rain

I'm just a few hours back from spending a couple of days in the low coastal mountains of Mendocino County... northwest of Ukiah, at about 800 feet elevation. It's been off-and-on raining, with the heavier and more sustained rain at night, and long breaks during the day. The total precipitation has been substantial, with tremendous variation from place to place. Some areas got a lot more than what I saw. There's a fair amount of snow visible above 3,000 feet, although I never got over 2,000 feet on the drive.

The system handled it pretty well. The densely vegetated north coast acts as something of a sponge, to some extent. These "pineapple express" systems (multiple storms backed up all the way to Hawaii) happen a couple of times every winter, so except where humans have messed with the system in a bad way, there's plenty of capacity for the flow. Every once in a great while the water overwhelms the system, and that's part of the longer term process, that's when rich silt gets deposited on the higher floodplain terraces that form prime redwood habitat.

I was in the transition zone this trip, and could look out from the modest cabin I was staying in and see grassland, oak woodland, and mixed evergreen forest (Douglas fir, tanoak, madrone, and various other species) all intermingled on slopes in every direction, with a riparian corridor running through it all. Just a few miles to the west is a redwood grove.

To the south, grassland and oak woodland become more common. To the north, conifers dominate. In the transition, in the constantly shifting (on a geologic time scale) boundary between what's been called (by Raven and Axelrod) the arcto-tertiary forest, and the madro-tertiary system, plants aren't the only things that change. The range boundaries of a number of animals fall in this zone, also.

It's an ecotone I've spent a fair amount of time in, but it's been a while,. I would have like to stay longer this time, spend a while exploring. It will need to wait til next time, but the rain served the purpose of giving me time to stop and look, and remember.