i love it when it rains cats and dogs here because i am saving money on my irrigation bill. my sprinklers are currently off. i will turn them on whenever it hasn't rained for more than 2 days. the other day when i went to pick up my garbage bin there was 2 inches of water in it. it was only standing outside with the lid down for a few hours. California gets less than half an inch of rain for the entire summer. i remember when i used to bike behind Google Campus ( it was a nature preserve of some kind ) there was a truck there going around and watering trees - literally a truck would pull up to every tree one by one to water it - absurd. Mediterranean climate is shit. Yes it is very comfortable for people but not so much for plants. When i lived in Silicon Valley i had no AC and was completely fine, but i am also completely fine in Florida WITH the AC. On other hand if you tried to water your lawn in California after 2 months without rain you would probably get arrested but in Florida you don't even need sprinklers but everybody has them anyway. in fact Florida sprinkler systems are much more advanced than the ones back north even though i don't actually see any point in having them here because of how much it rains. as i mentioned before the only logical explanation is people who move to Florida do so to enjoy a tropical paradise and are not willing to compromise on how perfect their landscaping is. honestly in my gated community especially it is insane how much landscaping work is going on. i remember the first time i drove through it ( for an open house ) i was like "this is a really nice neighborhood" but there is definitely a price to pay for that in landscaping bills and also in the noise from landscaping tools that pro landscapers use. mine are electric of course and i do all the work myself - i don't pay landscapers - but 80% of my neighbors pay. only about 20% of them ( or less ) go the DIY route like me.