Yesterday we received .51 inches of rain according to our weather station. That brings the total for 2014 up to .54″ — the additional amount having arrived mid-last week. Normally in this area January is wet and dreary. This year the January weather was more like summer. Actually, it was better than that since it lacked the fog and the nighttime temperatures did not drop as much as they had in August. As show in the photo, we had daytime temperatures into the 80’s in January.
Typically the local hillsides turn green in December. As of the beginning of February they are still brown due to the lack of rain. If one looks around, many trees, both landscape and native, are in serious condition as a result of the drought and may not survive.
The lack of cooler temperatures also has a lot of the garden plants confused. Blackberries are blooming and some of the blueberries have fruit. The 4-in-1 apple tree that was planted last winter is blooming but never dropped its leaves from the past season. Likewise, three out of the four low chill pears are essentially evergreens this year. Most of the stone fruit trees had dropped some percentage of their leaves. However, the retained leaves were anything but pretty, so I finally started removing the stragglers. We only have two more weeks according to the calendar for the fruit trees to get in their “chill hours” and from the looks of things, most will have bloomed before then.