losing our peninsula
I hope that we’ll all soon look back on the unprecedented water cutbacks just announced by California Governor Jerry Brown as the wake-up call for the climate change crisis that clowns like Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma try to dismiss by presenting a snowball in Congress in February. Inhofe’s willful — nay, blissful — ignorance is understandable because he’s in the back pocket of Big Oil, but it gets more inexcusable with every new report about accelerating global warming.
We’re even sweating it here in the Pacific Northwest. Our community had a scare in March. It’s one of our rainier months, the rainiest before it starts tapering off until mid-September. After a nice 17.8 mm (about 2/3rds of an inch) March 1st, we went 17 days without a drop or a flake of snow. Our neighbour Paul, a forester, was worried about a particularly dry fire season. Jude and I were worried that we might lose the water level we need in the creek to feed our micro-hydro system, months before we usually do in July.
Fortunately, it rained copiously the rest of the month, leaving us with nearly nine inches, close to our average the nine years we’ve been keeping records here. Today we’ve had 42 mm of the wet stuff so far.
When we get a lot of rain in a short time, the peninsula that juts out into the pond our creek feeds is briefly inundated. Here it is a few days ago:
Here it is a rainless day later:
And here another rainless day later, back to its normal flow:
We’ll be watching the peninsula the rest of our lives, hoping for its regular disappearances.
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Anchor Struck 
Our friends and family in Calif seem to be enjoying the drought. Out doing warm weather activities no complaints. Wish we were there in a way. Here in Fanny Bay it seems like we have had a lot of rain. Pineapple express like. One day we walked down to the bay and got blasted with warm air. It was a shock. The streams have been running over the equipment for fish counting. Looks like we might get sunny days this week. The main problem has been the warm weather/rain and no snow for Mt. Washington. Don’t know what the future will be for the resort. Last year we went up to get information about mountain biking there for our kids when they visit. They said they had no more mountain biking there. Big Mistake!
I’m not sure how someone can enjoy a drought, unless it’s the abundance of sunny days. Jude and I fret for friends and family and everyone else caught in this slowly-developing disaster (sort of like a reverse glacier). It’s good to hear, however, that you’re water rich for now.
Every one I know in California is just enjoying activities in the sunshine. Except for sking of course. They have had no consequenses yet.
I thought lack of snow was a major part of the drought. Governor Brown made his announcement standing on bare ground he said should have seven feet of snow pack on it.
My family is out there enjoying the sunshine mountain biking, kayaking spending time at the ocean. They love the dry weather.