Careful What You Wish For...
As I woke up this morning to the sound of rain on the skylight it dawned on me that it has been raining steadily here for over 30 hours. No doubt we do need a lot of rain here – rainfall totals this season are well below 50% of normal. I am thankful that we are catching up. But do we have to do it all at once?As the sun came up this morning I saw nearly 4 inches of rain in the gauge. Radar has been showing fairly gentle rain rates of 0.05-0.20 inches per hour in our area, from a low pressure system that is parked off the coast. This moderate rate of accumulation means that a good bit of the water will have a chance to percolate into the soil.
Over this same period the radar has shown rates at least double that over the Santa Cruz Mountains, peninsula, and South Bay – areas where wildfires last summer consumed the ground cover.
When I drive over Sonoma Creek on my way to the office today, I expect to see the channel well-filled with a heavy flow of brown silty water. Our vineyard does not drain into the Sonoma Creek watershed, and our focus on erosion control means that surface water running off our property is clear. But the silt load is coming from somewhere, and I imagine things must be a lot worse south of us.
The rain is forecast to continue through tomorrow. Normally winter storms out here drop out of the Gulf of Alaska down the coast, and move fairly quickly inland south and east of us, one after another. As an indication of how unusual this weather is – this low is not projected to move inland. Instead it is just going to fill and dissipate where it sits. Weird – I can't recall this happening before.
I'm hoping for a break in the weather for my flight to Houston (partners' meeting) Tuesday and back Thursday. Today it looks like another storm is due here next weekend.
posted 2/16/2009 06:11:00 AM
1 Comments:
Better to do the weeding one more time instead of three ?
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