Yesterday a coworker, Sylvia, asked if I knew what muddy rain was and if I had ever seen it. I told her I didn’t, and I hadn’t. She explained that “muddy rain” is when high winds kick dirt into the air, creating a dust storm aloft, rain passes through the dust storm. The result is a thin layer of mud on the surface of everything.
Yesterday Lincoln and a small pocket of southern Nebraska got a batch of muddy rain. Because the wind was coming out of the south and the nearest red dirt south of here is in Oklahoma, it was thought the mud came from as far away as Oklahoma, possibly Texas.
When Sylvia told me the story, our coworker, Lee, overheard and came into my office. Lee was relieved to know he wasn’t going crazy. Lee had spent part of the day using our Trimble Station to layout points on a local project, and he said he kept needing to clean the equipment because a film was building up. Until Sylvia relayed her knowledge, Lee was just left to wonder what was going on.
I wanted to see for myself what it looked like, so Sylvia and I went outside to find a white car and see how dirty it looked. The muddy rain had turned Brittany’s white Honda CR-V pink.
As we walked back into the office talking about muddy rain, we joked with another coworker, Brittany, about her car’s condition. Three more coworkers heard us and went to see for themselves.
Sylvia had made a simple comment about muddy rain and everybody who knew about this rare metrological event and was racing outside to see it.
After work, I went to the car wash. It was still drizzling, but clean drizzle, not a muddy drizzle. The line to get into the car wash was long. As long as we typically see on sunny Friday afternoons.
When I got home, I told my wife, Sue, I had been to the car wash, and she wondered why I would wash my car on a rainy day. Ten miles south at her office, the rain hadn’t been quite so muddy.
Hours later, she told me, “you right about the muddy rain. I had never heard of it, but it seems to be a real thing.”
But this isn’t a blog about the weather. This is a blog about getting the word out.
One person, Sylvia, steps to tell me an interesting tidbit. (Mostly, because she knows I love weather information) and others overhear our conversations. They then see our actions, and they want to learn about what we are talking about and experience what we are experiencing—a total of five more people.
I didn’t stop there, I took the interesting tidbit home, and when Sue heard my story, she wanted more information, so she looked deeper into the situation.
Word can travel fast. People seek it out.
If we have something important to share with the world. We should take action and share it. If muddy rain information can spend this fast, imagine how fast other potentially life-changing news can travel.
If we only take the time to share with others.