and world) are at or near record lows; a few are bone dry. Lake Anna, down over a foot across its 13,000 acres, is missing over 4 billion gallons of water.
Extremely low surface water levels also means ground water levels are at extremes. My ‘creek’ comes and goes, tiny pools for a few days after our rare rains. I have heard no news of local wells going dry but as the drought continues, I have to guess that sad news is coming. The extreme heat forecast for the country’s Big Two Five Ohhh celebration will not help water or power issues but should serve as a reminder of our direct link to the warming going on worldwide.
“We the people”, as an opening line in the preamble to our constitution was a bit extreme in 1776. Few countries at the time granted ‘the people’ much say in their governance. Our experiment in a government whose powers are derived “from the consent of the governed” was bold and has certainly hit and survived more than a few bumps in our 250 year journey. Extreme challenges to our system continue at the local, state and national levels for our ‘of the people’ elected democracy.
As celestial movements conveniently follow the laws of gravity/physics, extremes off Earth are relatively few in July. We reach our annual extreme distance from the sun on the 6th. Our extreme summer tilt keeps the sun high overhead across our daytime sky but means the moon rides extremely low across the night sky.
May’s two full moons pushed all full moons for the remainder of 2026 toward the end of each month; July’s Full Buck moon on the 29th. Venus still beams in the west as the Evening Star but there are no other planets nearby this month. Venus is just above Leo’s brightest star, Regulus, on the 9th. Both are visited by the crescent moon on the 16th and 17th. Our solar view moves the sun from Gemini into Cancer on the 22nd.
Ending May’s column, with hopes for rain, (I did get 3+”) and a prediction that June would be ‘mushroom season’ turned out to be extremely wrong. I have seen a few toadstools but they are a food source for many local critters and they didn’t last long and neither did that rain. Wise water use seems like simple, common sense; it is an extremely precious and very finite resource.
250 years! America has been on quite a run. A far different world looms ahead over the next 250 years. ‘We the people’ will have to work together to solve our shared challenges and limit the extremes we are all going to face, Today On Earth
