Drought is a four-letter word

Fear. Dust. Fire. Dead.

There was a false sense of four seasons in California one day in December when snow swept across the steep escarpment of Wilshire Peak on the Yucaipa Ridge in the San Bernardino Mountains.

Laughing, freezing, smiling, we followed Charlie our guide from the Wildlands Conservancy on a stumbling-fast pace between islands of visibility and three different peaks.

The Conservancy owns and manages this 2,200 acre preserve to prevent exploitation of private lands within the National Forest. Would that it could harness the racing clouds tossing sleet like lightening bolts at our feet. This is the only precipitation that Southern California would feel throughout its storied winter months.

Imagine cabins in the woods without snow men to protect them. No deer prints on frozen ground. No icicles dripping from cedar branches, snow shovels still in their plastic packaging, no reason to drink warm cider or wear scarves.

A week later, in the desert, we found the snow. It poured between granite boulders in Anza Borrego's Palm Canyon, green moss forming on the surface of black water pools. There were waterfalls, butterflies and road runners. Pools pushed quicksand to cover the trail, forcing a slow creep up the rocky walls on our trek towards the four palm groves gracing this narrow canyon.

Snow. Melt. Life. Tree.

Folsom Lake in Central California is at 17% capacity. Farmers are selling their cattle because they don’t have enough water for the thirsty bovines. Republicans are blaming the drought on Democratic environmental policies. The governor wants to build tunnels sending 67,500 gallons of water per second from the Sacramento Delta to the lower half of the state. That’ll go over well.

Studying tree rings, climatologists say this is California’s driest period in 400 years. Ouch. They’ve come up with a catchy new term for it: megadrought. What will weather girls wear when describing this phenomenon? Downtown L.A. gets 15 inches of rain in a normal year. In 2013 it received 3.6. Look on the bright side: more storm drains will be converted to half pipe skate parks. Bring the X games to So Cal's culverts.

We’ve had droughts before and they can go on for a long, long time. In 850 AD, apparently, a drought began that lasted 240 years. Really it's not our fault. San Diegans can boast a 27% decrease in consumer demand for residential water use. We've been good.

Arid. Rust. Time. Hope.

I mean, the gators in Mississippi are burrowing into the mud to stay warm. Ice balls the size of WWII mines are rolling up on beaches of Lake Michigan. Tell Minnesota we want our storms back. There’s snow in Savannah, GA. for Christ’s sake. That’s our precip. Must have gotten lost somewhere on the Continental Divide. Send it back this way please.