Assessing the Impacts of Last Week's Rain
December 14, 2014
We're in a peaceful interlude between two significant storms. The sun may be thin and wintery, but it's (mostly) out. The rain that fell on Thursday and Friday is soaking in. Another storm is on its way, but won't arrive until mid-day Monday. We got 2.67" of rain in the storm -- a bit less than had been forecast, and quite a bit less than areas around the San Francisco Bay, which got drenched. Still, this brings our total for the winter to 7.5 inches, above average for this early in the rainy season.
I took advantage of this break to get out into the vineyard and take some photos, and was struck by just how much greener it was even than early in the week. A few photos will give you a sense:
As you can see, the cover crop is off to a flying start:
In terms of greenery, we're ahead of where we were in March of this past winter. The sequence -- an inch on Halloween, to get things germinated, followed by 3 weeks of sun to encourage growth, followed by a week of gentle rain totaling over 3 inches -- was perfect preparation for our first heavy rains of the year, and meant that we saw virtually no erosion, and almost total absorption of the nearly 3 inches of overnight rain this week. Even on Friday, there were only a few spots in the vineyard with puddles visible:
You can see in the above photo the deep ripping that we've done on hillsides in preparation for this winter. These cuts run horizontally across the hills and encourage water to be absorbed rather than to flow off downhill.
As the skies cleared Friday, we got some spectacular cloud shapes and colors:
Looking forward, on Monday we're forecast to receive a storm, similar to last week's if a bit weaker, that should provide another couple of inches, with a bit more Tuesday as the associated low pressure system moves inland. Then a brief break before a smaller system comes through on Friday, after which it looks like we'll have dry weather through Christmas. This December rain we've received is the best present we could have asked for.