Just thinking on a wet Tuesday morning
All the rain we’ve had lately is making me introspective. I may have a slight case of S.A.D.–seasonal affective disorder. When the sky turns a dull gray, it rains for a week and the sun seems like it’ll never return, all I want to do is curl up with a good book and wait until Spring.
Yes, we need the water. Everybody says so, and so I tell myself that I’m being selfish for being so bored stiff by the rain. Every night it drizzles; every morning I wake up to drizzle; is this California, or Seattle? You’d think that the talk about drought that dominated December and January would start to fade away, but no, the news is that no matter how much it’s rained lately, the drought still is upon us. Typical is this headline from last Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle:
More rain this week but it’ll fall short
“[San Francisco] has recorded just 8.01 inches of rain this season, far below its usual tally of 18.21 inches by the start of March,” says the article. Last week’s big storm–the one that hit when I was in Santa Barbara at World of Pinot Noir–apparently was more powerful in Southern California than up north, which must have helped with the water situation down in the Central Coast, where the drought has been particularly severe. Maybe some of my readers will let us know how things are doing from Paso Robles south. I do know that, driving home on Sunday, the hills and fields were bright green in native grasses, something I hadn’t seen in a long time. (California is called the Golden State not for the Gold Rush, but because gold is the color of our hills and mountains during the dry season.) But I suppose that when the rain falls so hard, so fast, that most of it runs off into streams and rivers that eventually empty into the Pacific.
Sometimes I like the rain. I spent a night once in a little cabin in the middle of a Redwood forest in the Russian River Valley, just outside Forestville. It was a wild night, stormy and windy and cold: a gale had swept down out of the Gulf of Alaska. The rain track for Northern and Central California can come down from the north, or it can come in from the west, via Hawaii, which is why it’s called the Pineapple Express. From the point of view of the water supply, it’s better to have Gulf of Alaska storms, because they’re colder; hence the snow level in the Sierra is much lower, and that’s where much of our water comes from. Unfortunately, all these storms have been Pineapple Expresses: warm storms, high snow levels.
I remember lying in bed, that stormy night in Forestville, and listening to the sounds of nature: the rain pounding on the roof and windows, but also the limbs of the trees rubbing against each other in the wind, making low, moaning sounds, like sad cellos. I thought of all the critters that live in the woods: the skunks and raccoons and rabbits and badgers. Do they have dry holes where they burrow and stay warm? Our distant ancestors, recently become human, must have relished a nice cave, and whoever could make a fire must have been seen as special, godlike. At some point in pre-history those ancestors discovered fermentation, and made wine. That too must have seemed miraculous. Fire and wine: two divine gifts that make life bearable, even joyous. We worship them both today.
See, I told you I’m feeling introspective.
Steve we got 3.00 inches even at the winery from the last storm. With what we got earlier this year we are at 4.5 inches or one third of normal. Pray for us. We need the pineapple express to start a series of storms to pass over us and drop 8 inches. It won’t break the drought, but at least give us a normal year.
Good luck Gary! We just may get that express.
Steve,
An official from the Sonoma County Winegrowers stated during her introductory remarks at the Sonoma in the City trade tasting that they are “about” 4 inches shy of normal.
Given that weeks remain before the rainy season ends, that’s encouraging.
But at least one vintner remarked: “Pray for us” regarding the upcoming 2014 growing season and harvest.
(Those who have nearly dried-up irrigation ponds are more than a little nervous. Those who have old vines that are dry farmed, less so . . .)
~~ Bob