SLOweather

My parents are on a 36 day cruise aboard the Queen Mary 2. They left from LA, went around the Horn, and are now in port in Montevedeo, Uruguay. Amazingly, the ship has a satellite internet connection accessible to the passengers (for a fee, of course) so we stay in touch every day via email.

More amazingly, the ship has a bridge webcam that updates every minute. The bridgecam webpage is here.

They are currently 5 hours ahead of us, so by 2 PM or so PST the image is dark unless they are in port.

If I do this right, this should be the latest picture from the camera:

This evening there was an incomplete double rainbow right around sundown.

I caught the jet and the rainbow together.

The other end of the rainbow…

And a Whatsit, taken Saturday (unenhanced, just resized).

The PG&E Met Office in San Francisco has issued a Thunderstorm Warning for our area this
afternoon.

This morning’s Doppler Radar and the 1200Z surface charts shows an upper-level trough about
200 miles northwest of Diablo Canyon moving towards our area. As this system passes our
area this afternoon it will produce periods of heavy rain and a good chance of thunderstorms.

Current PG&E weather warning

Thunderstorm warnings:

Start 1200 3/28/06
Ends 1200 3/29/06

Atmospheric conditions are expected to favor the development of thunderstorms over San Luis Obispo
county this afternoon and evening. Unstable conditions are expected to last through the night
into Wednesday morning.

ATMOSPHERIC CONDITION:

A front approaching the California coastline will pass the Diablo Canyon
area near midnight and will be followed by a cold upper-level trough late
Tuesday afternoon.

This condition will continue to produce rain (at times heavy) and strong
southerly winds through early Tuesday morning. A bit of a break in the
weather will develop late Tuesday morning, before a cold upper-level
trough moves over our area on Tuesday afternoon with more rain, turning
to rain showers by Tuesday night.

Scattered showers will continue over our area through Wednesday afternoon
and will end by Wednesday night. Precipitation totals this afternoon through
Wednesday should range between 2.00 to 2.50 inches of rain.

Another early spring wildflower, the Johnny-jump-ups (Viola pedunculata) are starting to make their 2006 appearance in the neighborhood.

The redbuds know it’s spring and are starting to pop. I grew this one from a batch I got from the CDF nursery several years ago.

Today is the first day of spring, which starts at 10:26 AM PST as the sun crosses the equator coming north. Today it rises exactly in the east and sets exactly in the west, giving us 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness.

Due to the cloudy forecast, though, it looks as if we will not be able to witness sunrise and sundown here.

I belong to an on-line forum dedicated to supporting the Virtual Weather Station software that helps run SLOweather.

Today the following message was posted there:
—
“I have a friend who is a teacher at a middle school and is interested in setting up a weather station and an associated web site as a class project. She feels she can get the funding through a school project grant but she is looking for ways to structure the project to maximize the educational content. She would like to get in contact with some schools and teachers who have done a similar project. She hopes to get ideas for lesson plans, ways to create sub-teams, ideas for related topics, quizes, etc.

“Pointers to any school resources for this would be appreciated.”
—

If there are any teachers here that can lend some assistance to a fellow teacher, please let me know. You can post a comment here, or use the SLOweather comment form to email me.

Thanks so much for any help you can give me to pass on to this teacher.

Chris

Over on our far hill, the chocolate lilies (fritillaria biflora var. biflora) are starting to bloom. Sometimes they are also called Mission Bells.

The bush lupines by our driveway are in bloom. It must be time to see if the chocolate lilies are up. Soon the calochortuses (calochorti?) will be flowering as well.