It was so cold last night at SLoweather, I expected to see snow on Cuesta Ridge this morning. Maybe it did snow, but it melted before dawn.
In any case, snow did fall on the Santa Lucias.
One of my co-workers, Dan Lopez, sent me a couple of pictures this morning.
Going up 1 at Hwy 46 just before Cambria, a shot toward the north.
Looking east looking out 46.
Our backyard bird feeders are becoming very popular. Because of how they are situated near a cypress tree, flannel bus and coffeeberry, it’s impossible to photograph all of them at once, but at times there must be 50 birds either feeding or waiting their turns.
I grabbed this picture from one of our network cameras as the Tour approached Foothill on O’Connor Way. It’s that string of pearls toward the top of the image.
SLOweather just received notification of a preliminary 4.0 earthquake just off the coast north of San Simeon:
== PRELIMINARY EARTHQUAKE REPORT ==
Region: CENTRAL CALIFORNIA
Geographic coordinates: 35.780N, 121.381W
Magnitude: 4.0 Ml
Depth: 6 km
Universal Time (UTC): 20 Feb 2007 16:46:13
Time near the Epicenter: 20 Feb 2007 08:46:13
Local time in your area: 20 Feb 2007 16:46:13
Location with respect to nearby cities:
23 km (14 miles) NW (311 degrees) of San Simeon, CA
32 km (20 miles) SSE (148 degrees) of Lopez Point, CA
37 km (23 miles) NW (314 degrees) of Cambria, CA
53 km (33 miles) SSW (205 degrees) of King City, CA
179 km (112 miles) SSE (165 degrees) of San Jose City Hall, CA
In checking other sites, it’s been downgraded to a 3.7, and was followed about 3 and a half minutes later by a 2.9 aftershock.
The waning crescent moon rose at 5:43 AM this morning, and at 6:15 AM was hanging over southern San Luis Obispo.
The February New Moon is on the 17th.
Well, almost. As I write this Sunday morning, it’s showering again. 0.21″ of rain since midnight and 1.29″ yesterday gives SLOweather 1.5″ for the storm so far, which brings us up to 6.66″ of rain for the season. That’s finally enough rain for Prefumo Creek to start running. I can hear it rushing down in the canyon bottom.
I got out for a little hike in between showers to see how things looked.
Every year, I see more rainbows here in SLO than in the 18 years I spent in the Midwest.
The warm rain was incentinve for mushrooms to sprout.
It was also enough for the oak moths to hatch. It was very magical to walk thought the woods with hundreds of these flitting about. Also very hard to photograph them. I wish I could have captured in an image a group of them in flight.
And the birds are out for a little post-rain breakfast.
SLOweather recorded 1.8″ of rain in January 2007. That’s only 36% of the 30 year average for January of 5″.
For our July 1-June 30 rain season, to date we’ve had 5.38″, or 41% of the 13,8″ 30 year average.
San Luis Obispo’s 30 year average seasonal rainfall is 23.5″. To meet the average, we have to receive another 9.7″ of rain in the next 2 or 3 months.
The NWS was forecasting that because of the moderate El Nino conditions, we had a 33% chance of a wetter than normal winter. So far that hasn’t panned out.
The NWS February-April show we have equal chances of being warmer or cooler than normal, and still a 33% chance of wetter than normal through the period. So there’s still hope.
