<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
<font face="Gill Sans Light">they didn't mention DPMN which might not
happen for April if the rains continue. that said, they also didn't
talk to any kayakers who are *thrilled* at all the rain and the future
spring snow melt....</font><br>
<br>
E. Grace Gellerman wrote:
<blockquote cite="mida0521060fc0552760a2fe@%5B75.0.188.61%5D"
type="cite">
<style type="text/css"><!--
blockquote, dl, ul, ol, li { padding-top: 0 ; padding-bottom: 0 }
--></style>
<title>'deep quoted in Chron!</title>
<div>Quote from our favorite gregarious software engineer highlighted
below.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/04/02/RAIN.TMP"><http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/04/02/RAIN.TMP></a></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><font color="#000000" face="Times" size="+1"><br>
</font></div>
<div><font color="#0000ee" face="Times" size="+1"><b>BAY
AREA</b></font><font color="#000000" face="Times" size="+1"><b><br>
</b></font><font color="#0000ee" face="Times" size="+1"><b> The
rain's a pain, from roofing jobs to softball fields</b></font><font
color="#000000" face="Times" size="+1"><b> <br>
</b></font><font color="#000000" face="Geneva" size="-1"> -</font><font
color="#0000ee" face="Geneva" size="-1"> Peter Fimrite, Chronicle
Staff Writer</font><font color="#000000" face="Geneva" size="-1"><br>
Sunday, April 2, 2006<br>
<br>
<br>
</font><font color="#000000" face="Times" size="+1">Cancel the
volleyball game and stow away the beach towels that aren't being used
to sop up water. The Bay Area is under the weather this spring and
there is no relief in sight.<br>
<br>
There were more rainy days in March than ever before in San Francisco,
Oakland, San Rafael and Santa Rosa, and the monotonous pounding is
likely to continue for at least two more weeks, according to
forecasters.<br>
<br>
The daily soakings have ruined or forced the cancellations of
countless activities, including picnics, softball games, playground
outings and bicycle rides. It has even put a damper on the
time-honored spring activity of gardening.<br>
<br>
In fact, the only outdoor activity that the rain has not spoiled this
spring is puddle-stomping, a practice that many outdoor enthusiasts
and people whose livelihoods depend on good weather are taking up in
frustration.<br>
<br>
"This has been the worst spring that I can remember, and I've
been umpiring for almost 25 years," said John Sherman, 57, after
another weekend of rained-out softball games in San Francisco.
"The biggest payday I've gotten was a day I went out to fields
that were clearly unplayable, and they just didn't call the game on
time."<br>
<br>
The winter softball league in San Francisco postponed 350 out of 412
games because of rain, said Jack Wolf, who has run sports leagues in
San Francisco for 52 years. Little League, soccer and school sports
programs around the Bay Area are all suffering from canceled practices
and a backlog of rainouts.<br>
<br>
"I've never seen anything like this," Wolf said. "I am
very mad at the rain devil."<br>
<br>
With 25 days of precipitation, downtown San Francisco set the March
record for number of rainy days. The previous record was in 1904, when
it rained 23 days. As of Friday afternoon, 8.74 inches of rain had
fallen on the city, making it the second-wettest March since records
began in 1850. The previous high was set in 1983, when 9.04 inches of
rain soaked San Francisco, according to the National Weather
Service.<br>
<br>
Oakland, with 22 days of rain, San Rafael, with 24, and Santa Rosa,
with 25, also broke their rainy-day records for March. Oakland
International Airport had 7.22 inches of rain during the month,
breaking the previous mark of 5.69 inches set in 1958.<br>
<br>
The -- let's face it -- lousy weather is being caused by a westerly
wind pattern that is blowing storms over the Pacific Ocean toward
Northern California. The wind trough has been stable for a month,
essentially funneling rain directly over Hawaii and then through the
Bay Area approximately every 48 hours, said Brooke Bingaman, a
meteorologist with the National Weather Service.<br>
<br>
That global pattern isn't showing signs of budging for the next two
weeks, said Jan Null, adjunct professor of meteorology at San
Francisco State University.<br>
<br>
"There is not a lot of relief in sight," Null said.
"April is going to continue to be wet. There are going to be a
lot of vacations over spring break where people will not be coming
back with suntans."<br>
<br>
The wet weather has left a great many Bay Area residents stir
crazy.<br>
<br>
San Francisco's Amandeep Jawa, 37, normally invites all his friends to
barbecues in front of his Valencia Street home in March. The
gregarious software engineer also organizes outdoor dance parties, but
hasn't gotten his groove on since the balmy days of winter.</font><br>
</div>
<div><font color="#000000" face="Times" size="+1"><b>"We had the
first one in Dolores Park, and we've been trying to do the second one
for, oh, three months now," Jawa said. "It's insane. We need
rain sometimes, but enough is enough. If I wanted to live in Seattle,
I'd live in Seattle. I didn't sign up for this."</b><br>
<br>
Parents and day care providers are equally frustrated, if not more
so.<br>
<br>
"I have two boys, so it's crazy for us,'' said Lisa Polakis, a
Mill Valley mother whose children are 5 and 2. "They're going
crazy. They need to be outside. I really feel like boys need to get
energy out, and that's not easy to do when it's raining all
month."</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000" face="Times" size="+1"><br>
Faced with the prospect of yet another visit to the Exploratorium,
library or Discovery Museum, some mothers are putting on the galoshes
and venturing out with their kids.<br>
<br>
"My son gets a kick out of looking for pill bugs and worms that
have come out in the rain," said Lisa Barnes, 37, of Sausalito,
whose son, Jonas, is 2. "He loves to go out in the rain, stomp in
the puddles, and sail leaves and pebbles down the rainwater."<br>
<br>
Soldiering out into the elements has its risks, though, as Melanie
Grubman found out. The puddle that Grubman decided to ride her bicycle
through the other day turned out to be 2 feet deep and full of
sewage.<br>
<br>
"I went down and I was, like, swimming in it," said the
27-year-old education coordinator for Marin County's Safe Routes to
Schools program. "Right after that, I had to teach a class on
bike and pedestrian safety. The kids thought it was funny."<br>
<br>
At least Grubman's humbling pratfall into a stinking puddle didn't
cost her any money. Roofers, construction workers, tree cutters and
other tradespeople have not been so lucky.<br>
<br>
Marty Hernandez, owner of Guaranteed Roofing in San Jose, said that in
a normal year, he would have completed six or more roofing projects by
now.<br>
<br>
"We can't work." Hernandez said. "We haven't worked any
good jobs for over a month. I just have to sit and wait until the
rains are over. It's a burden for all the trades that work outside. If
you haven't got any money saved up, you go broke."<br>
<br>
Tourism is also taking a hit. The Golden Gate Bridge reported a 4
percent drop in sales at the toll plaza gift center and a 22 percent
drop in sales at the cafe compared with March of last year.<br>
<br>
"People aren't sitting outside and enjoying a hot dog,"
complained Mary Currie, bridge spokeswoman.<br>
<br>
Attendance is also down at the Japanese Tea Garden, Stow Lake and the
San Francisco Zoo, according to the San Francisco Recreation and Park
Department.<br>
<br>
The fact that it has been raining cats and dogs might be influencing
people's behavior in more mysterious ways. Dog adoptions decreased and
cat adoptions increased in March at the San Francisco SPCA, for
reasons nobody can quite explain.<br>
<br>
Gloomy weather has long been associated with depression and suicide,
which might be why people are flocking to local tanning salons.<br>
<br>
Julia Louis, 20, an employee at Sun Company Tanning in San Rafael,
said March was the busiest month of the year.<br>
<br>
"Most of the people come in here and say, 'Oh my gosh, it's so
dreary outside. I just need to get some sun,' " said Louis.
"Probably half the people who come in here, the rain is their
reason."<br>
<br>
Cindy Bonilla, a nursery buyer for the Sloat Garden Center in San
Francisco, said the extra water has been good for Bay Area weeds and
bad for many vegetables and ornamental plants.<br>
<br>
"The ground is so saturated that people are having a hard time
putting stuff in," Bonilla said. "The tomatoes that everyone
wants to plant for the summer have either been ravaged by snails or
soaked and shredded by hail and rain."<br>
<br>
The daily downpours might also have something to do with a big
increase in hungry rats that she said are responsible for devouring
the bark off lemon trees.<br>
<br>
The stormy weather has turned park trails around the Bay Area into
quagmires. Raging creeks, mudslides and flooding have forced the East
Bay Regional Park District to close off some of its 1,100 miles of
trails in 65 parks.<br>
<br>
"It's been terrible," said Shelly Lewis, spokeswoman for the
parks, which cover 97,000 acres in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.
"It's the most rain damage we've had in our park in at least two
decades and probably in history. A lot of the trails have been washed
out. The creeks are raging, and mud is an issue everywhere."<br>
<br>
The park district had to postpone Saturday's grand opening of a new
park in Martinez until June. Last week, an Afghan new year's
celebration with 4,000 people at Del Valle Regional Park in Livermore
was rained out.<br>
<br>
Golden Gate Park isn't faring much better, unless you're a fish, said
Rose Dennis, spokeswoman for San Francisco's Recreation and Park
Department.<br>
<br>
"If this doesn't let up, I'm going to build my own ark and
collect two of everything," she joked. "We're reliving the
Old Testament."</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000" face="Times" size="+1"> This week's
question:</font><br>
</div>
<div><font color="#000000" face="Times" size="+1">What's your
favorite
pastime on a rainy day?</font><br>
</div>
<div><font color="#000000" face="Times" size="+1">URL:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/04/02/RAIN.TMP">http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/04/02/RAIN.TMP</a><br>
</font><font color="#0000ee" face="Times" size="-1">©2006 San
Francisco Chronicle</font><font color="#000000" face="Times" size="-1"> </font></div>
<pre wrap="">
<hr size="4" width="90%">
_______________________________________________
social mailing list
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:social@lists.deeptrouble.com">social@lists.deeptrouble.com</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://lists.deeptrouble.com/listinfo.cgi/social-deeptrouble.com">http://lists.deeptrouble.com/listinfo.cgi/social-deeptrouble.com</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
</body>
</html>