‘When it comes a passing guest, Young leaves like birds in the nest open their mouths wide to gain, as much as they can of the April rain.’ — Francis Sterne Palmer, ‘April Rain in the Wood.’

‘Did you order this rain?’ Coming in like a lion, March goes out like a lamb, followed by the showers of April that bring May flowers, a connection first identified by English poet Thomas Tusser in the 16th century. If ordered, every rain would be like an April shower, a gentle soaker, melting the lingering snow, greening the grass, with the remainder trickling into waterways that flow to the sea. To the bane of civilized man rain can be very heavy as some descriptive idioms suggest, gully-whopper, toad-strangler, or turd-floater.

Rain is part of what is scientifically termed the hydrologic, or more familiarly the water cycle, and is the sequence of conditions through which water passes from vapor in the atmosphere through precipitation on land and sea, returning to the atmosphere through evaporation. The water cycle is not weather or climate and weather or climate is not the water cycle but as natural cycles on a scale of planet earth, the measurement of the impact of human activity on them is difficult to quantify.

To pick one phase of the water cycle to concentrate on, the one most vulnerable to the demands of civilization to consume, commute, and construct, would be the flow of water over land to the sea. Hydrologist Richard Vogel, who makes projections on water resources, considers urbanization to be a greater threat than climate change. When he needs an example, he looks to the land of atmospheric rivers, boom cyclones, and pineapple expresses, he looks to California.

The San Fernando Valley was once a rich alluvial plain created by the flow of the Los Angeles River, the headwater of which is in the San Gabriel Mountains. It drops 600-800 ft. in elevation, as does the Mississippi but over a distance of 51 miles versus 2,000. It now flows through a concrete channel, the banks of which between the 1st and 7th Street bridges was the location for the drag race in the 1978 movie ‘Grease.’ Over the course of a century 94% of the valley’s waterways, rivers, creeks, and wetlands have been channeled through concrete banks, diverted into culverts, and filled in.

In the years between 1920 to 1940 the population of Los Angeles County tripled, going from 900 thousand to 27 million, several hundred thousand of them were ‘Dust Bowl Refugees’, from the states of the lower Midwest. Then in 1938, a 50-year flood caused by two days of rain sealed the river’s fate. The demand for space was loud and the urgent call for protection from flooding shrill, and the Army Corps of Engineers got it done, by 1960 channelization of the Los Angeles River was complete.

In 1987 the Strawberry Creek project in Berkley, California was the first restoration of an urban waterway. Landscape architect Douglas Wolfe, a participant, coined the term ‘daylighting’ the process restoring urban waterways. It became a trend and In 2015, in response to public concern the Army Corps of Engineers published the ‘Los Angeles River Ecosystem Restoration Feasibility Report.’

The Thunder Bay River is an asset to our community, and we should all be grateful for monitoring its condition.

‘As a rule, man is a fool, When it’s hot, he wants it cool; When it’s cool, he wants it hot,

Always wanting what is not.’ — Anonymous.

Tom Brindley grew up in Iowa, and studied journalism and accounting. He is a retired controller from Alpena Community College and has been active in local nonprofit organizations. He can be reached at bindletom@hotmail.com. Read him here the first Thursday of each month.