When the rain finally started about 5 PM on Sunday, October 23, Cortes Island had received almost no precipitation for 97 days. The “Rain’ chart at Cortes Island School shows that 3.5 mm of rain fell overnight and I can hear the drizzle continuing to fall on my roof early Monday morning. Hopefully light rains will continue to soften up the soil before we receive a downpour.

“The 2022 drought is worse than people think, it’s worse than scientists predicted, and its impacts up and down the coast are a lot worse than I had even feared when I started researching it,” said Forrest Berman-Hatch, author of FOCI Report: Climate Change and Drought.