El Niño in Wine Country

Happy New Year! The long-awaited El Niño has made an appearance, to the relief of most people that live West of the Rockies. One of the many glorious things about El Niño years is how Mother Nature deliveries the moisture to California. Rather than large, and potentially damaging superstorms, California generally receives a fairly steady stream of small storms. These storms deliver relatively tiny amounts of rain, but they become significant when taken in aggregate. One inch of rain here, two inches there, another inch there, and before you know it, the soil profile and the ponds are full! This week is a really good example of this phenomenon. We will see steady rainfall throughout this week, and that’s great news for all involved. To date, we have received almost 15” of rain up in Anderson Valley and more than 8” in Napa Valley. We have a long way to go to dig us out of the drought of the last four years, but what a great start to 2016!