Climate?

[Chimérique]

Originally Posted by kel9798

Thank you for all the great information! What about Sacramento area? It seems to be very affordable. Warm summers, cool winters. Any other info I should know about that area?

I posted about Sacramento weather earlier in the thread. What other info are you looking for?

Also, we have 150+ years of weather data that shows the North Coast is not going to get any drier, sunnier, or warmer, over the long term, and I think prior posters have "wishful" thinking about this drought staying with us. But you never know.

It's only been 2 years of significant drought. I seriously hope California weather as a whole goes back to its normal patterns. The last drought that was as serious as this one was in 1975-1976, since then it's been normal with a ton of rain in the north coast over 50-60 inches, about 20inches in Sacramento, just north of Sac in either the foothills or north valley you can double the rain 40 inches, south of Sacramento it's around to 10-15 inches, most of SoCal 10 inches or less in normal years.

Since the last serious drought till now, there have been serious wet years in California with serious flooding on the Sacramento, Feather, Napa, and Russian Rivers. It was all about flooding just 5 years ago, now its all about drought. In 1998, SF had it's wettest year since the 1860's, 47+ inches, they normally get 20 inches. In 1986, the Sacramento Valley(Feather River Basin) had 17.60 inches in a 24hour period!

Sorry, couldn't help myself on posting these stats, lol.

[kel9798]

Wow great stats! Thanks for sharing sorry, I forgot about your earlier post about Sacramento. There were so many suggestions I couldn't keep them all straight. I will go back and find it.

[Fiddlehead]

Chemerique brings up a crucial point, semiarid climates are known for exceptional variability. My 40+ year experience with and recollections of California climate (especially S. Cal.) seem to be just about always drought, fire, floods, with some killer mudslides thrown in. Tranquil, ideal periods do not stand out (I am sure they exist, but just don't make the news). I think the issue with California culture/economy/agriculture is that many of the folks who built the current system adopted cropping systems from from Europe or the eastern US, where water availability is much more stable. We ought to look other semiarid regions (e.g., Israel) for parallels.

Even on the West Coast, north of about 40 degrees latitude, moisture variability drops off a lot. Droughts occur further north, but you have a long period for winter rainfall to occur, milder, shorter, and somewhat wetter summers, and generally much less of the feast or famine pattern that characterizes California and the rest of the Southwest. California might even be the most variable of all the states, because without a summer monsoon to balance things out, the state's moisture supply is completely dependent upon about 4-5 months each winter. South of about 40 North, high pressure dominates and the winter jet stream seems to be pretty flaky.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by Fiddlehead

Chemerique brings up a crucial point, semiarid climates are known for exceptional variability. My 40+ year experience with and recollections of California climate (especially S. Cal.) seem to be just about always drought, fire, floods, with some killer mudslides thrown in. Tranquil, ideal periods do not stand out (I am sure they exist, but just don't make the news). I think the issue with California culture/economy/agriculture is that many of the folks who built the current system adopted cropping systems from from Europe or the eastern US, where water availability is much more stable. We ought to look other semiarid regions (e.g., Israel) for parallels..

Such a great point! CA needs to adopt "dry farming" techniques, like Native people of the Southwest.

[Chimérique]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

Such a great point! CA needs to adopt "dry farming" techniques, like Native people of the Southwest.

Problem with that approach is NorCal down to Monterey on the west and Sacramento in the Sacramento Valley to Yosemite on the East does not have southwestern climates. NorCal, including the Sacramento Valley, the Napa Valley and NorCal foothills east of the Sacramento Valley can support it's own water needs including it's agriculture.

If the southern San Joaquin Valley and all of SoCal didn't use so much water, NorCal would rarely have problems with water.

Basically, NorCal as you follow the Sacramento River from Mt. Shasta down through Sacramento City out to San Francisco Bay is completely sustainable including it's agriculture. Problem is we have to supply so much to the south of the mouth of the Sacramento River.

The California northwest has a ton of water plus natural rivers and a natural large lake, Clear Lake. The Eel, Klamath and Trinity Rivers run high in normal years, in Sonoma and Napa you have the Russian, Napa, and Petaluma all run high in normal years, and naturally supply the agriculture in the those regions.

Sacramento Valley and its foothills have natural high running rivers. The Sacramento Valley has two large rivers, the Sacramento and the Feather, plus large natural tributaries like the American which runs right through Sacramento and the Bear and Yuba Rivers, plus all those smaller tributaries.

Once you get to Monterey and Fresno the natural rivers have issues. From Yosemite down to Fresno you have the Merced and Kern Rivers with the San Joaquin River in the valley which used to be a higher running river before big AG sucked it dry. It regularly drys up every year.

Dry farming techniques is still useful but NorCal by itself would not have such a problem if so much did have to be diverted to the south artificially which costs billions of dollars.

[Fiddlehead]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

Such a great point! CA needs to adopt "dry farming" techniques, like Native people of the Southwest.

The Southwest has the monsoon, which supports limited dry farming, and when the monsoons fail, so do the crops. The movements of puebloan people toward the larger river valleys (Rio Grande) was because of the frequent failures of dryland farming.

The entire state of California gets very little summer rain at all, so without diversion and irrigation, nothing will grow at all in summer, except perhaps in the coastal fog zone. Winter wheat might work, but summer agriculture is 100% dependent upon irrigation water, and lots of it. Still, there might be techniques that could be done as a backup strategy during dry years, such as early ripening spring crops.

Again, my recommendation is to buy back some of the chrony-capitalized farmlands of the SJ Valley and similar places, to build a buffer for dry years, and to improve wildlife habitat and aquifer recharge in better years.

[Fiddlehead]

John Steinbeck got it.

"And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years, they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way."

East of Eden.

Given the variability in climate in California, it seems to me that appropriating 100% of the water available is not wise. Aquifers need to recharge during wet years, and the inevitable droughts don't need to be a political football. You plan for them, and not by eating all the seed corn.

[2sleepy]

If you don't mind driving a bit to get to the snow I would suggest Sacramento, or one of it's suburbs. It's a large area so there is plenty of everything you need, i.e. shopping, hospitals, parks, theaters, restaurants. It gets hot in the summer but it generally cools off in the evening and I have never been bothered by the heat as long as I can find shade. If you like to garden you can do so practically year round. I can't imagine living anywhere else, I love it here. And it's one of the few 'decent' places in California where housing is still affordable.

I lived in Reno before this and hated the cold winters and dreaded shoveling snow, and even though Reno is a decent sized city it gets boring and after awhile I got cabin fever and could think of nothing other than getting out of there. Lake county is not my cup of tea, I would suggest that anyone thinking of living there spend 2 days there and see if it is what they want. and the North Coast is way too cold and too isolated from any large Cities for me.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by Fiddlehead

John Steinbeck got it.

"And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years, they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way."

East of Eden.

Given the variability in climate in California, it seems to me that appropriating 100% of the water available is not wise. Aquifers need to recharge during wet years, and the inevitable droughts don't need to be a political football. You plan for them, and not by eating all the seed corn.

Don't you know, worries about the seed corn are obsolete, now that so many are planting GMO corn. You buy a new batch of seed every year. You're not allowed to propagate your own, once you start using GMO.