Saturday, March 19

Welcome to spring!

It’s still March, and I guess we need April showers to bring May flowers, but this is ridiculous! I thought La Niña was going to mean we were in drought conditions, but it’s become an El Niño year instead. Rainfall and snowfall have surpassed normal so far this year (it snowed during the night here in the foothills!).

We got word that the high mountain reservoirs, including Florence Lake, will be held near-full for the entire season since the Edison Company is still working on Shaver Lake dam and they want to keep that lake empty in order to get clear to the bottom of the dam’s face with their waterproofing project. That’s both good and bad news for us; good in that we can have our docks kept close to the store and trail ends of the lake, and bad that the nearby Jackass Meadow Campground will probably be closed because water will be going over the Florence dam’s spillway. If the Forest Service had listened to the locals and put the campground on higher ground, people could have a nice camping experience from spring to fall. But important decisions and plans are made in Washington, D.C. and those high mucky-mucks don’t listen to us rubes in the boonies. Oh well.

2 comments:

HHhorses said...

Hmmm ... where should we put our major campground? I know! Let's put it right below the spillway of a huge dam in the most earthquake-prone state in the US! That's a GREAT idea!

At least they have a siren.

Tom Hurley said...

It’s a clever setup. There is a long strong that goes from the siren to the dam. When the dam breaks, the string pulls a switch and turns the siren on! Of course, there’s a little problem when a bird lands on the string and the siren goes off. After awhile, people ignore the siren.

In reality, when the Edison Co installed the siren a few years back, the Forest Service complained that it was visible to anyone, and made them re-locate in off behind a bunch of trees, making is less loud as a bonus.