Your weekly dose of rainwater is here! For this week I finished measuring the houses in the Fox Glenn neighborhood which add up to about 340 houses! Now, the reason I measured all these houses is to take the average size (which hopefully represents the average household in Flagstaff) and plug that amount in to the equation I mentioned before:
Rainfall (in) x 0.623 x Roof/ catchment Area (ft^2) x Runoff Coefficient
Based on the house measurements, the average rooftop size in square feet is 2,270.20 ft^2! This equation will give me the amount of rainfall (in gallons) the average person can collect in a given year. The major variable here will be the amount of rainfall. As I discussed in the last post, I took data from the Pulliam and 4SW stations and took the averages for each year for the past 30 years, 15 years, and each decade and made each into graphs. Going back to the equation, I took the total amount of precipitation for 2014 (18.41 in.) and plugged it into the equation to get the amount of water you could collect in our current climate. Here's what I found if, in our perfect little world, we could collect 95% of the water:
18.41 in x .623 x 2,270.20 x .95
= (drum roll please...)
24,736 gallons!
¡Ay caramba! That is a may-yan of water! That word translates to "a lot" or "abundance of" in Vulcan (as a tribute to the recently deceased Leonard Nimoy). Now this is how much you could have collected last year but on the topic of practicality, if a 1000 gallon tank is this size:
-You can ignore Mr. Joe Shmoe (although, he is a very intelligent Joe Shmoe if he has a water tank..)-
Imagine having 24 of those around your home! So, figuring out how all of this can relate to the average person is something I need to research in future weeks..
Next, I made my own, hand-drawn (yes, I did use a real pen) graphs and created my own estimated trend. However, I continued that trend in to the next 5-10 years (2020-2025) and where it met with the years 2020 and 2025, I traced a dotted line back to the y-axis (precip. in inches) to find what might be the total precipitation for that year. I did this for graphs of the decade averages, totals for each year 15 and 30 years ago. Doing this I found that:
For decade graph: 2020: 15.9 in ; 2025: 14.8 in
For 15 year graph*: 2020: 22.7 in ; 2025: 24.5 in
*Remember that the 15 year graph showed an increasing trend
For 30 year graph: 2020: 13.45 in ; 2025: 12.5 in
Because I am essentially trying to predict the future, there is definitely going to be some variability. That's why I created an "upper bound" (maximum, best case amount of predicted precip.) and a "lower bound" (the minimum, worst case amount of precip.). So this creates a range of amount of rainwater we could receive depending on climate change, emissions, etc. I chose to use the amounts/ data in the decade graphs as the upper bound, and those in the 30 year graphs as the lower bound. I hope to read more on a report by Hereford (I know, you're probably thinking what I did, "is that even a name? Or is it just another part of speech? Like 'Hereford, we will name him Florfinschmorp!'"). Nonetheless, in his report, he calculates his own average precipitation from 1950-2014, which I might uses as another upper bound. When I plug all these numbers into the equation (hey, its easier than integrals!) I predicted that in 2020, the most/ optimal amount of rainwater (using data from the decade graph) you can collect in one year is: 21,363.5 gallons with the minimum you can collect being 18,071.6 gallons.
By 2025, the amount you can collect can range from 19,885.5 gal to 16,795.2 gal.
Now you might be thinking "but, Lia, that's a lot of water! You just said Joe Shmoe would have trouble storing it all!" Well you are every correct, inquisitive reader, that is a lot of water! But this research really puts it into perspective when you have to think about spreading all of that out over a year's time! Another thing to consider is that yearly precip. isn't distributed evenly throughout the year, we have dry and monsoon seasons. That means that the water you collect in the wetter months needs to be spread out over the dryer months, when you get little to no rainfall. I hope to look more into this when I research practicality.
However there is hope for us up in the mountains! Down in Tuscon there is an ingenious man by the name of Brad Lancaster, who can fulfill practically all of his water needs (except his dishwasher) with the rain that falls on his roof! I think that's pretty incredible and hopeful for us considering that Tuscon only received 1/3 the amount of precipitation that we do! Awesome!
Now, to wrap things up, my dad brought up a very interesting hypothesis as to why more precip. was collected at Pulliam than at 4SW (he is scientist after all, so he is pretty darn good at hypothesizing). He told me that an increased amount of aircraft activity over the years and increased condensation to due to different chemicals being emitted by more and more planes. This then shows an increasing trend in the graph. I myself am still confused as to the exact science behind his hypothesis but when I find out, I'll be sure to share it :) However, my rebuttal is pointing out that this trend is still prevalent at Wupatki and Sunset Crater, both far from any airport. Do you have hypothesis as to why there is an increase? Be sure to share it in the comments!
Well, this is it for now, but I hope you enjoyed reading my weekly report!
And as always, thanks for reading! :)
-Lia
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