Don’t believe me. If you live in S. CA. shut your water supply off for 18 months and see how everything looks around on your property. You better like dead vegetation and scrub.
You keep harping on the fact that non native vegetation would die if the water supply was cut off. Duh! What would happen to the people of New York City if 90 percent of their water supply, which comes from 120 miles away, was cut off? Of course Southern California is way overpopulated beyond the natural capacity to support that population. No one is disputing that. I am simply stating the fact that the original assertion that all of Southern California is desert is simply not true, and every climate classification confirms that.
Big Bear is not in a desert. It gets over 40 inches of precipitation for God’s sake! It’s in a forest!
Those transverse mountain ranges, along with the Pacific Ocean, are why the coastal areas are NOT deserts. The ocean moderates the temperature, and the mountains force the moisture of the prevailing easternly winds to fall BEFORE it hits the desert areas which are EAST of these mountains.
This is basic stuff.