looks much better this year for CA water

the collection of reservoirs i watch last year was around 6-7 million acre feet of water about this time. this year it is close to 12maf. the reservoirs that were close to sucking air that were real concerns were Folsom and McClure, both are doing ok this year.

i hope they get plenty of snow this winter on the mountains.

songbird

Reply to
songbird
Loading thread data ...

It rained for three days last week here in Northern Nevada, so CA should have got a bunch. The mountains (Sierras) now have snow on them. And it is 75F outside today.

Reply to
T

Most of our nearby reservoirs, three, are all full, it rained upstream several times recently. Unfortunately we are only getting sprinkles occasionally so we have to water the vegetable gardens and the fruit trees with a hose frequently.

The Houston, TX area is nearly always getting regular rain, this year has been an anomaly. Two previous years we got at least two or three eighteen inch rains and several folks dumb enough to drive off into an underpass died.

Reply to
George Shirley

We get three whole inches a year. A 1/2 inch of rain causes street flooding and flash floods. Go figure

Reply to
T

You either live in a cement city or someplace with lots of rocks. We sit on several hundred feet of ancient sea bed topped with many centuries of composted plants. Then we buy a house that the builder put five feet of Houston gumbo clay on top of that fine soil and topped the clay with two inches of sand. Just so the homeowner's don't have to buy gubmint insurance for flooding.

In Louisiana we lived on top of a forty foot ancient sand dune with eons of humus from dying plants and didn't have to buy the gubmint insurance. Should have stayed there, but our kids, grands, and great grands all live within less than an hour from us now.

Most people don't even think about what their property sits on top of then they wonder one of two things, #1-how did I get all this wonderful soil? #2-what the heck is this stuff under our feet? Then there's people who live in tall buildings in big cities and think a window box is wonderful.

Reply to
George Shirley

they got some for sure as i saw for the first time in a long time positive inflows to some of the reservoirs.

i hope you are setting up contours to capture and hold as much rainfall as you can, putting in rainbarrels, or even if it is filling buckets from the downspouts off the roof it is better than nothing.

the major principles in arid gardening are wind-breaks, midday shading if you have to, mulching and capturing water as high up as possible on the property, stop, slow and spread to get it all to soak in. if your house has a basement make sure you are not capturing it in such a way as to increase your foundation drains/sump pump costs. yet if you are pumping water that way it certainly makes a lot of sense to pay a little more and pump it up as high as you can into a large tank.

if you can get a tank to store water in up high enough that can also be a nice source of water for garden irrigation or possibly even micro-hydropower. nowadays with LED lighting you can light up a house for not many watts (for us here most nights if Ma is not sewing we can light the whole place enough with 10-15 watts).

songbird

Reply to
songbird

We replaced a large fluorescent fixture in the kitchen last year with a LED fixture of less wattage, same lighting. Slowly replacing all fluorescent and incandescent bulbs as they fail with LED's. Seems to be working and, eventually everything will be LED at a lower power rate. Seems that LED lights are slowly dropping in cost as more folks use them.

As to rain, here we either are drowning or in a drought, being a Native to this area of America I grew up in a beautiful, heavily wooded part of the US, lots of bayou's, creeks, etc., all running water year around. Now, many years later we are either in a drought or being drowned. Weather has changed dramatically here and other parts of this state and world. Historically this happens frequently if you study history and see what has been going on for eons.

We woke up to 57F this morning, only in the lower seventies now, perhaps winter might be creeping up on us. I'm still wearing shorts and a tee shirt but, by tomorrow, may be in long pants again. I'm just glad that for the last decade I HAVE NOT WORN A SUIT EVEN ONCE.

Oh yeah, what passes for a fall garden this year has been planted; one or two winter plants can pass as a garden, right!

George

Reply to
George Shirley

George Shirley wrote: ...

the most heavily used bigger lights have all been replaced. i figure that they pay for themselves at the rate of one a year (about $35 each).

the smaller ones i will need a miracle to replace them all as we have ceiling track lights and they are so rarely used i've never had to replace a lightbulb in any of them in

20yrs (and counting :) ).

you do know that much of what is going on has a lot to do with what happens when you strip off rain absorbing cover and replace it with concrete, subsoil, or altered lands (improved drainage via ditches and drainage tubes) right?

in many areas, even the arid near deserts as soon as you exclude animals from over- grazing and leave it alone it will recover to the point that ground water will begin feeding springs again. this has been doc- umented repeatedly.

it was pretty cool here this morning. 40F. i had to wear some dress clothes yesterday. family member got married (yay for them, they'd been looking for a long time).

i just have a bit of garlic to put in, i hope i can get to it tomorrow. friends called the other day and said they had leaves for me, hopefully some ashes too. i can use all they want to bring in the garden i'm working on at the moment. it was where we had the tomatoes and i could elevate it a foot and a half and get some wood chips in there too along with some ashes and leaves and it will be reconditioned for a few year's growing.

songbird

Reply to
songbird

Neat url about water:

formatting link

Reply to
Frank

Hi Songbird,

That stuff is a future thing. I have very little spare time.

There is not enough rain to justify a rain barrel.

No one out here has basements.

I try to make my holes and beds slightly lower than the surrounding surface so that water will drain into them. And it did. The big bed I am making for my onions took three days to drain after our whole

1/2 inch of rain stopped. (Pretty hard ground for it not to soak in. It only went about two inches down when I got to shoveling again.)

And the peat moss is to hole water.

With the drought, we have been seeing around 3 inches per year for about the last five years or so.

-T

Reply to
T

Yup, I've lived in several US states and at least four foreign countries in my lifetime. Have seen lush jungles destroyed, and people planting things in deserts to hold the sand in place. To many people building to many cities. When we lived in Houston area in the mid-seventies you could drive around where we live now and it was all farms and ranches, now it's thousands of houses and more concrete and asphalt roads. Big difference.

I'm showered, shaved, and headed for bed soon, has been a long day, just waiting for wife to get back from the church bazaar to make sure she's safe. I go to bed early and get up early, she does the opposite, good thing we sleep in different beds.

Reply to
George Shirley

cute!

for us leaking pipes mean the water just goes back into the ground, i am not sure how long it takes for the surface water to get down to where the well sucks it up. not too many leaks. pretty small system.

as we have running ditches from two directions that run through here i am not worried about running out of water. even this summer with very little rain the larger one keeps running as it drains a pretty big area (a few hundred acres).

in another era i'd set up a smaller and shallow well to use for garden irrigation and to get a small pond topped off, but i'm not quite that ambitious at the moment. eventually i do hope to do something like that to encourage more froggies and toadies and maybe even get some crayfish growing.

songbird

Reply to
songbird

T wrote: ...

you don't want standing water on plants for that long, so i hope that is not your final contouring for that bed?

if you can put contours a few feet to the sides to hold and soak that water that would be much better.

yeah.

we used to get more gentle and soaking rains in the spring, but now things have become more heavy downpours through most of the season. i try to do all contours to hold 1-2 inches of rain from a downpour and the rest can run into the next layer. some of it may make it off the lot but not much.

my other issue is potential flash flooding so i do have drains and pathways set up to handle that and the berm which has yet to be tested since i put it in a few years ago.

songbird

Reply to
songbird

The pool will be below the plants, so it should not matter. Plus when it is not a big trench, it won't collect so much water. It is all filled up now. I wonder if the worms have discovered all the melon peals I saved them.

The only heavy down pours are thunderstorms in the summer. We haven't had much to speak of for about three years now. The nitrogen water gives my plants a growth spurt. Help the plants recover from the holes the hail puts in them.

In the winter, the wind can be a thing to behold. We had two hurricane force 1 winds come though a month apart two years ago. So far, so good this years. The wind hits about 45 MPH at its worst.

Reply to
T

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.