Weather During the Sonoma County Harvest

Obsessed by Weather - Real and Virtual

To farm is to worry they say. At least it is to be obsessed by weather.

These days it is even worse since you can be obsessed not just with the real weather but you can live through a number of different virtual realities until the real weather hits. You can follow the weather forecast weeks in advance and see how the percentage chance for various outcomes change. So I spend lots of time checking www.weather.gov, www.accuweather.com and www.westernwx.com/Sonoma/ a great source for weather data in Sonoma. Depending on what they predict I may suffer through a 60% chance rainstorm two weeks from now a number of times over several days. Then sometimes that chance decreases to 10% and finally the day comes and it is sunny and beautiful outside.  We make plans, we make new plans, we have plan B, plan C etc. Once we get to the day of harvest or the day for a wine club event I will have lived through it many times already, in excessive heat, in beautiful sunshine, in drizzle, in pouring rain, in immense wind storm. I will have worried my way through all the various possibilities.

It is great to have so good predictability of course and it does mean that we can make smarter decisions on when to pick our grapes and have alternative dates and plans. But I guess checking once a day would suffice but it is so easy with just a click on the phone.

Next week we plan to pick Cabernet Sauvignon, now I need to check the weather forecast again, it could have changed since I started writing this.