[driftdiver]

Isn’t southern California a desert naturally?

[BenLurkin]

The Big Valley isn’t really desert (also not part of SoCal per se), but it does water for growing the kind of crops it can yield. It is an immensely productive region of our nation — when not being backstabbed by left wing politicians.

[Finny]

Isn’t southern California a desert naturally?

It depends on how you define "desert."

I would say more arid, Mediterranean-like. Desert is Arizona, to me, and high desert is Lancaster, Edwards Air Force Base, flat, dry, wind-bitten, baren. Climate, soil, and topography a whole helluva lot different than urbanized and semi-urbanized Southern California, which I know well and know what it was like 50, even 100 years ago, from pictures, etc. Not desert. But people like to say it is, I think because it sounds so dramatic!

Now, Las Vegas. THAT is desert. That is a city carved out of a patch of desert. It's a city that exists because water is shipped to it.

[goat granny]

I have visited a friend in San Diego, and yes, southern California is considered a desert, due to its lack of rainfall. That's what determines drought, desert etc. Its annual rainfall is (if I remember correctly) about 10 inches a year.. One of the reasons they have canyon fires so often...she has been burned out by those but chose to rebuild in the same area. The side of a canyon. It only happened once is 2 decades...