Who brought the rain?

The day after my last post about rain and irrigating, we got 0.94 inches of rain at the farm.  I was at work during the day - where there was no rain.  Driving home I saw no evidence of rain until I turned down the gravel road that leads to the farm.  For the past few weeks while it's been so dry, the dust from the gravel road has gotten progressively worse, covering everyone's vehicles in a layer of dust.  That morning I had run my car through a car wash, even while I thought about what a waste of time & money it was, given that I'd be covered in dust again that evening. But then as I drove down the road Monday night, I realized that there wasn't much dust.  Then I saw a place on the edge of the road that had washed slightly.  Then I saw actual puddles.  Apparently it rained steadily for about 45 minutes - that almost inch - but there was a definite line where the rain had and had not fallen. The city of Faribault hadn't gotten any rain; our farm was, apparently, just within the northern edge of the system.  This is pretty exciting stuff for a farmer.

However, there is some contention about who brought the rain.  Farmer Bill doesn't currently have any way to water his apple trees with the irrigation system.  The long dry spell - and the lack of certain rain in the forecast - had him sending one of his crew out to water the trees manually.  They use a huge tank (500 gallons I believe) mounted on a small trailer; the tank has hose outlets and a crew of 1 to 3 people can haul the trailer to water anything not accessible by the irrigation system.  One of our guys was out giving each tree a drink - parking the trailer at the end of the rows and hauling the hose up and down when he felt sprinkles.  He called Farmer Bill to ask whether he should keep watering & Farmer Bill looked at the sky, looked at the radar online, and told him to keep going - the real rain was going to miss us.  So Michael kept watering.  Just like washing your car generally brings rain that day or the next, so does watering.

So, what brought the rain - me washing my car or Michael watering the trees?  We'll never know, but we'll always take the rain!