Seems it never rains

Until my wife and I bought our Redwood City home, my interest in the weather was mostly academic, with just a touch of the practical. I really just needed to know what I should wear on a given day and how it might affect my commute to class or work. But as Redwood City homeowners, suddenly we no longer had a landlord to rely on for dealing with weather-related issues that affected our home. Instead, those issues were — and continue to be — all on us. And although I enjoy most of the projects I find myself doing around the house, the ones related to storm preparation are not among them.

Along the southwest side of our house are three large oak trees. Although those trees require regular maintenance — we want to keep them healthy to minimize the chance that they’ll come down in a storm — we are happy to have professionals tend to them because not only are they beautiful, the shade they provide in the summer greatly helps keep our house cool. But oak trees drop a lot of leaves and other fine debris, much of which falls onto our roof and eventually makes its way into our gutters. Thus, a couple of times a year you’ll find me up on a ladder, cleaning out those gutters. It is a tiring, dirty job that takes a good part of a day to do safely and properly. I’m close to the point where I’ll hand that job, too, over to a professional, but whenever I consider what it would cost and the fact that I can still do it myself, I conclude it is not yet time.

In addition to the gutters, our house is protected by a French drain system. Those drains not only keep excess ground water away from our foundation, they also handle the water from our downspouts — after first filling our rain barrels. (BAWSCA is still providing rebates for those if you could use some.) Our French drains employ a couple of sump pumps, and those, too, require periodic maintenance. Roughly once a year I have to clean out the chambers where those pumps live, and every five to 10 years or so I find myself replacing one of the pumps. At least I don’t need a ladder to maintain them.

These days, I no longer commute to an office, but I do take long walks at least once or twice a week to find things to write about. During the rainy season I rely on the 10-day forecast to plan out which days and times are best for my walks. I’ve learned through experience that the weather apps on our smartphones aren’t terribly reliable; more than once I’ve been caught in a rain shower when none was supposed to have occurred. Fortunately, the National Weather Service’s online forecasts seem reasonably accurate, so I mostly rely on those to keep me and my camera mostly dry.

California is a big place, and where one lives makes a big difference. Our current storms should do a lot of good in the Bay Area — watering our plants, quashing any remaining wildfire danger and transitioning us from drier than average to a more normal condition, water-wise, without causing excess flooding. But the poor folks in Sonoma County and northward, to Mendocino County or so, are receiving the brunt of these storms and are likely to see significant flooding. It puts my gutter-cleaning and pump-clearing chores in perspective — I really have nothing to complain about. But “it pours, man, it pours.”

Greg Wilson is the creator of Walking Redwood City, a blog inspired by his walks throughout Redwood City and adjacent communities. He can be reached at greg@walkingRedwoodCity.com. Follow Greg on Twitter @walkingRWC.