Lots and lots of rain. I'm here in the Napa Valley--doing the work thing. Called Joni last night who said that we had had 6 1/2 inches of rain over the last day and a half.
The Sierra has had up to THIRTEEN FEET of snow in places. Rainfall totals from this current series of storms could be around 18 inches of rain.
I've been reading a History of Butte County. Volume One encompasses from the 1840's up to 1920 or so. A line caught my attention, talking about some floods in the 1870's: " A storm dropped six inches of rain". This was seen as an abnormally high 24 hour total.
This is routine at our household today. This year we've already had one storm that dropped ten inches of rain; this current storm should match that. And every year, over the last three that we've lived up at the Ridge, we have seen storms that drop ten inches or more of rain.
Evidence of climate change? I think so. For our part of the Foothills, the models predict stronger and wetter storms. We've certainly seen that. Generational climate change lulls one into a slumber that believes things have always been a certain way. We lose track of trends. You have to read an obscure history book, or talk to someone who is 90 years old, to see that, perhaps, things are a bit different now.
So I will drive home tonight. Through more rain. Dodging the trees that inevitably fall because they were burned from the "freak" lightening storm that burned up thousands of acres of Butte County. A freak storm (because of the thousands of lightening strikes) that is yet another argument for climate change.
The backlash against climate science is in full regalia in America. My own 3rd district Assemblyman is a climate change denier. Dan Logue led the efforts to dismantle California's carbon emission laws through Prop. 23. He lost. Does the guy ever go outside?
1 comment:
Thinking of you with all that rain, while we here in Saratoga NY are still waiting for snow, which has walloped the counties to the west of us. Very strange weather. And a definitely changing climate, no matter what dumbbells like your assemblyman claim.
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