Recent rains in California have not only provided a superbloom of wildflowers but have provided desperately needed rain for the vineyards there.  The Los Angeles Times reports: “It’s hard to imagine what might have happened to the region without this season’s rains. Record low rainfall levels, coupled with record average temperatures in an age of global warming, had left viticulture from Monterey to Ventura in a low-grade peril. The five-year drought had been so inexorable in its effects, so disruptive to seasonal cycles, that growers were having a hard time imagining what a return to normal would look like. Paso Robles, the Central Coast’s great tourism success story, where vineyard acreage and real estate tracts had ballooned in the last decade, faced the prospect of an abrupt about-face in its growth pattern, as the region confronted one of the most catastrophic water management crises in California history.”

You can read the rest of the story at https://www.latimes.com/food/dailydish/la-fo-wine-california-drought-vineyards-20170314-story.html.

Source: Commons Wikimedia