SLOweather

Katie and I went to Atascadero today for the noon session on the temporary rink at the Sunken Gardens. The weather cooperated, being sufficiently cool (~50F) and overcast. I don’t think it would have been as much fun at 65 and sunny.

The sessions are an hour long, with a half hour in between to turn in and rent skates, and recondition the ice. By the end of our hour, the ice was getting a little snowy from the high concentration of skaters on a comparatively small area. The rink is 50′ x 90′, and there are 100-120 skaters per session. I had my own skates, while Katie used rentals.

Skating was a lot like at a roller rink, roundy-round counter clockwise to music from KSTT. I grew up skating on a pond back in Illinois, which was a lot more free-form than this. Here, it was like a NASCAR race, all the slower skaters on the outside, all the faster ones on the inside, and a lot of crashes into the wall. And, just like NASCAR, we learned to aim for where the wrecks happened, as they’d slide away before we got there.

Also, Katie pointed out to look out for the little kids with snowy bottoms. They fall down a lot.

Skating isn’t apparently just for people, either. This little poodle was out on the ice with Dad.

One of the staff told me that they allowed 100-120 skaters per session, and that most sessions sold out.

We smiled for the webcam…

It takes a large refrigeration unit and its own generator to keep all that water frozen. The refrigerant lines were frosty.

Yep. If you haven’t heard by now, Jiffy Lube and Clear Channel are sponsoring an outdoor skating rink in Atascadero. It only runs until the 7th of January. I grew up in the midwest, skating on the pond in the park adjacent to our house in the winter, so this caught my eye. We’re headed up for Date Day tomorrow to give it a fling.

The information page is here.

There’s even a live webcam with audio. Take a peek between 12 and 1 Sunday. Maybe you’ll see us.

Today saw winds at SLOweather up to 40+ mph, with a gust at 12:33PM to 51 MPH. Courtesy of John Lindsey, apparently Diablo Canyon had even higher winds:

” Gale to storm force northwesterly winds along the entire California coastline has generated high northwesterly sea/swell along the California shoreline. The NOAA Marine and waverider buoys north of Diablo Canyon have recorded combined sea/swell heights of over 28 feet today. Northwesterly winds at Diablo Canyon have reached over 54 mph sustained with gust over 66 mph. ”

Ah, well, here’s yesterday’s sunrise…

Today I added a page for the new SLOweather forecast. I’m still learning about the forecast programs, and the process isn’t fully automated yet, so the availability of a current forecast may be limited. And there are as yet no other links to the forecast from other SLOweather pages.

It’s just before 8AM on Christmas Eve, and Santa is over Myanmar. You can track him here.

I’m currently learning to use WxSim, a weather forecasting program, to augment SLOweather. When I’m finally comfortable with the entire process and the automation thereof, I’ll figure out how to automatically upload the forecasts to the SLOweather web site.

Here’s my first run, out through Thursday. It compares favorably with the National Weather Service and Weather Channel forecasts at the time I made it.

WXSIM text forecast for San Luis Obispo, initialized at 4:56 PM Dec 23, 2006
________________________________________________________

Tonight: Partly cloudy. Low 40. Wind north-northeast around 5 mph.

Sunday: Partly cloudy. High 67. Wind north-northeast around 4 mph in the morning, becoming west in the afternoon.

Sunday night: Partly cloudy in the evening, becoming partly to mostly cloudy after midnight. Low 39. Wind north-northeast around 2 mph.

Monday: Partly cloudy. High 68. Wind north-northwest around 2 mph in the morning, becoming southwest around 6 mph in the afternoon.

Monday night: Partly cloudy in the evening, becoming mostly cloudy after midnight. Low 42. Wind southwest near calm in the evening, becoming southeast after midnight.

Tuesday: Cloudy in the morning, becoming mostly cloudy to cloudy in the afternoon. A chance of rain. High 63. Wind south around 2 mph in the morning, becoming 6 mph in the afternoon. Precipitation mostly less than a tenth of an
inch.

Tuesday night: Cloudy. Rain likely. Low 49. Wind south-southwest around 7 mph. Chance of precipitation 60 percent. Precipitation mostly around a quarter of an
inch.

Wednesday: Mostly cloudy to cloudy in the morning, becoming partly to mostly sunny in the afternoon. Patchy light fog in the morning. High 63. Wind west-northwest around 10 mph.

Wednesday night: Mostly clear. Low 40. Wind northwest around 7 mph in the evening, becoming north after midnight.

Thursday: Sunny. High 65. Wind north around 6 mph.

Thursday night: Clear. Patchy light fog after midnight. Low 36. Wind north around 6 mph.

If you listen to the weather radio broadcasts from the National Weather Service, you know that several years ago they switched from recorded human transmissions to synthesized speech.

Herewith, Deck The Halls as done by the NWS.

Deck The Halls

Katie spotted this Winter Solstice Sunrise this morning off our back deck.

Winter starts today at 4:22 PM local time, making this the day of 2006 with the least amount of daylight hours. I’d say that it was the shortest day of the year, but then my dad would point out that all days consist of 24 hours, including this one (except when they add a leap second to compensate for the spin of the earth decreasing).

The Celts were big on celebrating the solstices. Here’s some information if you are interested.

This morning about 7AM, I was out on the street retrieving my LA Times. Across the canyon I noticed what looked like a small cloud or fog bank, except it was a little too blue, more like smoke.

Katie and I watched it for a few minutes with binoculars, and became more convinced that it was smoke from a fire. It wasn’t dissipating, and was slowly billowing out of the trees.

I called it in to SLO PD dispatch and the Fire Department responded.

It’s quite a hike up to the area of the fire. The last I heard, it was a 10′ x 10′ spot somewhat off the trail, which had apparently been burning for several hours, with no determination of cause.