No need to worry anyone and run around screaming “the sky is falling, the sky is falling“. However, we do have to be a little more up-to-date in the 21st century with our weather patterns and our climate change issues. It was just 2 years ago; when my capital city of Atlanta, Georgia was on the brink of disaster. You may not have heard about this in your area, but its true! The millions of Georgia residents that call Atlanta home was only 3 months away from running out of water. The two big lakes in our area (Allatoona Lake and Lake Lanier) were running dry and there was no rain in sight. It was a big panic in my state and it set off a big water battle that continues today with our border states of Alabama and Florida. We could not supply these states with water; since our own state was needing the precious supply of our fresh water reserves. This was all due to a major drought and no one in Georgia was practicing any rain harvesting methods. If no rain would have fell for the next 12 weeks, some of the most populous places in Georgia would be left bone dry.

Luckily the rains did eventually come and it began to fill up our streams, rivers, lakes, and other areas that are use to holding water supplies. This drought taught everyone in Georgia just how precious water is to us. The local news outlets in Georgia began to promote something most people in my state was not aware of and this includes me too. The process of catching and retaining rain with the use of rain barrels. These barrels can be placed around the home and help save some of the wet stuff; when we do get a nice summer time shower.

Just about every home has a corner or a place around the home where a lot of rain falls from. You can take a rain water barrel and strategically place them around the home to catch rain. Home owners can use these barrels of rain to help water their gardens, wash their cars, and other things like that. It may not sound like much, but when 1 or 2 homes in each neighborhood practice this rain harvesting procedure, it really starts to add up across the board. A garden that gets watered during a long period of rainless days, will continue to grow well and thrive. Keeping a small garden wet and producing, helps to keep that ground moist. When a rain shower does come, that ground around a home garden will not soak up as much of the rain and will be a little extra run-off for our water tributaries to collect. Just this example alone can add gallons and gallons of rain water to our area lakes; if enough people are saving rain in these barrels. Washing your car with rain that has been saved by barrels, also cuts down on the amount of water a community is using up in the hot weather months.

All of these small water-saving methods can help an area endure a drought much longer; if just a few home owners practice this new-age method. It’s easy to see how a small town or even a large city could prevent running out of water, if more people would just try and store the rains from Mother Nature more often. It was just a couple of years ago; when the worse drought ever hit my state. I hope more people will look for these rain barrels for sale and practice some form of rain harvesting. Record heat this summer already has our creeks and rivers running extremely low this year and we could easily be in a drought later this fall. Our climate is changing fast and we must keep up, if we plan to live and thrive like we have for the last 200+ years!