Wet Summer

Summer in California is typically very dry. We are cold-monsoon type climate here, meaning it rains in the winter months, not the summer. Usually. The trouble is, and this is where my studies of the last ice age comes in, we used to be a place that got rain (and snow) year round. The storms that hit the PNW used to hit here, alternating with hurricane thunderstorms out of the Sea of Cortez (Mexico). When a hurricane breaks apart after hitting land, it spins out thousand mile arms of energetic cloud, which forms thunderstorms WAY UP HERE, slamming into Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and drift over the top of the Sierras to drop a bit over here too.

We've been in a weird pattern all month with those sorts of storms forming and flowing, plus there's been moist air from the sea filling the valley, then accumulating into thunderstorms over the sierras starting around 4000-5000 feet and dropping rain and hail on the high country. I'd read about this type of weather and understand its fairly typical for Sierra summers, very different from the Coast Range which merely get fog in the summer, not thunderstorms or rain. Different weather here in the Sierras, which run parallel to the coast range, only with a valley between them.

We were warned as kids not to trust the weather in the Sierras and told to always carry a jacket when hiking because it was possible to get a blizzard on the fourth of July in the Sierras and die frozen on a hiking trail. This is a KNOWN weather problem, nothing new. A fairly significant thing to know, considering that white people have only occupied the Sierras for the last 155 years. We only got here with the Gold Rush. Before that it was quickly crossed and forgotten, and before Gold, nobody cared about California since all it offered was beef cattle and leather goods.

I suppose I should mention that I've noticed some upsides to the stupidity of the California govt.

1. For one thing, the state is running out of water because they refuse to do critical maintenance on the reservoirs. Those need to be cleaned out before the silt plugs them up and they turn into a series of waterfalls. 
2. They're spending billions on a bridge between Oakland (which is like Detroit) and San Francisco (which is like New York) without the valuable businesses and much more expensive public utilities costs. Why? The governor also conned the state into paying for a train from Los Angeles to San Jose, but is building it to stop everywhere along the way so its super slow instead of fast and thus pointless. The train was supposed to be a bullet train, an express that was as fast as flying, going up I-5 in an hour and a half. So much for that plan. So it is doomed. 
3. The governor is also building an underground water tunnel from the north side of the Delta to the South side, in theory so that it will save the delta smelt (fish) but it won't. It will suck them in just like the Tracy pumps do and kill them, same as ever. Only they'll be doing it through another set of pumps that can be plugged up. This is a stupid plan. 
4. The governor allowed the banning of fracking in counties which have oil bearing shales underneath them, which will essentially end energy supply in this state. The oil is there, but laws are never overturned in California, and can't be removed without a 3/4ths majority. Whoops! That never happens. This means that California residents had better be able to buy an electric car for $85K (each) or ride a bicycle. The buses and trains are going to stop running since there will be no diesel fuel and natural gas is a benefit of fracking, but that was banned. 

The consequence of these acts of stupidity is Los Angeles and San Francisco bay areas will be abandoned eventually. Delivering their water without a way to power it economically is doomed. It will soon be cheaper for San Francisco to use a nuclear reactor to desalinate water for the city's very rich mansion residents and ignore the poor than try to maintain 250 miles of canals from Hetch Hetchy reservoir. California is going to end up mansions surrounded by feral wilderness. A place for the very rich. Even the poor need drinking water and jobs, but with the infrastructure maintenance largely abandoned by this governor, a man who should know better, this is doomed. 

I mention this because I notice that Kim Stanley Robinson has made a series of books about California getting wrecked by "climate change". That doesn't mean he's a True Believer. Scifi writers are people who can consider an idea for a story without believing in it as "truth". Its an idea with a market you can sell to, so him writing about worst case scenarios of climate change just means he's selling books and making money for a temporarily popular topic. And that's fine. The library where I volunteer puts Al Gore's scifi novels in the Non-Fiction section, but they put Bibles and the Quoran there too. I understand his "truth" series are being sold as burnable trash in many states, cheaper than firewood. His novels in a good wood stove will burn for a couple hours. There's another idiot who very publicly lost his mind. So anyway, KSR wrote some books and I haven't read them. Few scifi novellists will put in the effort to really learn a subject before writing about it. If the climate changes back to ice age pattern California will see summer rains and winter rains and snows, and nature will come charging back. It still won't be enough water to fill the reservoirs in Oakland, mind you, and still won't be enough consistent rainfall, not at first, to offer much to a human population. Hell, if it gets up to 100 inches a year again, that will kill the crops in the Sacramento Valley and end agriculture. The grapes will rot, so the vineyards and wineries would be abandoned in many places. And the old people would stop moving here because the sunshine will be clouded over. They'll go to other places, maybe even buy into Baja resort towns with heavily armed guard perimeters and deals with the Mexican army to stay out. 

In the California context, I think that summer rains will slightly help our drought. And the reservoirs aren't full yet, but we'll have to wait 15 years for the next drought to actually remove the silt, and summer rains brings thunderstorm based wildfires from the lightning strikes. That also brings more silt into the rivers. One of the things I disagree with the Jefferson State movement is their objection to CalFire clearing understory brush to prevent wildfires, since understory brush is called Ladder Fuel. Non-Californians don't care, but that's a big deal here. Ladder Fuel leads to Crown Fires, were are very bad and kill entire forests in a day or two of burning. They kill people too. Crown Fires are supposed to be rare, because in nature, summer lightning fires burn forest undergrowth every 2-5 years, which is often enough to prevent the ladder fuel from getting big enough to reach the crown. These fires burn slow and low, over weeks, and the places they burn sprout with new growth that is edible for the deer and is good for the land. The local indians used to do this labor themselves, clearing brush, and taught the gold miners how when they showed up. This practice continued into 1920, at which point Democrats cut their budget because California always votes Democrat anyway so why spend money there, right? There is every reason to vote Republican in California because that's the only way to get spending here. And preventing wildfires is something all Californians support. 

Yesterday morning was clear, but by afternoon I was hearing distant thunder and the clouds built up at 4000 feet, just east of town. They didn't show up on radar, but you could see them with your eyes. Today the overnight low was 60'F, which is summer temps, and we'll possibly see 80'F today. And probably 90'F down in Sacramento. And that's good. Its nearly June, after all. Summer gets serious in June. I might even ride my bicycle to the Library one of these days, if I feel ambitious. I think this is going to be a wet summer. I am okay with that.