Normally I like the beginning of the school year, but this year I want to do it again. Lucky for me, a new year begins next week: the Year of Water 2026! We had a surprise storm this week, with purple streaks of lightning and raindrops filling our barrel to complete the end of water year 2025. And I’ll use this storm to update the next post: It happened a few years ago, but I’m still thinking about water and weather.
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It’s almost October, the beginning of a new water year. A hydrological year is one of several ways to measure precipitation. In this way, the 2026 water year begins now (when we expect the rains to begin) and will end next year, on September 30. A rainy year runs from July to June, a dry season buffer on either side of when the rain might arrive. Other places simply use a calendar year, from a fingers-crossed-wet January to the dryness of summer and then, we hope, the rain again. We wait.
Different groups use different calendars: The National Weather Service in California used to use the rainy year, but recently changed to a hydrological yearfollowing the lead of the US Geographical Services and many other weather and water agencies. Hydrologists tend to like a rainy year, because streams and rivers can dry up in October. Others prefer the simplicity of measuring the rainfall that falls during a standard calendar year, which begins in January.
I’m not sure which path I would choose if it were me choosing. A water year offers the best chance of getting good starting numbers; then you’re just watching time run out unless there are some late summer storms. The rainy year softens you with the dryness, then it is strong in the middle. Maybe it’s the calendar year that we need a last-minute miracle. It’s probably a good thing it’s not run by a water agency, because it would probably keep changing the system to make the numbers look good, or at least not as bad.
I do the same thing with the weather even when I don’t expect it to rain; I’m always choosing different watches so that everything turns out the way I want. I don’t really make New Year’s resolutions, but I do try to shape the year ahead. But if that hasn’t gone well, I start again on my birthday, which falls on the spring equinox. Still not happy? I’ll try it in the fall, when school is back in session, providing another chance to start over, whether I’m the one buying new pencils and following the bell schedule.
I like calendars that measure time in other ways. I like the lunar calendar, the shape of the moon from dark to crescent, medium and gibbous, full and vice versa. I like the names of the moons I find in almanacs, where October is the Traveling Moon, the Dry Grass Moon, the Hunter’s Moon, the Dying Moon.
I also like the names of the water measurements. There is the word fathom, the six-foot length that describes the depth of the ocean and our ability to know or not know what is beneath it. There are the acre-feet of reservoirs, which make me think of a giant walking through the hills, creating a rain-retention pond with every footprint.
Time also has its lovely increments: the jiffy, the Tatum, the fortnight, the dog year. there is a song from the musical Rent which measures 525,600 minutes a year in cups of coffee, burned bridges. Even in the incommensurable units of love.
At the end of August, my part of the coast had 65 percent normal rainfall and our reservoirs are shrinking. Last week there was a small storm at night, with lightning and a half inch of rain. I think it’s a fitting way to end our year of water. A new year is approaching. I want to measure this water year, and every year, in drops and inches, rain barrels and gallons. Acrid feet, feet of snow. I’ll divide it however I can, as if I can somehow get more out of what we have too little of: water and time.
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Image: Tad Zapasnikvia Flickr/Creative Commons
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