Rain this morning...no harm done

A light rain has been falling for the past two hours, but there's no danger to the vines and crop right now. We are well past flowering and set of the clusters in every varietal, and this will be a short weather system passing through. I had heard from friends yesterday evening that it was already raining in Eureka and Arcata, and that the system was dropping down through Mendocino County on its way to Sonoma and Napa Counties. I was kind of hoping this would happen and help sap some of the heat out of our previous weeks weather. Unfortunately, it won't be enough rain/moisture to alleviate the fire danger and drought conditions we're in right now (except for the actual day it's raining - the weekend will see us right back where we were in that respect).

Yet it is somewhat disturbing to have this happening again -while not entirely unheard of, as we do have a small amount of precipitation which falls in the summer - summer rain was/is a bit more frequent the past 3 harvests than it has been in the, say, last 15 years. While that's faaaar too short a time frame to be making any sweeping judgments, it is a little dismaying to those trying to get the crop into tip top shape. From years of experience I know we'll have plenty of sunshine & warmth following little showers like this to make it inconsequential in the long run, but even so, the farmer in me always cringes slightly when I hear the rain on the roof in the summer.

Now if this were a cold wet year, and the rain was falling at harvest, well then, things would be different...