I was going to go to Sequoia National Park on Monday, but the flooding and storm warnings changed my mind. Not to mention, I live in a direction that I access the park by the south entrance through a town called Three Rivers, and a landslide has demolished at least one road there.

Technically uplifting

Playing devil's advocate. This might increase the risk of sink holes or land slides.

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Lmao yeah sounds about right.

Switch to oat milk like my wife.

Yep. Water likes to stick to water. If the ground has some moisture already the water is more than happy to go into the ground with all of its other water molecule buddies. If the ground is completely dry it takes more time so it will either pool up or just keep flowing.

Now it's up to the Californian government not to squander our water reserves...

Yeah I was about to say the same which got lost in translation with a yank mate in a convo few years back.

I'll take one of these every month Jan-Mar if that's what it takes.

Yeahhhh it’s kinda sad to see ABC fall for clickbait-y headlines. This is our national, independent govt funded news source but they’ve slowly added more of this to their headlines as time has gone on to stay relevant.

What is the espoused reason that is prohibited where you live?

That just isn't practical. One of the big problems with dry ground is water likes to stick to other water molecules. They will work their way into the dry soil but it takes more time. A good example is comparing how much more and how much more quickly a slightly damp sponge will absorb water versus a completely dry one. If you were to pour water on both you'll see that most of the water will just run off the dry sponge.

If were to drill out a few holes in the dry sponge it's not going to really change much. The hole itself might become a small reservoir but it won't change the rate of absorption.

This would scale really poorly in the real world. You'd need so many holes drilled all over the place. It would be incredibly expensive and logistically impossible not to mention insanely dangerous. Having tens of thousands of open wells isn't a great idea.

Most of California's water consumption is from agriculture. A couple personal catchment systems would make little difference.

Its hard to understand until you've lived here how its like the Atacama desert for much of the year and then only modestly rainy for a couple months most years.

Many months are not "very little rainfall" but basically zero rainfall.

You got to love Episcopalian’s for covering everything.

Actually it's not though. The central valley is arid, and the bottom like 15% is desert, but that's not most of the state.

It's not in the absolute worst category

So far ;)

I would assume any amount would help. If we were allowed I would get big tanks to store the rain water and use it for my trees and plants. Connect them to drip system and I wouldn't be using the drinking water.

Well, if the water is pulled from reservoirs that are unlikely to get filled during those 5 months when people would be primarily being using water they collected from rainfall, then it seems like it would have some positive impact.

This is from the point of view of someone who lives in a country where every. single. house. is constructed with roofs that catch, purify and store water for usage. Not a third-world country, a quite wealthy one.

During the summer people do have to purchase water during the few months with very little rainfall, but it isn't as if those months where we get to have full tanks due to rainfall, and get to have that water not be bogged down by chemicals, are having no positive impact. Quite the opposite, in fact.

O my what will you do without almond milk for you $7 coffees?

Anyone who lives somewhere hot where it can go lengthy periods without rain, even if it is just a seasonal thing, should understand why this rainfall isn't going to solve the draught, even if the sheer amount of water that fell theoretically could have in a basic model that doesn't account for what happens during a lengthy period without rain.

Even just a few months here without rain and the ground is so hard, it becomes more like hardened clay than soil or dirt, and the rain doesn't seep into it quickly, meaning any winds, slopes, etc. make it just roll/flow away before it saturates the soil.

It takes times for the soil to become pliable and accept rain, and I don't know the actual science about it but I sure know that when it gets dry in the summer here, the first heavy rains don't feel like they've done much for how much rain there was, and it seems like all they've done is fill up pools.

By the time it has rained a few times and the ground gets more receptive to absorbing water, the rains definitely have a notably different impact.

That is after 1-4months of fairly dry weather, and I live somewhere with exceptionally high humidity. California has had many, many years of draughts far more extreme and very little humidity, so it is going to take far more than just a few torrential rains before they get anywhere close to being out of a draught. You can't expect the reversal of many years of something extreme to occur within just a short period of the opposite, at least not in most situations.

This drought is not over

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I don't think storing your own rain water is that helpful in most of California. It rains for 5 months then doesn't rain much for 7 months. The time I need the water is in those 7 months and you would need an insane amount of storage capacity to make a significant dent.

It’s only temporary the lakes are NOT refilling. By summer it will be dry dry dry