Double yay! Rain tends to beget rain, fortunately. Here's hoping for rain, minus mudslides ;)

We are getting it too. What a blessing !

Great to hear, Jackie!

Congratulations!

That's great! Rain on the roof is such a soothing sound.

Happy about you getting some rain. Happy happy plants and redwood forests!

roseseek - I took the white sheet off of the mature Anna Olivier stumps & roots this morning, and it has been raining gently on them all day. When I took the sheet off, there was one tiny sprout coming out of the smallest diameter cane - I am hoping for more. I did keep it watered and misted and the sheet wet for the past weeks, when it was HOT and DRY. Hope it works.

Jackie

Congratulations on the rain, Jackie, and the new growth. Just wait until you see the new shoots that plant is going to pump out after this rain!

Celebrating your rain and your rose sprouts! Carol

I LOVE RAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, just an update - it has now been raining for 60 hours here - I am pretty sure without stopping. Regular rain, interspersed with hours of just drizzle, so no flooding yet. They say this is going to continue (2 more storms coming, the last of which is supposed to be a very strong one) util next Thurs, 6 days from now. Our county is almost out of water in the local reservoirs, so everyone is hoping this will keep up -

Jackie

That sounds incredible, I'm so happy for you! Congratulations on all the rain. As someone who is also from somewhere that barely rains, I know it can feel like the greatest gift sometimes. We are also in quite a drought over here and I sure wish we'd get some precipitation. I bet this will really give your transplanted roses a boost 💙

Jackie, i am soooo jealous! no rain south of Bakersfield yet … but Monday i too could be out in the wet doing a happy dance. 🤞

I'm so happy for the rain for you!!!! And it sounds like your area really, really needs it!! I ho pe it fills up the reservoirs and lakes!!

Wow, that is amazing! We've had a quarter of an inch so far, but expect 3 inches over the next 48 hours. This is good news. Any rain that falls anywhere in California benefits us all. My fingers are crossed that wildfire season will come to a close with this storm.

Now it is about 11:40AM on Sunday - it has been pouring since last night. There is a river running down our driveway towards the street. Our basement has 3 inches of water in it in some places. Not a problem - we will take the rain. Lovely sound, too. Of course, the power keep flickering - I hope it stays on long enough for my DH to watch the 49er game -

Jackie

We have had 4 inches and a bit as of this morning (still a few more showers to go, looking at the Doppler radar), which is more than a quarter of our average annual rainfall here in Livermore, in just a day's worth of rain. The native plants in the unirrigated parts of the garden are already plumping up and coming out of dormancy. The flushing of built-up alkaline salts will be such a godsend -- it was very discouraging to see those white "blooms" on top of the soil everywhere and the browned leaf edges, etc. as a result and nothing to be done for it -- with only a few exceptions, there was virtually no good-looking rose foliage here during this past summer; everything was generally beaten up by that and the heat and drought. A good test of the integrity of the roof, too, which didn't leak, and a chance to debug the yard's various drainage pathways (important and a bit tricky, with the hill topography we have), which haven't been tested much since the last big deluge 7 years ago. Happily, only a few glitches there, easily fixed with a rake and hoe.

It has rained 7 inches here in the last week, 3 of them yesterday as of 5PM. Since it rained all night, I expect those numbers to go up. It has stopped this morning, and the sun is out, which is good because we needed to get out and sweep the driveway, sidewalk, etc. No trees or large tree limbs came down that I could see, but that did happen all over town. Our new rose garden drained nicely, which I expected, but it was great to see. The entire garden is so happy, and the fresh smell is wonderful! Now I just have to remind myself NOT to step on the beds, because they are still like sponges full of water.

Our local water company made a big announcement in the paper this morning - they are banning the use of automatic irrigation systems as of 12/01/21! Duh. That goes along with much of their other lame ideas - we have had drought on & off for the past 10 years, but they have never done anything whatever (like making more storage, so they could capture water during the occasional very very wet year - there have been 2 during that period, but no storage added). Sigh.

Jackie

Jackie, is that banning automatic irrigation for the rainy season only? Surely not year round.

Sounds crazy, Jackie. Over-reaction. Sheesh.

They are banning it from 12/1 through 5/31. Unfortunately, lately our rain has stopped in Feb, so we have had to turn on the irrigation sometime in March. May 31 is way too late, but they say we can still water using a hose or a bucket - I can't wait! The good news is that 3 of the 5 directors of the water district (who have all been in office 20-25 years) are up for election in Nov'22, and I am hearing rumors that a slate of people who actually have new ideas will be running against them.

Jackie

Thankfully you will have 6 months of the year at worst, then, of irrigation. I'm glad it is not eliminated completely.

That doesn't mean drip irrigation, does it? That's supposed to be better for saving water, isn't it?

Yes, it means ALL "automatic irrigation". "Whom the gods will destroy, first they make mad".

Jackie

Jackie, what about turning the water on and off by hand? Isn't that "manual", not "automatic"? hehe.

Nope. You will have to hold a hose, or pour out of a bucket.

Jackie

Here in Livermore, irrigation via sprinklers (usually automatic, but not always) is currently constrained by days (every-other) and time of day (not between 9 am and 6 pm). Our ordinance says that drip irrigation is allowed any time of the day, but only on the days allowed for your side of the street, which alternate according to odd or even house numbers, but enforcing that, on a practical level, would be pretty tough without a minute inspection of the lines. No limits on use, so you could set your sprinklers for twice as long on the days/times you are allowed and "no problem". Sounds like Marin/San Rafael is similarly floundering.

What worked really well last drought around was to have the water company set a monthly quota for each household via a set percentage reduction of the use of a normal year (with every household guaranteed a minimum of 6 ccf, which would easily cover household use, but not landscape irrigation) and use sticks (penalties) and carrots (if you used water below your quota, you could "bank" the credits to offset penalties should you go over your quota in the future) to get compliance. However, this latest generation of town administrators are relatively young and maybe not even around in the last drought...and maybe not as hard-nosed as my generation. The only really effective way to reduce usage is to give people a target and let them figure out how to meet it, from what I've seen. Last time around, Livermore reduced usage way more than the targets, even, doing this.

catspa - I agree with you - they should give people some sort of amount of water, and let the residents decide what to use it on, instead of trying to micro-manage everyone's behavior 24/7. this is how "the government" becomes the butt of jokes. AND they should work and plan ahead, and make more storage for the really rainy years, and spend money to stop all of the zillions of leaks in their system, and and etc. But, they don't.

jackie

We're lucky here...no water restrictions.

OK, and update: as of today, my town has gotten 11 inches of rain here since Oct 1, 2021. That is more rain than we got in the entire "water year" (Oct 1/Oct1) of 2020/21!

That is because this year it rained prodigiously in Oct, whereas "normally" it does not start raining in ernest until Nov. Our historic "normal" annual rain is 40 inches, so we have 30 inches to go to between now and May to be normal, but what a good start! More storms are predicted for next week, so we are well into our "winter mode" of always taking umbrellas with us (they are in every vehicle, suitcase, and closet) where every we go, as well as throwing on a raincoat whenever we go out, "just in case". Have not done this for so long that it took a few days to get back into the swing of it. Now if this just keeps up...

Jackie

Excellent news, Jackie!! <3 <3 <3

Jackie, lucky you in lush NorCal! Down here in northern LA County, dew in the morning is all we have, and I’m thankful for that. Since the glorious half-inch we gleaned from the atmospheric river early last week, it’s barely even been cloudy.

Send some of those storms down this way, please!

Sylvia

We got 1.7 inches at the edge of the Los Angeles basin, at 2000ft, in Oct. this next storm will only go North of us. Enjoy the rain!

Wonderful! So happy you're getting rain!

I can't imagine living in a place where you're told how much water you can use and when. I understand environmental pressures, but my goodness. Sometimes the things I read about CA make it seem like an open air prison!

Steven

If you lived where there was a water shortage emergency Steven, I'm sure you would learn to understand.

Oh Sheila! I said I understand the environmental pressures, but there's no way I'd choose to live in a place like that because I would understand it's clearly over-populated/developed for what the ecosystem and environment can support. Especially when the development continues to expand at a very rapid pace. There's no "learning to understand" about it. :-D It's not sustainable, the current practices, and it will only get worse.

***Plus, why is it that it's always the private individual's requirement to cut back/go without when the issues aren't being caused by them? When the issues caused by businesses and the governments that allow them to continue the way they are and those issues become the individual's so-called "responsibility", that should be a red flag.

It's also frustrating to an outsider to observe that, without massive irrigation efforts, it seems much of California is unable to be the huge ag producer that it is. Definitely makes me want to get more involved with things involving my state government and laws to protect the water in our Great Lakes here from the greedy desires of dry western regions.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasdelbeccaro/2018/04/19/the-top-four-reasons-california-is-unsustainable/?sh=7d9e2c643a23

There are so many facts and aspects I'd love to address and touch on, but that's irrelevant.

Steven

Update - it is raining as I type! Another storm came in today. Not a huge one like the last one, but a "normal" winter rain storm. We should get 1/2 - 1 inch from it. That means the "storm door" is still open for Northern CA! For those of you who don't know what that means, it means that the winter storm process of storms lining up off Asia, and then coming across the Pacific one after another which has been normal my entire life is so far still working. In our drought years, the West Coast still gets the normal amount of rain, but all of the storms are forced North by a horrible enormous high pressure zone off CA, (the first time it happened, the weather people named it the "ridiculously resilient ridge") and the North West gets all of the rain, which is not good for them either.

So far, so good. We do still have very wet years about 1 or 2 out of 4, but the problem is here at least that we do not have enough storage to store it - our local reservoirs are in our county, on our local mountain, and the smallest one is spilling already. We can only store enough water to last for 2 years, so if the rain is very light for more than 2 years in a row, we run out of water. We are hoping that in Nov '22 we can un-elect 3 of the 5 directors of the local water utility, all of whom have been there 20-25 years, doing nothing to plan for the obvious need for more storage, and perhaps desalinization (we are sitting right on the Pacific Ocean).

So, for now I am still doing my happy dance! Also, I planted about 400 bulbs in various places in the newly damp soil 5 days ago, but did not use our precious water to water them in, as a storm was predicted. So, I am listening to the rain water in my bulbs - a very nice feeling.

Jackie

Half an inch overnight here, to add to almost-5 inches already this seaon, which is nearly a third of our annual average total. So far, so good, indeed.

Well, now you’ve done it, MiGreenThumb (Z5b S.Michigan/Sunset 41) Elevation: 1,029 feet -- started talking about water around a Californian!

As a 6th generation Northern Californian who has been around a while, I can assure you that availability of fresh water here has always been dicey, even many decades back when there was only a small fraction of the current population and even in places, like my family's homesteaded ranches in Mendocino County, where there were hardly any people (and still aren't). There's an old saying, "Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting" and there's no truer statement about water in California than that, whether 100 years ago or today. Because there is no rain (and I mean zero) between April and maybe mid-October or even later (not until December/January some years), except for occasional summer thunderstorms in the Sierras, access to a year-round supply of water here has always been critical, much contested, and governed by water rights laws that date back to 1850, when California first became a state (surface waters, at least – underground sources via wells have only recently come under some regulation). The infrastructure and laws around surface water appropriation and rights in California are complex, arcane, steeped in custom and history, and aren't even well-understood by most current Californians (the great majority of whom were born elsewhere) much less folks living outside of California.

Surface water can’t be stored or used by anyone in California unless they hold the specific right to that water – be they municipalities, individual land owners, agricultural irrigation districts, whoever. Rights that allow beneficial use of such can be bought and sold, but nobody can own water itself. There are also differing priorities among established rights for surface water; rights originating prior to 1914, for example, tend to have highest priority and get first use of a given source, while later rights with successively lesser priorities get what's left, which is likely to be nothing in drought years.

In the article you link, the author (who was born in Chicago, by the way) mentions only the State Water Project, which provides just part (about 12%) of California’s water supply. Overall, via dams and pumping, around 50% of all precipitation that falls in CA is captured, 75% of which falls in the northern half of the state, even though 80% is used in the southern half of the state, so massive amounts of water are transported south, mainly via canals. Roughly 80% of captured water goes to irrigation and other ag uses (at only a fraction of its actual cost, with taxpayers in general heavily subsidizing ag users) and no more than 15% of the total goes to municipal or residential use, where users pay around 10x more for the same water (an opportunity not lost on ag users, who can, and do, sell their cheap water rights at a premium to municipalities with shortages for handsome profits). Given that agriculture currently contributes only about 1 to 2% of the state’s total economic output, this situation is becoming a real head-scratcher and will likely change as the political influences of ag interests, once so dominant in the state, continue to wane. In any case, soils on land that is irrigated in arid climates eventually and inevitably become toxic and useless for farming due to salinization and saturation (remember the fate of ancient Mesopotamia and its Fertile Crescent?), something already starting to happen in California’s Central Valley, where an increasing amount of cropland is being permanently fallowed for these reasons.

Bottom line is that water supply infrastructure in California does need to be updated, but the emphasis should first focus on re-allocating current supplies, as the amount being withheld and withdrawn from natural systems is already excessive, something that has been obvious to local ecologists, at least, for a long time. Because Jackie lives fairly distant from the infrastructure that serves ag users, though, her area does need to increase local storage or sources. No worries about Great Lakes water being shipped here, either – the cost and technology to move it over or around two major mountain ranges would be prohibitive – would likely be vastly more cost-effective to subsidize moving Californians back to there ;-).

catspa - what a succinct and very well written explanation of the water issues in CA! (Yes, folks from other states opinions are usually not helpful - the actual hard facts of the legal issues around water in CA are so arcane and ridiculous on the face of them that even 5th generation Californians (me - my great great grandmother arrived in a covered wagon) have trouble understanding them). Anyway - thank you.

As our local reservoirs are almost full already, it will be interesting to see what our local water utility does about the drastic water rationing plan they have announced to be effective Dec. 1. I actually hope they keep it intact, so that it will be more likely that the Board will be un-elected.

Jackie

How's that rain been coming along?
I had my first snow yesterday!

Steven

We have gotten over 11 inches of rain since Oct 1 in my town. "Normal" (a 25 year rolling average) for the same term is 2 inches.

Jackie

Congratulations! Glad yougot rain! Send it this way when done :)

I'm glad you got some refreshing rain there. I am glad it has been dry here in FL for a change and the mud has dried up. We seem to have opposite moisture patterns.

Here in the South Bay we have less - about 5 1/2" in the lower foothills where I live, and nearly 2 1/2" in San Jose, which is actually a bit about average. No rain is predicted for November. As for December, who knows? I am still grateful for the October gift.