The Dryas Press is a small press publisher based in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, with a focus on public safety and preparedness around natural disasters, specifically in mitigating expected impacts of our strong and extreme storm weather events. Our first publication is the book Megastorms, California, and You, in preparation since 2019 and released in November 2023.  Early excerpts appeared as a series of newspaper articles in February 2020 (just as Covid-19 disrupted normal life).

Our assessment is that accurate information about extreme West Coast weather events, while available, has not broadly reached the California public and many of its leaders.  Complicating this picture are some unfortunate elements of miscommunication, misunderstanding and misinformation that have arisen.  We address those issues with this book.

We believe that accurate information, effectively communicated, serves the public interest, specifically to increase public safety, preparedness, and community resilience.  This is our hope: to spare our population the avoidable worst impacts of extreme weather disasters, and to help save lives.  We acknowledge the contributions of other, authoritative writers, communicators and researchers on this subject, and we hope this new book will fill a need for the general reading public and others with broader responsibilities.  

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In support of this objective, we have -- at local scale, at no charge -- been providing copies of Megastorms, California, and You to local public safety officials, agencies, responders, political and community leaders, service organizations, NGOs, public libraries, and news media.

Continuing book donations to county public library systems through February 2024 include:

Amador

Calaveras

Tuolumne

Mendocino

Sutter

San Joaquin (pending)

... and we aren't done yet.  County library systems may request one copy from The Dryas Press at no charge, and may order additional copies via Ingram.  If you donate a copy to your local public library, please let us know!  

We would like to see this informational outreach effort and perhaps others expand further (California has 58 counties).  We can't predict what the revenue stream from sales of this book will amount to; we don't know what funds might be available to support continued placement of copies where they might have the most useful effect.  If you would like to help see this information achieve a broader reach, here are some ideas:

• Your purchase of print or e-book copies for yourself and others will contribute to available funds for outreach
• You may consider ordering and gifting copies to your local leaders and libraries (if so, please let us know where they have come to rest)
• You can help bring this book to wider attention within your circle of friends (or book group, or other club or organization) and your community; for book group/volume purchases, contact us about discounts
• Let your favorite booksellers know that you would like them to stock this book (available to retailers from distributor www.ingram.com)
• If you would like to consider contributing a modest amount to support our in-house outreach efforts, you may contact us directly for more details (see our Contact page)

We appreciate your support!  If you think this book is useful and has an important contribution to make, please let others know about it.  We don't have a publicist or a marketing department; we do hope to have your goodwill and any assists you can provide.  We aren't a registered non-profit, but we hope to do some good in the world, and, possibly, sooner or later, cover our costs on this project.

Thank you! -- The Dryas Press