CLIMATE. 33 
March, and April; in ’54~’55, January, February, March, and 
April; in ’55~56, December and January; in ’56-’57, De- 
cember and February; in ’57~’58, December, January, and 
March; in ’58~59, December, February, and March; in ’59- 
’60, November, March, and April; in ’60~61, December and 
February; and in ’61~62, from November to February, in- 
clusive. 
The rain of California usually comes with gentleness, and 
falls perpendicularly. The coast, above Humboldt Bay, re- 
ceives a greater amount of rain than any other part of the 
immediate shore; and in this respect it resembles the humid 
clime of Western Oregon. At Fort Yuma the amount of rain 
is from one-fifth to one-seventh that at San Francisco, and it 
all falls during the spring and summer; for the rainy season 
of the Colorado Desert does not come at the same time with 
that of the remainder of the state, but is synchronous with the 
rainy season of Northwestern Mexico. 
The rain along the middle coast of California usually comes 
slowly, and falls gently and perpendicularly. Here it is very 
seldom that two inches of rain fall in a day, and three inches 
have not fallen within twenty-four hours in ten years; while 
in the Eastern states the former figure is reached frequently, . 
and the latter every year—where also the rain-is generally 
accompanied with violent and long-continued storms of wind. 
The rains of the Sierra Nevada are far more abundant in quan- 
tity, and fiercer in the manner of their coming, than those 
about the bay of San Francisco. It is established that the 
amount of rain, and its equivalent snow, increases on the west- 
ern slope of the Sierra Nevada with the elevation; but our 
statistics are not sufficiently extensive to enable us to deter- 
mine whether the increase is in regular ratio to the altitude, or 
what the proportions are between the snow and ‘rain at differ- 
ent heights. It is, however, an unquestioned fact that, in or- 
dinary seasons, the amount ‘of rain at Sonora, two thousand 
five hundred feet above the sea, is from twice to thrice as great 
as in Stockton, only seventy miles distant, at the sea-level; 
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