Send that rain to Texas.

We have been in drought for almost three months here, so I envy you that rain. I don't have deer problems but my goats sheered a whole bed of roses one time, and they bounced right back. None of them were once-bloomers, though. My sister lives right down the road and is surrounded by heavy woods. She has deer problems. I have orange groves on either side of me, and the deer are so distracted by the delicious new growth on the citrus they never mess with my roses.

Jackie. Wave if you see me floating by your house sometime today......

Susan

Susan - I will keep an eye out for you!

Seriously, our street gutters are deep, but they are overflowing onto my rose beds between the sidewalk and the street - those roses are sitting in a fast running river. The first time that happened is when I realized how tough roses really are - they don't get washed away, they don't die or get sick, they just bloom more, and politely request that I replace their mulch, which of course does get washed away.

Jackie

I am truly grateful that we have a roof over our head-not leaking, a warm heater, a cold frig/freezer full of food. And the end of the day all four of us come home to each other.

FJ

We'll take your extra rain -- we always need it in SoCal. It was GLORIOUSLY rainy here last night. Yee haw.

The rain in Sacramento passed the glorious stage some time ago. It's going straight across, the garbage cans have blown over, a least one tree in a nearby park has toppled, and I'm hoping there are no trees or limbs down in the cemetery.

The cemetery roses have alfalfa and manure and are looking good. I don't think we'll add anything further. I haven't put anything on the roses at home and think that I must fertilize when I can get out into the garden again - the nitrogen has to be leached from the soil.

I think that the roses will put out new leaves if you're able to keep the deer away. Remember, there are latent buds next to the primary ones.

I just checked the forecast and it's supposed to be bad all day and into the evening, rain more tomorrow and Sat, and then dry out for a while. Whew. We need that. March is to go out like a lamb, sunny and 71 degrees. Soon, we Californians will be lamenting unusual amounts of disease due to all the wet weather and heat and dry weather. It's always something.
Anita

I'm kinda enjoying the rain too once I got over my panic about roses rotting.

Cause you know, a couple months it'll be 115 F.

also, it makes the weeds easier to pull.

The rain does seem to be a lot, but that's just because we're getting it all in a short space of time. I check the National Weather Service website for my YTD rainfall information on a regular basis. Down here in San Jose we finally made it to 90% of average for this time of year yesterday, meaning we are not yet quite up to the average rainfall here. I'm expecting today to bring us up to average. I carefully do not say "normal" because there is no normal. Wide swings in rainfall are normal in California. I do see that other parts of the bay area are now slightly above average, but we in the south bay and peninsula are just now creeping up to the okay mark. Until the past couple of weeks we were in serious deficit.

Rosefolly

Here is a link that might be useful: Select

The text on my link seems to have vanished. Instructions for seeing the YTD rainfall compared with last year and with average are to select the radio button by Regional Summary, click Go, then scroll down to Precipitation Climatology. Since I posted before they have put up today's data. We are now at 13 inches, exactly average for San Jose at this point in the year. I feel much better than I did when we had only 8 inches a mere three weeks ago.

Rosefolly

Interesting that there is such a difference between San Jose and Sacramento in rainfall this year. We are 5.18 inches ahead of normal, which in a climate that gets 19 inches a year is a LOT. We set a record for rainfall on Thursday, with about 1.35 inches. Doesn't seem like a lot in other parts of the country, or world, but here we are worrying about river stages and opening weirs for flood plains - and fretting about 20 feet of wet snow up in the mountains, and hoping that it all doesn't melt at once.

We have really needed the rain, and there really hasn't been much damage from it.

I track rainfall data in the newspaper, Paula, but was not familiar with the data on the link you posted. Thanks.
Anita

For purposes of this consideration, I'll call our rainfall area "Los Angeles," though we're actually in Ventura Co.

"Los Angeles Average" rainfall for a year is somewhere slightly in excess of 15 inches. We were just "OK" with that, until we got to March -- this is nominally part of our rainy period, but in a drought year, March is usually dry. And even if we get rain, it's warm rain by this time of the year. Instead, this time (and despite the La Nina forecasts) we've got cold rain.

Going in, we were in a "rainfall deficit."
We've made that up and more, bringing our rainfall for the year up to 18.55 inches -- before this weekend. We're likely up to 19 inches, now.

"This makes the 2010-2011 water year the wettest in Los Angeles during a La Nina over the last 60 years, surpassing the totals recorded during the strong La Ninas of 1955-56 (99% of normal) and 1973-74 (106% of normal), and weak La Ninas of 1967-68 (110%) and 2000-01 (118%)."

As much as we love and want rain, the truth is that, unlike folks in the PNW, we don't have the geography or the infrastructure to deal with it.
Sooooooooooooooo . . . IMHO, the *&$#@! rain can stop any time now.

Jeri in Waterlogged Camarillo, CA

Now, this is really getting ridiculous! On Thursday my DH and I drove in to the City. We had checked the tide tables, and it was an extra low tide, so we decided that the freeway would not be flooded, and went despite the fact that it was pouring. In places the freeway, AND THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE had standing water on them (or rather, running water) 2 to 3 inches deep, because it was coming down so fast that it couldn't drain as fast! At some places you could only see 10-15 feet ahead, because it was raining so hard! Final rain amount for that day here was 2.21 inches.

Last night (Fri) it started to pour again, hard, and kept it up all night, and it is still doing that. I just got my boots, long rain coat, and a large umbrella and ventured out our long driveway to get the papers. Half of the entire length of the driveway is under running water, and the deep street storm gutters have overflowed onto the sidewalk. The entire sidewalk is under water (not to mention my rose beds which are between it and the street) for what I can see of the length of the entire block.

When I checked yesterday's paper we were 2 inches over our "season to date normal" rain number, and almost at our total annual (season ends in June) normal number.

I am going back to bed!

Jackie

Well, I'm willing to take a break from the rain, though I do want two more inches before the season closes. But I don't want all my friends to float away.

Rosefolly