California situation, page-5

A severe storm hitting southern California at the moment:

A powerful Pacific storm blew into Southern and Central California on Friday with wind-driven heavy rains, triggering rescues, calls for evacuations, toppling trees and power lines and disrupting travel and outdoor events...

...The storm took aim at Southern California but also spread precipitation north into the San Joaquin Valley and up to San Francisco. It was not expected to bring significant rain in the far north where damage to spillways of the Lake Oroville dam forced evacuation of 188,000 people last weekend.

The National Weather Service said it could end up being the strongest storm to hit Southern California since January 1995.

Powerful storm enters California, bringing risk of flooding

Fortunately, it appears that the dam at Lake Oroville will avoid the worst of it, although there was one local news site suggesting that the evacuations might adversely impact pollination in the area near Oroville.

It remains to be seen if the extreme weather hitting Southern California will have an impact on the almond bloom. Apparently the bees only need a small window to pollinate the trees, so it is actually pretty unusual for unfavourable blossom conditions to impact the crop. Still, it has happened before. This is from the Select Harvests annual report of 1998:

...The blossom conditions in California in March 1998 were less than ideal and a crop reduction from the previous crop of some 25% is expected. As a consequence international prices rebounded and have remained relatively firm.

On that note, the Blue Diamond website had a report yesterday on the progress of the current almond bloom:

...Bees averaged 7 hours of very good pollination throughout the state on Wednesday. Thursday’s pollination was limited due to high winds in the northern and central parts of the state, along with added rain in the south. These conditions led to 4 to 6 hours of fair activity in the north and central parts of the state, and 2 hours of poor activity in the south...