Rain, We Don't Mind

It's churlish to complain about our weather, considering the winter storms that continue to wreak havoc from the Midwest to the East Coast.  So let's just call this a report.

Now officially in serious drought, we're having an eerie winter. Lots of sun in the rainy season has made people oddly nervous. So far it has been warmer than usual in the daytimes (mostly due to that sunshine) but colder than normal at night, often hovering around freezing, which usually happens a few times but not so often or steadily.

  But in just the past few days the pattern started to revert towards "normal", with fairly steady temperatures( 50s/40s) and a series of rain-bearing storms. That's good.  Only so far the rain here in northern Humboldt has been minimal, and it looks like it will continue that way.  The rain is mostly falling north and south of here (with snow to the east).  Even San Francisco will probably get more rain out of the system coming through tonight than we will.

It's good for the state, for the snowpack in the Sierras, and probably good for our water supply from the north.  But locally, our rivers and so on, not so much.  Nor for our plants and trees.  In a drought you start to see how things are connected.  The dairy farms, food prices, potential conflicts and problems for our cash economy--whatever kind of grass, it takes water to grow it.  Farmers vs. fishermen/wildlife (salmon) vs. "growers" vs. townspeople etc. for what water there is.   (However, southern Humboldt--where the "growers" mostly are-- is expected to get decent rain from this system.)

 So despite the reassuring sounds outside, I'll continue to be nervous until I see a few inches of rain have come down from one storm.

About the only good thing to come out of this drought so far however is increased pressure on the Brown administration in Sacramento to not approve fracking in the state, which uses millions of gallons of water.  A protest march in Sacramento to make that point is scheduled for March 15.