One of the things I’ve always had a hard time adjusting to since I moved to CA is the winter rainy season.

Most of my life has been in the semi-tropical/temperate zones of the southeastern US (North Carolina to Puerto Rico). I’m used to rain being a year-long phenomenon. It comes and it goes. But no so, California.

No, here the spigot is turned off some time in April or May, and it doesn’t really get turned back on until sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving. The real stuff seems to hit in late winter (which means right about now), and we’ll see days on end of gray skies and rain. For a child of the warm oceans like myself, it’s a challenge to get through it with my sanity intact. More than two days without sunshine tends to drive me down, and as the storms continue it’s hard to stay clear of outright depression. I start to dream of Mexico or south Florida… and I understand the motivation of the east coast “snowbirds” a lot better.

The rain here is a double-edged sword, of course. Without it, large segments of this state quickly return to a desert condition, and with the millions upon millions of people living here, water shortages ensue. Water rationing becomes the norm, and people start to struggle to keep their water use to a minimum or face fines. Agriculture suffers, wildlife and habitat suffer, and things get a little touchy until the wet cycle returns.

Point is, I know we need the rain. But dangit, I’m not made for this! And what’s worse… for the second year in a row this weather is threatening my upcoming Tejon Ranch hog hunt. The hills at the ranch are snowed under, the freeway was closed last night, and the storm is still moving through. Right now, the end of the week looks promising, but that’s subject to change at any moment. My fingers are crossed.

So Rain King, if you’re listening… just a short break. I’ll trade you another week of sun-deprived depression for a few days of reasonably dry weather at the ranch. It doesn’t need to stop altogether. I just need the roads to be safely passable, so we can get in there and do a little hog hunting for a couple of days. Is that too much to ask?

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