Rain: A week or more of new rain

Today the sun is out for the first time in several days. It's expected to be a short respite before more rain over the next seven or eight days. Checking the rain gauge this morning, we've had 3.00 inches of new rain since I last made a note of precipitation, bringing our total for the 2025-2026 rainy season so far to 23.00 inches, which is on the low side for this time of year. Average annual rainfall for Santa Rosa, California is somewhere around 35 inches. Even if we get another two to three inches in the coming days, we'll be behind where we ought to be. Let's hope for more in the coming week and then for a rainy March. 

[Edit: A few more rainy days since the above post added 1.60 inches of rain to the rain gauge. That brings our total as of March 1 2026 to 24.60 inches.]

[Edit: A bit of rain overnight on March 1 brought our total to 24.65 inches.]

Miscellaneous: White-throated Sparrows

For the last three days, I've had a pair of White-throated Sparrows kicking around the leaves under our bird feeder looking for seeds dropped by the rather messy House Finches that prefer to land directly on the feeder. White-throated Sparrows are not rare but they are by far the least common of the three Zonotrichia genus sparrows we see here in Northern California in the winter months (the others being White-crowned Sparrows and Golden-crowned Sparrows). All three are winter migrants here, usually arriving around October and leaving by April. I always enjoy seeing them. Please excuse the poor photograph, which was taken through the kitchen window.