Rain!

The most notable happening so far this year has been rain! Our historical average annual rainfall in the San Diego area has been just over 9 inches annually. We have a semi desert climate, thus the 3 million people around here depend on a series of reservoirs storing water from the Colorado River and from the California aqueduct, as well as some run off from our local mountain ranges.

The last 5 years have been drought years throughout much of California and the West, with rainfall in San Diego averaging around 4 inches each of those years. People worry about water! We have watched the water level in the the local storage "lakes" drop very low to less than half of their capacity. Lake Hodges, a few miles to the east of Encinitas in Escondido, and which depends on local runoff, had dwindled to about 20% of its normal surface area. What once was a great recreational and fishing lake had become inaccessable to boats. The launch ramp was hundreds of yards from the waters edge. A forest of trees had grown up within the normal lake bed over the last 5-6 years. There had been talk of allocating a few hundred thousand dollars to a project to remove those trees, because there is a project planned to connect the lake to the network that supplies other reservoirs to insure that lake levels could be maintained in the future.

Then in January and February the rains came. Some of the storms came from the north and were cold and stormy. Some came from the South and were warm and steady. In the last couple of months over 20 inches has come down, and there is more on the way this weekend. It is likely that we may get three times our average annual 9 inches of rain this year. (And 6 times last year!)

Lake Hodges is full again and is almost overflowing the dam. There are tree tops sticking out of the lake over a wide area. That might be good for the bass, but makes for a messy lake, and for a poor source of drinking water.

With many areas of high density population, when Southern California gets lot of rain strange things happen. Roads become slick due to a buildup of oil residue on the pavement. The incidents of fender benders goes way up. That is hard to understand if you are from a place where it rains and snows often, and a driver has to face weather conditions on a regular basis. One might think that Southern California drivers are wusses when it comes to driving in weather. Maybe so, but give them credit for facing bumper to bumper traffic on 10 lanes of freeway going and coming to wherever on a daily basis. Rain on the freeway is not a common condition, and there are millions of cars in close proximity to each other with brakes that don't grip as usual. Rain is good for body shops!

With the type of porous soil which exits in some locales, alot of rain can satuate it and cause it to liquify. In January in Orange Country, just south of L.A., a new $2.5 million home which had just been built on the edge of a hill started to slide endangering other homes near it. It was condemned and it took only a few hours for a piece of heavy machinery to knock it down and load the debris in a truck. So much for someone's dream home. One hopes the contractor has insurance.

In a small town on the coast just north of L.A., part of a hillside collapsed and buried a number of houses and killed 10 people.

Even in Oceanside, just north of Encinitas, there was a hill that started to slide and endanger homes that had been there for 30 years.

Rivers in Southern California are very strange. The Los Angeles River is a very long river that runs through the heart of most of the city from the San Gabriel Mountains to the Ocean. It is a large ditch completely surfaced with cement. In some places it is 100 yds or more wide. For most of the year, the ditch is empty. Maybe there is a trickle of water easily stepped over. The cement channel has been used for car chases in alot of movies and TV shows. When it rains a bunch in the area, all the runoff from the mountains and from much of the storm sewer system in the city makes the river a huge raging torrent, dangerous to all who venture near it. It is the ultimate flash flood. People drown in the desert! Weird!!

All the debris that people throw into or that washes into the storm drains in all the populated areas on the coast flows down the rivers and into the ocean. Beach areas turn brown with the color of the silt and sand and the pollution that flows along with it.

The San Louis Rey river in North San Diego County runs through the golf course where I am a member. It drains through the valley east of Oceanside and its mouth opens to the ocean in Camp Pendleton. Most of the year it is a gentle creek. After the last rain storm it flooded three or four of the holes. We are playing two of them as par threes instead of fours, and have sandbagged the green on the other. Bummer! It probably will be 2-3 months before the fairways on those holes dry out.

On the other hand, having adequate rain in southern California is a relief! It is wonderful to see lakes filled to their capacity! It's good for fishing and boating. The mountain forests become healthier and less prone to disease and fire. Wildlife flourishes! There is green as a primary landscape color rather than brown. Golf courses get lush. People seem less tense.

I just checked the web site for Anzo Borrego State Park(anzoborrego.statepark.org), which is the largest desert park in California, and the wildflower bloom is early this year because of all the rain. Even some of it splashes over the Laguna Mountains to the east of us into the desert to change the landscape on the desert valley floor into a kalidescope of color that is a view worth the two hour drive!

Rain brings life!

It is Thursday and the forecast is for more rain starting tomorrow. It is sprinkling outside!
Traffic is slowing.