I'm on an island in the middle of a huge river at the end of the Great Lakes, the largest body of freshwater in the world, things stay pretty green and I never run out of water.

@Surfpirate I'm frequently surrounded by varying shades of yellow.

@FrayedBear I've got friends from Taz that now live in Melbourne, fireworks set off a grass fire on their corner last night. Bloody Hell it's dry there right now.

@MissKathleen I'm actually at the other end of the Great Lakes, the eastern end of Lake Ontario where it flows into the St. Lawrence River.

@MissKathleen The largest freshwater lake is Lake Baikal in Siberia but collectively the Great Lakes are bigger and since they are technically one giant lake that we just gave different names to the 5 branches.

@Surfpirate Middle of winter - rain is normally a winter commodity.

@FrayedBear Hard to figure the weather, even my Grandfather used to say so but the last 10 years has been anybody's best guess. I think the weathermen all over the world just watch the radar and then throw darts at a map.

@FrayedBear Hard to figure the weather, even my Grandfather used to say so but the last 10 years has been anybody's best guess. I think the weathermen all over the world just watch the radar and then throw darts at a map.

@Surfpirate I think that they are much more accurate than 50 years ago.

@FrayedBear I agree that the weather forecasts are more accurate in the short term than they were even 20 years ago, the technology has improved that much over the years and makes 24 hr forecasting very accurate but once you start casting further out on the time line it gets very grey. I used to check my tropical storm sites every morning during hurricane season when I was building in the Caribbean and the potential variables were pretty large for major cells and their intensity. We're seeing more extreme weather than we did when I was a kid back in the 60's and I do think it will continue to get worse and more unpredictable.

I think the float charges might be cost prohibitive. I bought it to build the house and do the landscaping when I found out they charge $600 just to float a machine onto the island to your site, then it is $150/hr including lunch and breaks. I've run pretty much everything but a tower crane over the years so I bought if used for $35k, a good investment as I can sub out at $100/hr on the island and still be a good deal - cash of course.