It’s amazing how much variance there is in the local soils. Some folks have to put in french drains so that tree roots won’t sit in a deep pool of water for weeks, while others need to remediate their soils with a bit of peat moss or coir to retain moisture. The soils on my property are at neither extreme, but I do construct large (7-9 foot) diameter basins around the trees so that rain water is captured at the trees and soaks down out to the canopy drip line.
Here’s a portion of the geologic map for the San Diego county, my home is approximately in the center:
It will be interesting to the extent we do get some water restrictions lifted how much people go back to their old behaviors. Below is our water usage chart over the years (for reference 1/2 acre flat lot in Central Orange County with two adults and two kids added in 2010 and 2012). Yard was wall to wall grass with a bunch of trees when we bought it in 2009. Over the past few years I’ve replaced about 60% of the grass with garden space, some open mulched area and about 40 densely planted young fruit trees. We are getting better about capturing water, but that’s very much a work in process. I really don’t think we’ll change a lot if the restrictions are eased, but we definitely will have some better looking grass! But I’m still looking forward to the deluge coming.
Normally I’d agree but this backs up to the detached garage and you’d need a pick to get through that hard pack dirt layer against the garage. Even wet you can’t get a shovel through it. How they ever grew nut trees on this property 60 years ago, I have no idea!
OK. Alright. Let’s take a little bit of a break now. Just spread the rain out a bit more. I’m not complaining. All my buckets are full. We’re good, it’s fine.
Ugh, another 6 tenths overnight. I’d venture a guess that we’ve had maybe 4 or 5in of rain in Jan. Supposed to stop for a couple of days, might get to 60 on Wed. Yeah, I imagine if it was cold enough, we’d had 2ft of snow.
But the 10 days after that, it’s not supposed to get above 40°, so more seasonable weather coming. Might see some light snow next week.
OK, curiosity got the best of me, so I went on the local NWS site, and pulled rain data for the last month.
Last week of Dec: 2.14"
First 22 days of Jan: 6.59"
Days of Jan with measurable rain: 20
Total for month period: 8.73", not including the 0.6" in my rain gauge today.
Pattern change up coming…16 day looks dry for san Diego…although temps don’t look anything to write home about…probably near normal? LA should be low 70Fs by Sunday.
This evening my locale topped 9" in cumulative rain for this rainfall year. That exceeds the year-total for several prior years. Tomorrow we’re expecting thunderstorms and perhaps another 1/8".
Several factors can play into what weather actually occurs Oct-Mar in the western portion of San Diego county. The latter half of a 16-day forecast is typically not worth betting on.
But the prediction that we’ll have a break from rainfall beginning Wednesday seems robust and it could easily last a week. I’m looking forward to it.
For my locale they’re predicted to be lows in the low 40s and daytime temps in the upper 60s. For any given week this time of year it’s hard to say what’s normal. I’ve seen 80F some years!
