Leon Turnbull Photography

You may be thinking after this weekend, we are going to have a great winter with above average precipitation! You may be thinking, we’ve had enough, stop raining already! As of right now, we have a snow pack about 200% of average. Surely that is enough. If you are thinking that, you would be wrong! Has the fat lady sung yet? No, she hasn’t. Remember last year? We were well above average in December and then we received almost zero precipitation in January, February and March. Nada. We ended up well below average for the year. Winter in California is four months, not one month. I read one report that said the same thing is going to happen this year, and already now it seems we are starting an extended dry period after this past weekend. What is my point? My point is: don’t get so excited yet. Keep praying for rain and snow. It’s not over yet.

Whenever I go to the Bay Area I am almost always disappointed with the waterfalls. About 90% of the time they have low and disappointing flows. I keep wanting to go back there because there are many waterfalls I still want to see. I should have gone to Oroville instead. However, I thought if I went on Saturday during the big storm, then the waterfalls would be good. They should be good. I had plans to see four falls, including three new ones. The first one was one I have been to before: Arroyo San Jose Falls.

As I started the easy hike up to the waterfall I was stunned: the creek was completely dry! We are in the middle of a huge storm and the creek is still dry from the summer? I just drove 2 hours to see this? This is a fairly decent sized creek. I expected this one at least to be flowing quite well. It was dry. Nonetheless, I continued on the hike. Well, I’m glad I did not turn back because as I came close to the waterfall, I found water in the creek. It was flowing up at the falls and then went underground. It was not great. But at least it was not dry.

There were a couple kids playing in the creek at the waterfall so I went off to the side to take photos. I did not want to disturb their play (I’m not that mean!), and also it was probably a better angle from the side anyway. After photographing this waterfall I decided to skip the other waterfalls. I did hike a bit more but in the end I figured it was not worth the effort. Considering the low flow in Arroyo San Jose, I knew the other creek would have been just a trickle at the very most. I will have to come back. Hopefully next time it will not be a disappointment.