On 10/22/2016 2:09 PM, songbird wrote:
T wrote:
songbird wrote:
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.

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.

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

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. BSEG

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