*** Source: Thompson, Robert A., Historical and descriptive sketch of Sonoma County, California. Philadelphia: L.H. Everts & Co., 1877, 122 pgs. Notice: This data is donated to the Public Domain by TAG, 2004, and may be copied freely by anyone to anywhere. *** ---page 21--- April, as in the east, is all smiles and tears--sunshine alternating with showers. Nature pushes her work in April, and vegetation grows astonish- ingly. The turning-point of the crop comes in the long warm days of this month; the rainy season is about over, and from that time until it matures the crop is sustained by the sea fogs, which set in about the first of May. In June the grain matures, and by the middle of July is ready for the harvest. The season in Sonoma county begins a month sooner, and ends six weeks later than in Southern California. This is one of the greatest of its advant- ages over the other parts of the State, and has given the farmers of this sec- tion a good crop every year for twenty-seven years, while disastrous failures have elsewhere occurred. Corn is planted in April, after the rains have ceased, and a good crop is often raised without a drop of rain having fallen upon it; by good crop we mean, on the best bottom lands, from eighty to one hundred bushels to the acre. We have mentioned the fog which sets in about the 1st of May. This phe- nomenon, of almost daily occurrence from May to the middle of August, is an important factor in the growth of the crop along the sea coast and on the bay of San Francisco. About the 1st of May the trades winds set in from the northwest. The Spanish galleons, bound from Manilla to Accapulco--three hundred years ago--steered for cape Mendocino, where they would encounter the northwest trade, and run before it, with swelling sails, to their beautiful harbor, Acapulco. To these winds the farmer of Sonoma, of our own time, is indebted for their never-failing crop. After a drying north wind in spring, which has parched the earth and twisted the blades of the growing grain, the trade sets in, and, as if by magic, the scene changes, the shriveled blades unfold, and absorb life at every pore from the moisture-laden breeze. When the trade winds set in, a fog-bank forms every day off the land, caused, perhaps, by the meeting of a cold and warm strata of air. In the afternoon this fog comes inland with the breeze, which commences about noon every day. It is not an unhealthful fog; on the contrary, the most healthful season of the year is when the trade winds prevail. The fog spreads through the county late in the afternoon, continues through the night, and disappears about sun- rise. This mild process of irrigation is repeated nearly every day during the season. The farmer estimates that three heavy fogs are equal to a light rain. The growing season is from six months to two months longer on the coast than in the interior; the grass keeps green, and this accounts for the product- iveness of the dairy cows on the coast, and also for the fact that the wool of this section is very superior in length of staple, strength of fibre and in color, to that grown in the interior of the State. We will give a brief review of the seasons since the American occupation of the country, as they affected Sonoma county. The season of 1849-50 was extremely wet; there was no rain gauge in this county, but not less than 45 inches of rain fell; the whole of Santa Rosa and Petaluma plains were flooded. In 1850-51 the rainfall was light; estimating by the reported fall of 4.10 inches in Sacramento city, it must have been about 12 inches here. In 1851-52 the rainfall in this county was 24 inches; in 1852-3 there were very heavy rains, and the whole of Petaluma and Santa Rosa valleys were under *** end ***