Rain Gauge Measures Life in State’s Wettest Town

No rain is falling--at this exact second.

But here in the wettest spot in the dripping state of California in the heart of the fiercest El Nino year this decade, all you have to do is wait if it’s precipitation you want.

How wet is it in tiny Cazadero, clinging to the side of Pole Mountain beneath moss-covered redwoods about 90 miles northwest of San Francisco? Just this week the town surpassed 100 inches of rain for the season. Soggy Seattle averages 38.6.

How wet is it? There have been only five rainless days so far this year, none of them consecutive. How wet is it? “There’s maybe 100 people in town, and every one has a rain gauge,” quips state climatologist Bill Mork. “In a town like that, what else is there to do?”

Barbara Parmeter might take exception to such a swipe at her longtime home, a logging town at the mercy of the elements, a place with just two seasons--fire and rain. But she does have a rain gauge. And her own barometer too.

“It’s actually more reliable than the Weather Service,” said Parmeter, who has kept her own weather statistics, day by rainy day, back to 1971. “When you see the old barometer start to drop, the farther it drops, the worse storm you’re gonna get.”

Parmeter’s sister-in-law has a rain gauge too. So does her father-in-law. So do many of her neighbors. There’s one at Montgomery Elementary School where she is secretary, nurse, part-time janitor and yard duty chief. They sell them at the auto supply store, along with the license plate holders boasting “Cazadero: Redwoods & Rain” that grace many of this town’s mud-spattered pickups.

Parmeter has one of them too. What she doesn’t have much use for, though, is a raincoat. Rain or shine--and it’s usually rain--she is out on the playground of her 95-student school with just an umbrella for protection.

“If it isn’t raining too hard, the kids love to play in it,” Parmeter said. “It’s not too cold.”

Although Cazadero’s very particular geography is the cause of all this rainfall, it is easy to see why several hundred far-flung residents live here, about seven miles north of the swift-moving, latte-colored Russian River. All this rain means hillsides and road shoulders are decorated with the singular green color that looks so very good on tender shoots of new grass and so very bad on golf pants.

All this rain means that only the determined and self-sufficient settle near bubbling Austin Creek, where the water is just a shade short of turquoise and the air is tinged with the fragrance of wood smoke.

If you live here, you own a generator, simple as that. And if you live here, you use the generator, just as simple. For although the telephone service is relatively stable, electricity is a far more fickle proposition.

When Ray Little and Jim Raidl moved their design studio here from San Francisco four years ago to fulfill “Ray’s dream of living in the country,” they came prepared. The men hooked up their generator to the necessities of life at Little-Raidl Design: the computer, the studio where Little creates works of stained glass, the forced air furnace, the refrigerator and the freezer.

Raidl’s favorite wet-weather tale is of his birthday, three years ago in March. The Russian River flooded. The power went out. The house guests couldn’t leave. So “we entertained,” Raidl said. “We had a sit-down dinner. The house was filled with candles. The stereo was on. There was music.”

Blame geography when your boots squish on Fort Ross Road, in this town that averages 75 inches of precipitation in a normal year and tops 100 inches every decade or so.

“Even in a dry year, Cazadero is wetter than anywhere,” said Jean Falbo, professor of environmental studies and planning at Sonoma State University just down U.S. 101. “It’s a microclimate. The El Nino is happening to us generally, but the wrinkles in the land dictate who gets the most of the most.”

Cazadero stretches up 2,200-foot Pole Mountain, 10 miles or so from California 116. Prevailing wind patterns bring moisture-laden air in off the Pacific Ocean. The damp air hits the mountain and rises.

“The physics underlying it is that warm air holds more water than cool,” Falbo said. “As the air rises, it gets cooler, can’t hold the water, and it rains.”

Not only does moisture-laden air hit Pole Mountain as it travels in from the Pacific, added National Weather Service forecaster Dan Klinger, but it also comes in from the San Francisco Bay. The more air flow from more directions, he says, the more rain.

Much of Northern California has already received almost double the average rainfall this season, with San Francisco, for example, the wettest it’s been in 130 years. So Klinger would bet that Cazadero is primed to break some records too.

But records are a rather cloudy issue on Pole Mountain, a Northern California microclimate that is home to half a dozen microclimates of its own. The National Weather Service gets its 100-plus-inch measurements from a gauge about five miles northwest of the general store.

Parmeter lives on the eastern edge of town. Her gauge showed 87.8 inches as of Sunday; her record is 110.15 inches, in 1978. Joe Lang, who lives in yet another Pole Mountain pocket, keeps the precipitation measurements for Sonoma County and the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. His gauge shows 95.81 inches. According to Lang’s records, the year to beat is 1958, when 131.25 inches fell.

Oosa Geis, manager of the Cazadero General Store, has a gauge too. Hers, she admits, is the faultiest of all. See, most gauges are just tubes with inches calibrated up the side. To get a proper reading, they must be checked at the same time every day.

Then they’re emptied so the 24-hour reading can begin again. Unless of course it rains more than the gauge can hold, which is usually 5 inches. If that happens, you empty and add, empty and add.

“It’s fun when you remember to empty it and know what you’re reading,” Geis said. “I’m not consistent about it.”

Don Berry, owner of Cazadero Supply, dreams of a custom Cazadero rain gauge, designed along the lines of bigger is better.

“I’d like one that’s 10 inches or 15 inches,” he says. “It’s rained as much as 13 inches in 12 hours before. We got 3 inches in two hours last year. Washed us out.”

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