Our preseason softball practice was cancelled this week due to rainy, windy weather in the low 40s. While other parts of the country are already enjoying golf and baseball opening day, we are muddling through April.
We’ve had some nice days in the 80s, but also below freezing temperatures and snow. Our unpredictable ’Spring Showers’ season is meteorologically frustrating. People are anxious to get outside, but it’s impossible to make any plans.
Even our dog waits to see what the weather is like before agreeing to go on a walk. A lot of ‘vetos’ from Riley lately as he sees the rain & snow coming down.
Related: Rearranging The Seasons
I have a heated garage and plenty of projects I’ll want done before the weather turns nice. I should be prepping my bike, Jeep, and sports car for nice weather, but I’ve found little motivation right now to get much started.
Everyone we know is in the same situation, so I told my wife that next April we should plan ahead for the ‘Spring Showers’ doldrums by planning a bunch of themed activities with other couples like “Restaurant Month”, “April Film Festival”, “Weekly Museum Field Trips”, or other scheduled themes.
In the meanwhile, maybe I’ll stay busy writing a post complaining about the weather? (Oops … done ✅, but didn’t make me feel better! ).
Anyway … HAVE A NICE WEEKEND! Hope it is nice and sunny where you are – or at least your outlook is. What activities keep you busy during gloomy weather?
Image: Pixabay
MrFireStation 
St Paul Art Crawl is this weekend, good time to see the Rathskeller!
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Schmidt Brewery?
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yep
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The People’s Republic of California has had unprecedented g̶l̶o̶b̶a̶l̶ ̶w̶a̶r̶m̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶d̶ ̶d̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶t̶ record rainfalls. I attribute this to our new neighbors moving from Seattle to LA so they can see the sun. They brought their Seattle weather with them. Most of my preferred activities are outdoors, so I am not used to entertaining myself inside.
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It’s funny how a decade or more of California drought was suddenly solved in one wet winter – with no need for government programs!
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Bad governance is the root cause of California’s water ‘shortage’. Here are some factoids. California’s population grew from 10 Million to 40 Million between 1950 and 2020 without any new water reservoirs coming online. There are a lot of math challenged people who are pointing at suburbia with green lawns, long showers, mega flush toilets, and a propensity to wash their clothes and dishes as the root cause. Yet, residential use only accounts for 15% of state’s utilized water, while agriculture uses the other 85%. But, we need to eat, so we need agriculture.
At a personal level I did several relatively low cost water conservation projects around my house. My year over year my water use went down 43% without sacrificing anything. My son actually presented my case study to his ecology class in UCLA. The punchline was his Wisconsin towny father didn’t do his water saving project to save the world, he did it to save $958 per year for a 100% annual payback.
Here is where the big gains will come from. I am adding a link that tells the story about a farmer who started flooding his fields during the winter and spring when the state sends 95% of its water out to the Pacific Ocean. He waters his plants and is replenishing the aquifers underground at the same time. Storing water underground in the aquifer turns out to be the cheapest and safest way to store water for future use.
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/amid-deluge-california-farmers-flood-their-fields-order-save-them-2023-03-24/
Note the solutions are coming from engineers and farmers, not the science and engineering phobic lawyers who go into the government business. The politicians are coming up with ‘solutions’ like everyone needs to start driving electric cars to solve global warming, which will solve California’s drought problem.
Ending on a lighter note. What do you call a law student that graduates in the bottom 10% of their class? Your Honor. What do you call a law student that graduates last in their class? Senator.
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I had heard it reported that California had not built a reservoir in 40 years. 95% of water lost to the salty ocean. Crazy.
My brother is a state judge. I think his grades were very good, but I’ll tell him he just missed being a Senator.
$958/year – that’s some savings! I should make that my project this year. See how much I can impact the water bill. Our city charges more $, the more you use as a way to ‘soak’ the rich & inefficient.
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If you water your landscaping, I highly recommend getting a Rachio Irrigation Controller. You provide the system details of your plants including soil type and root depth and tie it into a local weather station. You then take a leap of faith and let the algorithms automatically schedule your watering. I found the PHD’s that developed the scheduling did a much better job than I ever could.
A couple other products I like are High Sierra Shower Heads which were developed by an irrigation engineer who repurposed his technology for showerheads. The heads look different, but the water feels like big rain droplets and the heads do not get filled up with calcium deposits, and they feel like you are spraying more water instead of less.
I also like Toto dual flush toilets. My water district gave me hundreds of dollars worth of rebates to do the upgrades.
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We don’t water landscaping except for our annuals – which are in window boxes. We get those big Midwest thunderstorms all summer that mostly take care of everything. We have a sprinkler system for the lawn, but I only turn it on manually when it’s needed.
We do have the nice Toto toilets inside. I don’t think they are dual flush, but the do a great job.
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