Maru A Pula (Clouds of Rain)

The title of this post, "maru a pula", is the name of a South African song sung in celebration of the rain, which having finally come, averts the drought and famine.

Here too, in San Francisco, the rains which come every year around this time are necessary to avert drought. It seldom rains in the Summer, so if there's not enough rainfall / snowfall during these Winter months, we have to compensate for the lack of water the following year. We [here] all remember those past dry seasons when we were forced to omit things like landscape watering, limit dish washing to only full loads and, if washing dishes by hand, you were to use a biodegradable soap so the water could be used for plants and gardens. We were encouraged to limit showers to 10 minutes, and if you ever indulged in something like a bath, the bath water was to be used for toilet flushing.

So when December brings the Winter storms, one right after another, dousing us with buckets and buckets of water, when the skies are grey for weeks on end, it's a good thing. The water is needed to fill the reservoirs for the entire upcoming year.

And yet, no one is singing songs of celebration. All this precipitation is a mixed blessing.

	The ground has been dry for most of the year; it can't absorb the water fast enough, so the run-off causes flooding ...especially in Northern California (Russian & Napa Rivers). No, this is nothing like Katrina's devastation, but enough to result in considerable damage.
	And then there's the traffic. From year to year, people simply forget how to drive in the rain and there's a significant increase in the number of traffic accidents ranging from minor fender benders to multi-casualty collisions.
	When the water does start to soak into the ground, we're plagued with mud slides and people's houses start sliding off hills. The soaked ground can't support those huge trees that topple over, crashing onto cars and homes, blocking roadways, and taking down power lines.

Wasn't it not too long ago that the whole area was so dry, that just the thought of a match was enough to trigger an uncontrollable wild fire? I left the East Coast to get away from such extremes in weather. All I did was exchange the extremes of heat and cold for the extremes of wet and dry ...with an occasional earthquake thrown in for good measure.

Still, I've no real complaints. This is winter in San Francisco. In between the raindrops, the temperature is still quite moderate. Besides, if we had beautiful sunny weather all the time, that really would be tedious. Plus, it never snows in San Francisco. I left New York to get away from the Winter with its cold and snow.

However, just a short drive away, you can frolic in all the snow you want ...for those who feel snow is "fun". At higher elevations, the new fallen snow is coveted by countless ski enthusiasts and is a boon to the winter sporting industry. And, when it melts in the Spring, the run-off contributes significantly to the filling of the reservoirs. In fact, it's the major contributor. The success (or failure) of our seasonal water accumulation is determined by the snowpack.

Addendum (added 2/4/06): Even though the damage was still not a severe as that caused by Katrina, it turned out to have been much more significant than eluded to earlier in this post. This year's storms were much worst than usual, much worst than they've been in a very long time. Several of the counties in California were so battered they've been officially declared as disasters areas and the feds have called [again] on FEMA to bail out the casualties.

Quote of the Week: "In nature there are neither rewards nor penalties, only consequences."