We’ve had some good rains so far this winter with 8 inches total as measured in my back yard.  Already that’s 4 times the total rain fall compared to last year.  But then, last year was the driest year on record.  Two inches - that’s desert weather.
We had a storm come through Wednesday night and [...]

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We had some more good rain this weekend.  It was a huge storm but most of the precipitation came down up north.  The Sierra got as much as 10 feet of snow!  The state really needs it.
The aftermath in the Santiago Fire burn area relates to the green grass that is growing in profusion all [...]

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Rain is on the way.  We’ve been warned about a huge storm that will hit over the weekend.  The National Forest people have been mulching the hillsides.  The hope is it will at least slow erosion and runoff.  I talked to a couple of National Forest rangers yesterday and it’s not seed. 
In the past they [...]

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The First Surprises 
The recovery after the burn holds one surprise after another.  The first surprise was how quickly the thistles started growing back.  They didn’t even wait for rain.  It only took a few weeks and they were sprouting.
 The second surprise was how quickly the grasses came up with just a couple of inches of rain.  And [...]

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There are more hillsides turning green besides the ones behind our house.  Further up Saddleback Mountain there is a growing patch of green.  But it’s not the natural green of tender shoots of new grass.  It’s artificial green.
 It has something to do with the crop dusters that have been flying over the canyons and ridges the [...]

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Last night marked two months since the fire came through our ‘back yard.’  Since then we’ve had about four inches of rain.  In fact, there was more rain in one storm than all of last year.  As a result the scorched hills are starting to turn green.  We’ve seen crop duster planes flying over the [...]

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There are several miracles related to the fire.  One is an apple tree at the stables.  It’s about five feet tall, just a small thing.  But it produces tiny apples every season.  Rumor has it that it was planted by a grieved person who lost a beloved horse.  What better gesture than to plant an [...]

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The fire really changed an important part of our life in an unexpected way.  We were leasing a horse at the stables not far from our house.  When the fire roared through Monday night it continued on and burned through the stables.  The big wooden barn burned to the ground. 

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The rain this weekend wasn’t as bad as expected.  It was cold by Southern California standards.  But that doesn’t affect runoff.  We were treated to snow and ice atop Santiago Peak (over 5000 ft).  All the radio towers up there glistened in a sheath of ice.  Modjeska Canyon was under mandatory evacuation again due to the [...]

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The 2007 Santiago Fire was about seven weeks ago now.  The fire left the hillsides behind our house bare and covered with ash.  There were two kinds of ash.  There was the black ash that pretty much covered everything.  Then there were patches of white ash where a larger shrub or small tree had once [...]

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