How bad is it? This is how bad it is. I tried to find a better view of the map, but basically, there's no water anywhere, and there's even less water in the Central Coast and the southern Valley. I live in the Central Coast. One good/bad thing is that all our water comes from here -- no water from the Sierra Nevada, no water from the Delta, no ( Read more... )

About six inches so far: by now we're usually pushing twenty around here. I figure if we got 20 in the whole season we'd avert actual disaster. With about twelve weeks left in the season, I guess we'll be all right if we get like an inch and a half of rain every week. That's possible. Is it likely?

This from the BBC: Three sailors die and a fourth is missing during a California yacht race, only weeks after another fatal accident off the same coast.

The California coast is not a small place: 840 miles long.  So two fatal accidents in the course of "weeks" does not constitute a trend.

Yacht races still dumb, though, even though my brother in law ( Read more... )

I feel like an overprivileged brat for the second time today writing about this, but it's tropical out there.  Warm and muggy and very windy, with that weird light that comes from a certain kind of cloud cover -- like we're going to have sunshowers or even a full-bore rainstorm with the sun glaring through.  It's not very cloudy, but the clouds ( Read more... )

1. Facebook won't let me post this link, so I'm posting it here.  I think maybe facebook won't let me do anything, but since the only thing I wanted to do over there was post that link, I'm not interested in pursuing the matter.  I did try about six times over the period of twenty minutes or so.

2. I tried to send a note to Bill O'Reilly but the ( Read more... )

John Laird, who was term-limited out of a very successful assembly job excellently representing our area, has been appointed to do environmental good.

I'm pleased -- and relieved: I think we need John in public life.

So I use my friends' list as an RSS list.  I read a number of progressive blogs this way -- The Sideshow, Crooks and Liars, Atrios, Digby, calitics -- a few others.  (I dropped DailyKos because I can't keep up with it).  I also have RSS feeds to some science blogs and The Scientific American, and so on ( Read more... )

You need to browse this list.  When you have heard "Honky Tonkin" you will know the truth of California.

Edit: forget "Honky Tonkin."  Listen to this and learn.  Now who is Emmy Lou Harris going to sing with in ten years?

Not doing this in writer's block because that's not how I got the idea.  Bean montag personhead did it and asked for her readers to do it ( Read more... )

I hate hate hate keyboard shortcuts. I keep losing my text because my fingers trip and mysteriously replace everything with the letter N or something. I was saying, hey, it's Midsummer's Day and not the first day of summer. But at more length but I can't be bothered to do that twice.

Linkity time: a new online magazine all about Northern ( Read more... )