We all know about the big events when it comes to our global climate crisis: ice melting all across the Arctic circle, good parts of California burning, floods and rising sea levels in many locations. But what about the little thing? How is your daily life affected by "relatively minor" changes? What are you seeing when you're out and about? Let's see some examples.

I'll start with a snapshot taken on a short ride last week, showing a river in my region. You can see shrubs to the right, which are just above the typical high water line, and some vegetation in the gravel ending approximately with my shadow around where the waterline would normally be at this time of the year. As you can see, the river has receded several meters from this line already - and I could probably walk in a third of the river's current width before the water would even reach my knees.

Under normal circumstances, the water level of this river would be held nearly constant by an upstream dam, because it is still supposed to be a navigable waterway at this point - but the dam doesn't have enough water left to perform that function at all times after several years that were much too dry. In fact, there are reports about old villages becoming visible near that dam, which were flooded when it was built nearly a century ago.

It’s funny, here in California I think about climate change all the time because we lost our favorite forest, three of our friend’s houses, and we have a house full of evacuees. We’ve taken a ton of fire photos.

But I don’t often think of the everyday things you mention. But here’s one. It used to be that to succeed in planting a Bird of Paradise plant in our area, you had to plant it right beside the house or under an overhang to prevent cold damage in the winter. When I planted this one 20 years ago, a landscaper friend said I’d lose it to winter kill in a year or two. Made sense, I’d lost several before.

But this one has become huge because we don’t get hard frosts anymore.