How to Save Money While Making Rain

This is being written on Tuesday morning, amid what appears to be the final furies of a huge, two-day storm. Much of Northern California is hip-deep in some form or another of elemental chaos. Steady rain has turned highways into running creeks and running creeks into full-blown rivers. Winds blowing as hard as 70 mph have set high-rises and bridges to swaying. Out by the sea, a sinkhole has swallowed a mansion. Entire towns are blacked out, school districts closed.

For all of this, I apologize.

If only I had done the right thing this summer.

If only I had repaired my roof.

This is how it goes, in the evolving field of weather fatalism. To pay thousands of dollars for a new roof is to guarantee drought. Conversely, to not fix the roof is to invite the gods of meteorology to open the heavens. I’m told that new ski equipment can work the same way: Spring for new skis, boots and bindings, and the Sierra slopes will remain barren and bone-dry all winter; shun the ski sales, and expect a winter wonderland that stretches from Thanksgiving to the Fourth.

Car washing, however, has become less reliable. Back in times of normal weather, all it took to induce rain was a trip to the carwash. That only the more elaborate acts of weather-baiting now succeed is another piece of evidence that the term “normal weather,” for much of California, has become a useless oxymoron.

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There is no longer such a thing as normal weather, especially as it applies to the all-important index of precipitation. The pioneers thought they had the weather patterns all figured out. They clung to such fondly held aphorisms as “rain will follow the plow,” and “droughts never last longer than three winters.” They produced detailed charts to demonstrate what westbound settlers could expect in the way of weather or, more to the point, free water. That these charts sometimes were based on just a decade or two of record-keeping did not diminish the confidence of the prognosticators.

What the past two decades of erratic rain and snowfall has--or should have--taught Californians is that, when it comes to weather, we are a lot like good old Sgt. Schultz of television: We know nah-thing, nah-thing. Last Friday, a panel of state weather experts concluded that, to quote one front page headline, a “Very Dry Winter Looks Inevitable.” This assessment was based on the fact California had endured one of its driest autumns on record. Three days later, precipitation totals throughout most of Northern California had rocketed up to normal. Hopefully, the prognosticators made it down from their Sierra convention before the storm came a-pounding.

While predicting future precipitation is dicey business, assessment of how much will be needed is a cinch. How much water does California need? The answer is always the same: More than it has. Thus, the water wars. One way to track California weather is to monitor the rhetoric of the water warriors--that ever-feuding triangle of farmers, environmentalists and urban water agents known as the Hydraulic Brotherhood. In dry years, they’ll go at it in shrill shrieks: Gimme my water, gimme my water. In wet years, they become perfect little statesmen, evoking compromise and peace.

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One year ago--with the Sierra already smothered in snow--opposing warriors gathered to celebrate a new pact. This was described as a pivotal moment in California history. For once the cotton growers and salmon lovers and urban water grabbers all were hitched to the same happy, peaceful, wagon. This year--with a frightfully dry fall--came signs that the water wars were not quite so settled after all.

Court actions have been filed with the aim of shutting down some west side valley agriculture. There’s disgruntlement over new efforts by Los Angeles water barons to form an alliance with Las Vegas water barons, in the process putting a squeeze on San Diego and Phoenix water barons. The farmers are up and active, working the halls of Newt Gingrich’s Congress for relief from some of the peace terms. And so on.

While the war receives less attention in wet seasons than in drought, it does go on nonetheless--our own little Bosnia of sorts. And as California grows, so will the warring grow more desperate. During the 1970s, it was often said that California’s water system had the capacity to capture enough runoff in a single rain season to supply the state for three years. Now the capacity is said to be only two years. This puts more pressure on the rain gods to produce: One dry season and the drought watch resumes. This fact at least makes me feel patriotic about the holes in my roof.