Has California Always Had Such a Distinct Dry & Wet Season?

9 comments

1. You mean February to November?

2. Has it always had a distinct dry and wet season? Yes.

   Is it getting worse? Yes.

   Could it threaten California’s farmers? It already does.

3. Winter and spring have always been rainier and summer and autumn drier. In *Of Mice and Men*, which came out in 1937, a character makes reference to the rain coming in the winter as a regular occurrence.

   Whether it’s been that way for centuries or millennia I can’t say but I know it’s been that way all my life and seems to have been that way for decades before I was born.

   Of course droughts can hurt farms. If the droughts continue or worsen that will be a problem. But the rainy/ dry cycle seems not to threaten agriculture in itself.

4. #

   # California Farms Face $3 Billion Loss From Historic Drought

   [ ](https://www.yahoo.com/now/california-lost-rain-snow-cuts-002034461.html#)

5. How long has California’s climate been the way it is? A long time.

6. I can’t speak for all of CA, but San Diego has cycled around for as long as I’ve been alive (30+ years). Sometimes it’s a really wet El Niño year, sometimes it isn’t.

7. The entire Pacific Coast has pretty distinct dry and wet cycles. Seattle is often bone dry for a couple of months from around mid-July to mid-September. These dry seasons are getting longer and drier as climate change progresses.

8. Yes. So much so many native plants have evolved such that they require fire for their seeds to germinate.

9. It’s getting worse. Duh! We keep trying to warn everyone about climate change but no one wants to listen. Measurements don’t lie. The entire western US is getting less annual rainfall. We’ve been in an on-off drought for almost two decades.