28 Aug 2014

The day after my last post, a tropical depression (the start of what became Hurricane Cristobal) came across the islands and brought a lot of rain (liquid gold) on Friday and Saturday. I don’t know exactly how much but believe it was about 6 inches. We didn’t have a rain gauge at the time … but we do now.

It was a lot more rain than TS Bertha brought back at the beginning of August. How do I know? Because our cisterns collected a lot more water this time. And monitoring the cistern water levels is an important part of our jobs here as caretakers. We have about 60,000 gallon capacity here – fresh water and grey water combined. Without the rain filling up the cisterns during the rainy season, you’re buying water from the desalination plants in town.

The USVI is the only place in the modern world where citizens are required by law to be directly
responsible for their own domestic water supply. Since the early 1930s the US Virgin Islands have a mandatory law requiring private residence and businesses to construct cistern(s) for the storage of rainwater from rooftop or dig a well for domestic water supply.

The building code of the USVI reenacted in 1964 and revised in 1996 has a clause setting a mandatory cistern construction or well for all dwellings except those units that have connection to public water supply system. Most of the lower areas around town and near the waterfront are connected to the water system which is from desalination plants. But most of the island is rural and depends on their cisterns for water needs. So we look forward to any substantial rainfall.

The Virgin Islands does not have a rainy season, however there are month to month differences. The rainiest months are November, October, September, August and May. Rainy months does not mean that there is continuous rainfall every day all month long, in fact most daily rainfall reports are below .10 inches. Rain showers are often short and typically occur early in the morning or at night. On a truly rainy day (like we had the weekend of the 22-23), it will rain off and on for the entire day. All day downpours over numerous days are not common.

So, yes, we had a rainy weekend but no one we know is complaining – especially us!