Tuesday, February 11, 2014

The world is full of stupid people.

This weekend California had it's first set of consecutive days of rainfall since I can remember. I think it's been since last spring, but every article I read says it's been 14 months. I took the opportunity to burn anything I could. Seriously. I had a fire in the fireplace. I BBQ'ed. Both at the same time. We were having 30 day consecutive spare the air days which mean no burning anything. The mountains are still brown, although they are at least looking greenish/brown  now. I have never seen he mountains be brown in February.

Having said that - SocGen says no big woop. Here. Their rationalization is the rest of the country is getting tons of rain. Which would be great if the rest of the country grew half of the stuff California does. You can grow stuff in snow. Right? It just makes me want to do the windmill to the economists who write this shit. 

One week ago I started fearing for the California economy in a crazy way. It's not only the farmers. It's the gardeners. If stuff doesn't grow - you don't have anything to trim. The nurseries. The livestock. Tree trimmers. The replacement cost of landscaping. Truckers. How all these things trickle down through the economy. 

It feels a lot better today. But that is just denial. I garden, so I know that the window for some crops have passed. You would never plant crops with the kind of rainfall we've gotten. Most of the rainfall will go into plant growth because most of that stuff didn't have too much longer to hold on. The first rain took two days to evaporate. I was pretty shocked. You start getting the garden ready this time of year with tilling in compost and I almost didn't make it before the earth was already drying up.

The reservoirs are a fraction of what they stood at during the 1970's drought. And the pattern is following exactly what happened in the 70's. I ran across this handy information video from the 70's and this drought is caused by exactly the same type of ridge that caused the drought in the 1970's. It's kinda boring and long, but you should watch it. It's my road map for the year.

I wouldn't even gamble on water stocks, because while they will get to jack up prices - if you don't get to water anything - it doesn't mean jack shit. 

Anyone who thinks the drought isn't a huge effing deal is mental.

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