Thick, low and wet-looking clouds hanging above my back patio on an early Monday look like they’re ready to drop some water onto California’s north coast — rain started last night, and with the sound, seemed fairly-good for awhile, but at this morning’s first light, just the warm, moist overcast.

Supposedly, this particular rainstorm will drop the heavy stuff further inland, and along the coastline, mostly just dense cloud cover — the NWS, though, does call for at least a 50-percent chance of rain today, which normally translates into at least some showers, or thick drizzle.
There’s a neat rain-gizmo thingy on the forecast map at WunderBlog I check at least once a day — looks like wet this morning, then dry for at least until next weekend.

And today, we Californians face new water restrictions as Gov. Jerry Brown’s executive order goes into effect.

(Illustration found here).

The governor’s historic directive seeks a statewide water-use reduction average of 25 percent, which makes for a fairly-wide compliance factor for local water agencies from 8 to 36 percent — here in my unincorporated town of Mckinleyville, we’re slated at the conservation standard of 16 percent.
In that chart at the link, looks like we saved nearly 44 million gallons last year over 2013.
As this goes into effect, I really don’t understand how they figured that shit out — Arcata, a little college town five miles south of here, has a standard of only 8 percent, while Eureka is set at 24 percent.

And since my water is included in the rent, what keeps me from 15-minute showers? How do they regulate assholes like me? Down south, it’s lawns and swimming pools, but not so much that kind of shit up here behind the Redwood Curtain — how do they restrict us when our reservoir, Ruth Lake, is nearly-full right now, and has been four times this year?

Anyhow, a bigger concern are the emotional and intellectual significance of three goodly-sized earthquakes late last night and early this morning off the Oregon coast — first, a 5.8 just before midnight, then less than 10 minutes later, a 4.3 aftershock,and then a 5.5 three hours later.
Too loud, too close for comfort…doesn’t help water reduction.

And something you don’t really think about nowadays, but today 35 years ago, a novel idea: CNN‘s first day — ‘After Washington bureau chief Bernard Shaw promised aggressive coverage of what he called “the news capital of the world,” he added, “You can depend on us being here all the time. And please, pass the word.”‘