It feels like another hot day in the Sacramento Valley (which isn't all that unusual, it is hot every day from May to Oct).  I really like the sunny, warm mornings - it is 75 F at 8:30am, so I am sitting very comfortably in just my shorts.  The days are dry (45% RH), tinged with a bit of cool air until just about this time of the day - perfect!  However, in a few minutes there will be no more cool air, and the humidity will drop to about 20%.  That is when I stay inside if I can because it feels like a blast furnace outside, and it makes my skin shrivel, flake and dry.

Last week my "solar crew" went to San Jose to install a solar system on the roof of a house.  It was divided into several small arrays to fit on the available roof space and to work around things on the roof such as a sky light.  The multiple array layout caused significant "extra" work in comparison a roof with wide open spaces.  Even though it was in the nice "cool" San Jose area by the sea (92F), it was HOT on the roof, and really hot in the attic.  I got over toasted and dried up.  I attempted to keep hydrated, but you can only drink so much water.  We finally finished it up, and it looks good.  Our price was very close to one half of the nearest competitor's price - and I made a nice bit that makes a comfortable business. I sure don't see what the other guys do to double my price for 3 days work and no investment. The customer pays before the payment for materials comes due - so I have no investment our outlay for materials.  I usually get paid before payroll, so I don't even have to bankroll that expense.  I guess it is a situation of whatever the market will bear is the correct price.  I don't believe in that approach to pricing things, but I suppose that makes me something other than a dedicated capitalist.

The point of that little excursion is to say that I got REALLY hot last week, and it seems to be still impacting me.  I feel dried out - and have started having fantasies of standing in a nice, drenching, cool downpour.  I was watching a TV program last night and they had a scene where people we walking (running) in a drenching rain.  I missed the point of the scene because I was focused on the idea of wet, cool, sloppy rain.  Hopefully there will be a wetter winter this year, but even if it is that is still more than three months away.  We went to Alaska a couple of weeks ago for a fun vacation with the kids and grandkids.  All the way up the inland passage we kept hearing about the storms and drenching rains that were there the day before.   Everyone exclaimed how "lucky" we were to be missing the storms and rains, that we just got clear sunny days!  I was so hoping for a little bit of "bad luck" where we would be contending with delicious rain and cold winds.  We got to have beautiful, California like weather.  I wasn't the hoped for nasty, Alaska like weather.

Speaking of hot, dry and water .... We live in the countryside, away from cities or towns - surrounded on all sides by agricultural land.  That means we all share the same aquifer for our water supplies - the farmers and the homeowners.   There is no surface water in our area, it is all from wells - and those wells are rapidly getting deeper.  Neighbors are having to re-drill their wells, or reset the pumps to lower depths.  We are getting lots of sand pulled up with the water, so I suspect that one day soon we could be out of water and will need to do something.   Part of the reason for the low ground water level seems to have to do with thousands of acres of new almond trees planted for miles around our home.  Many of the trees are being planted on ground that has always been dry land farming without any wells or irrigation.  Now they have new, totally unregulated, wells pumping 24 hours a day.  Surprise!  The water table is dropping.  Not only that, but the water they are using is "ancient" water (12,000 years or older) and doesn't get replenished by rains or rivers.  Once it is gone, it is gone.  There is a layer of water above the ancient water that does get replenished by rainfall (when we have it), but since we are in the middle of an extended drought those shallower layers are pretty empty, therefore the wells go past that into the old water layers.  This practice of using ancient water that doesn't get replenished is called "water mining" and is outlawed in most of the States - but California has a long standing tradition of strong historical water "rights," along with wide open use of water, caused in part by many old and outdated water laws and policies. 

The reason for all of the almond trees is interesting.  Years ago they were planted in the southern end of the valley (the San Joaquin Valley) using surface water from the Sierra Nevada Mountains for irrigation.  The drought resulted in the reservoirs in the mountains getting very low, causing water rationing to the farmers.  The farmers turned to unregulated wells until they pumped the aquifers dry - at which point they could no longer water their orchards.  The trees died, and they tore up the orchards, replanting in our area because we still have water in our aquifers. In effect, they "moved" the orchards to my backyard.  I wonder how long that will last - the pumping is already making very large changes to the water supply, but the farmers are still planting like crazy.  For example, this last week a 600 acre field was prepared for a new orchard.  This spring a couple of thousand acres within a mile of my home were planted in almonds.  Every week brings another new field of a square mile or so.  In almost all cases the new orchards are going onto land that has never been irrigated - requiring dozens (hundred?) of new 100 HP, deep wells.  Almost all of the almonds are being sold in China (and a few other Asian countries) - therefore we are "exporting" huge amounts of our water to China in the form of almonds.