Wyoming has rarely gotten the reputation as a wet place. Perhaps except only when ski areas get buried or back when Cheyenne was inundated by a horrific super cell thunderstorm, our state is generally known as semi-arid.

         A tour of the state this spring, summer and early fall shows that Wyoming, incredibly, is still green in a great many places.

         Although snowpack levels in the mountains this past winter were not that high, a constant stream of rainstorms ever since has kept the landscape verdant and the grass growing.

         Hay farmers have enjoyed record harvests and even local gardeners have basked in the joy normally reserved for residents of the Midwest. It has been so wet there are some species of vegetables that have actually not done so well because of too much water.

         Nobody traveled the state as much as politicians.

         Pete Illoway of Cheyenne, an unsuccessful candidate for Secretary of State, said the following:

“When Shoshoni looks a little green the state as a whole must be doing good. Actually most of the state did look pretty good and for August the grass was still looking good. Livestock should be in great shape with the amount of grass that was available. Most of the state is going into winter in good shape.”

Ed Murray of Cheyenne who won that race said Wyoming, at times, reminded him of Ireland, it was so green.

Gene Bryan, now living in Tucson, is a rodeo fanatic and spent the summer traveling the state. As a former head of the Wyoming Travel Commission and a native Wyomingite, he offers perspective on what kind of wet year the state had.

         “We have never seen the state so green for so long. Yellowstone`s rivers and lakes were all full. There was still a ton of snow in the higher elevations, the wild flowers were a riot of color, and all the reservoirs we saw (Boysen, Buffalo Bill and Glendo) were as full as we have ever seen them!”

My favorite weather spotter is Jack States who lives in Sinks Canyon. His take on all this goes like this: “Your interpretation of a "wet" summer is right-on. It is supported by the seasonal drought maps, which show June-Sept 2013 (drought) and May-August 2014 (wet).

 “Fundamental to the human definition of drought and flood is their ever changing condition, flowing, sometimes unpredictably, from one extreme to the other.  Agriculture and forestry- the enterprises that I call man’s attempts to manage nature- are foremost affected by this variability. Therefore farmers are the ones likely to remember, with accuracy, past droughts and floods and the temperature shifts translating precipitation into wind, humidity, rain, hail, frost, snow and tornadoes.

“So there you have it. You can get your best weather fix according to Farmer Brown. Some of us, though, feel compelled to measure past and present weather variables using scientific methodologies, and use the results to interpret weather events. For example, the following quote: ‘Unlike rings in wood of the oak, the fragile memory of man is an unreliable record of weather.’”

States likes to quote this ditty:

We’ll weather the weather,

whatever the weather,

whether we like it or not.

Retired Thermopolis publisher, Pat Schmidt, related some comments about the wet summer: “About the only thing that I recall as real unusual this summer was taking my 9-year-old grandson to the Bighorn Mountains in late June near Burgess Junction. We awakened to low clouds. As we drove on west 14A and reached the Big Horn Basin overlook we were surrounded by fog.

“A lifetime resident of Las Vegas, my grandson said he had never seen fog. He took off running down the mountain and I had to holler he was nearing some sheer drop-offs. He sat down in an effort to stop and slid along on the wet grass on his backside, scaring grandpa more than a little. This does tell you how humid and wet our summer has been.”

Dave Simpson of Cheyenne says: “We had more rain at my cabin in the Snowy Range this year than any year since I bought the place 30 years ago. It was great. I was able to burn a lot of the wood killed by the bark beetles.

“As far as fun, there was plenty of rain on the tin roof, a fire in the fireplace, an easy chair and a good book. I must be getting old, because that`s my idea of fun these days.”