Everyone knows there is a desert somewhere in California, but many people believe it is off in some remote corner of the state—the Mojave Desert, Palm Springs, the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. But inhabited California, most of it, is, by strict definition, a semidesert. Los Angeles is drier than Beirut; Sacramento is as dry as the Sahel; San Francisco is just slightly rainier than Chihuahua. About 65 percent of the state receives under twenty inches of precipitation a year. California, which fools visitors into believing it is “lush,” is a beautiful fraud.
