Published in the November 11-24, 2015 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Marty Cheek
Marty Cheek, publisher Morgan Hill Life
The drizzle started shortly after 3 a.m. Nov. 2. I stepped outside and looked up at the mist of water dancing in the glow of a streetlight. “Here comes the rain again, falling on my head like a memory,” played the lyrics from a Eurythmics song in my mind.
Walking in the rain is for me a simple pleasure. Most people think I’m nuts for going out for a rainy night stroll without hat or umbrella, coming home with soaked clothes. They warn I’ll catch cold. But considering the human body consists of about 75 percent water, I trust a few of these H20 molecules on my skin won’t hamper my health.
As I walked along East Dunne Avenue near my neighborhood, the strength of the rain picked up, splattering sidewalks and pavement with a delicious white noise and making the asphalt shiny, reflecting the reds, greens and yellow of the nearby traffic lights. The runoff collected fast, turning the streetside gutter into a miniature river carrying autumn leaves to grated sewer entries.
Watching the rain descend made me ponder California’s big water question — our severe 4-year drought. The hope is the El Niño storm systems that might come this winter will help to reduce the impact of our state’s water shortage.
With 38 million people, the Golden State’s economy can not continue without this life-giving liquid. Two-thirds of the population lives in Southern California, but most of the water is here in the north.
Our water supply grows short, especially with the reduction of the snow-pack to what scientists say is the lowest point it has been for 500 years. That water captured in a frozen state in the Sierra mountains keeps California’s economy booming. If climate change reduces that water in future years, we face economic devastation. El Niño promises to bring heavy rains, but because it is a warm weather system so will produce little snow. California needs water in its winter ice and snow to help sustain our population in the summer months.
Taking my night walk in the rain, I looked up at an LED streetlight. A psychedelic rainbow halo surrounded it in the mist, an ominous eye with a bright white pupil at the center hovering overhead. I recalled chatting once with a person from the Santa Clara Valley Water District, trying to impress him with a fun fact I’d learned about water. I showed him a plastic bottle filled with water and told him that because of the hydro-cycle and the transportation of water throughout the planet, it was a near certain probability that the bottle contained at least one or two water molecules that had once been in the body of Jesus.
In fact, that bottle contained water molecules once in the bodies of Alexander the Great, Socrates, Julius Caesar and virtually every person who existed 2,000 or more years ago.
The water district official said he didn’t believe it. Perhaps a mathematician could do the calculations for him. An individual such as Jesus drank at least 5,000 gallons of water during his lifetime. A teaspoon holds about 5 grams of water, which would be 300,000,000,000,000,000,000 water molecules. A gallon of water weighs about 3,785 grams, so Jesus must have drank 1.8 million grams of water in his life time. The number of H2O molecules that passed through his body would be an amazingly big number. Given 2,000 years to be mixed into Earth’s water system, it seems highly likely some of the water falling down on my face as I looked up at the streetlight halo must have had some molecules that once were in Jesus — and anyone else from the ancient world.
Every second, powered by the energy of the sun, 16 million tons of water evaporates from the surface of the Earth, mostly from the oceans. Every second, 16 million tons of water falls back on the Earth as precipitation. The power of the water cycle and how it rules our lives is really something to think about during an early morning walk in the rain.
