The DrsC are currently in California, there being snow on the ground in WY. And yesterday we had rain off and on all day and into the evening. Not hard rain, what Hillerman claims the Navaho call “female rain” which is gentle. And it is very welcome.
“So what?” I imagine you asking, “So it rained? How is that news?” Because, as the other DrC noted, more-than-incidental rain hasn’t happened here for the past six months.
Furthermore, this isn’t anything unusual for California. Au contraire, it is normal here in a savannah climate. And therefore forest fires are normal here because, between winter rainy seasons, the sunshine makes things gosh-awful dry and combustible. Add a windy day to move it along and it’ll be a big fire.
People will tell you it’s climate change, reach for a grain of salt. CA has been suffering forest fires since I was a kid too many decades ago.
Some of my most vivid memories of adolescence are of hot autumn nights watching the line of flames burn across the mountains of the Los Padres National Forest which form the northern backdrop of the Ojai Valley, some 50+ miles northwest of Los Angeles.
In the 13 years I lived there growing up it probably happened three separate times. Each time distant relatives would call to ask if we were okay. Each time we told them both we and all the normally settled parts of the valley were fine and in no danger. A few houses on the edge of the wild land burned and the alarmist news played it up to fan interest.
Twas ever thus.
