Drought in California UPDATE

2/9/14
I was reading about the drought in California, (warning link has strong political stance and I am a centrist), and I decided on a lifestyle change. Mind you, Seattle does not appear to be short of water, I was just shoveling snow a few minutes ago, this is solidarity. The two changes are sea showers and washing some of my clothes in the shower since I am using that water anyway. A sea shower is when you turn the water off while you are soaping/shampooing yourself and turn it back on to rinse.

It is snowing again. The "kind to plants and concrete" de-ice formula I bought is not able to keep up so I picked up the shovel. I do it in fifteen minute increments since middle aged guys like me succumb to heart attacks shoveling snow. Today is an arms exercise day anyway, so this can be my exercise. No big deal there.  Today is Compassion Sunday at church, so I drove Kathy to the 8:00 AM service in the Toyota Tacoma 4wd. BTW, I have one of the fairly rare long beds, but now that the raid boat is in the garage, it is a really tight squeeze, if anyone has a great condition short bed and wants to talk about a trade, I am open.

During the cold snap the lake froze. Gosh that was pretty. It was also interesting to note that the ducks and geese tend to stay in sections of the lake that are not frozen. I guess it is a problem even for ducks to get trapped under the ice.

1/31/15
Apparently the folks in California are still suffering. I am currently in Hawaii, (Kauai), and while it hasn't rained much since I have been here they do not appear to be suffering. The reservoir off Kuamoo looks like it is happy. California declared a state of emergency in January 15. 2015.

Still taking Navy style "sea showers" and washing some of my clothes in the shower since I am using that water anyway. One advantage to this is socks. Have you ever wondered what happens when you send your socks to the washing machine and dryer and out of every twenty five pair or so, you end up with one sock of a former pair. This solves that problem.

2/15/15
Just watched a NASA video talking about mega-droughts. They expect them to happen in parts of the American West. The kicker? They can last for 30 years or longer. In fact, a mega-drought is what probably destroyed the Mayan civilization. The current 3 year drought has cost California 1.5 billion dollars in agriculture as well as impacting what farmers grow. Wheat, corn and cotton prices may go up. One of the really big current concerns is that as the fresh water aquifer in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is deplenished, there may be salt water incursion that could contaminate the water supplies of Contra Costa, Alameda and Santa Clara county residents, Delta residents and the 25 million Californians who rely on the Delta-based federal and state water projects.