rain in California
water issues
Another early morning for a flight, and-arrggghhh-another correction. USS Enterprise is in the queue to build another aircraft carrier with that vaunted name but the carrier I had the chance to tour in 1998 is now retired. I am spending too much time on this column and not enough in the world!
It does rain in southern California, contrary to the 60s or 70s song. I am an avid (ok, obsessive) observer of weather, earthquakes, and volcanoes so I have noted that California has had its rain replenishment this winter with an El Nino, though it is ending. The sand along the shore in Coronado was muddy which is pretty odd. This morning we have rain as we await the flight but it is not snow which I assume they have in the Sierra.
San Diego is a wonderful climate but I do have to wonder how folks in the south of the United States (not to mention elsewhere globally) will survive our seemingly increasing extremes. The persistent heat last summer wore out everyone and everything. Thank goodness we did not have the types of wildfires so characteristic of California in recent years. But the past is no guarantee of future results as Merrill Lynch used to tell us.
The most dire problem seems to me the shortage of water. Then again, that is dire for so many places. A report published within the past fortnight gave pretty sad statistics on groundwater levels around the world. An August 2023 New York Times piece on the U.S. conditions alone said ‘we are going through groundwater as if there is no tomorrow’. A huge portion goes is farming, often for crops not really appropriate to the climate but demanded by the consumer. But groundwater usage also reflects our cavalier use in cities for green yards, plants, and human needs.
We so often forget we are now a nation of more than 340 million, the third largest in the world by population. Even if we were the most careful consumers, which we have never been in this land of plenty, we would simply use a lot of anything. Water just so happens to be essential for our bodies, what we consume, and how we live. Some water available to us is fouled, thus non usable, but it’s primarily that we simply give it little thought most of the time when we use water.
Some parts of the country have already experienced serious droughts but it would appear more of those phenomena are ahead. That probably wouldn’t matter so much if the high temperatures did not accompany this state of affairs. Remember the Dust Bowl? My family certainly suffered profoundly as Midwesterners living off the land, even if my grandfather was a blacksmith. There were no customers for his efforts so he had to move his young family repeatedly to find any work.
We aren’t Somalia in 1992 in virtually any manner when the drought created a horrible famine, exacerbating a civil war and attendant U.S. involvement but we the Americans also could be in for more expensive water—along with food, transportation, and everything else. More expensive is different from scarcity, of course, but it will force us to evolve our lifestyle.
Thoughts in your part of the world? With flooding we saw in the U.K. in December, this sounds unlikely but is it pertinent there? Should we be doing anything or just letting nature take its course? I really wonder what you think.
Thank you for reading this column. I appreciate any rebuttals, concerns, encouragements.
Today’s photograph is one of the glorious flowers in yesterday afternoon’s sunshine.
Ah, the anticipation of spring excites us all.
Be well and be safe. FIN
‘America is Using Its Groundwater Like there is No Tomorrow’, NYTimes.com, 28 August 2023, retrieved at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/28/climate/groundwater-drying-climate-change.html