SLOweather

After Thursday morning’s midwest style thunderstorm here, today’s San Luis Obispo Tribune has several stories about it. Here’s the link to the main story on the front page of the Local section:

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/story/130290.html

“More than 22,000 lightning strikes hit within a 50-mile radius of San Luis Obispo by Thursday afternoon, according to www.sloweather.com. ”

SLOweather also got mentioned on Dave Congalton’s show on KVEC yesterday afternoon by the Diablo Canyon meteorologist, John Lindsey.

As of 6:45 AM Thursday, 30 August 2007, SLOweather has recorded 15,627 lightning strikes within 50 miles.

From John Lindsey at Diablo Canyon, at 5:24 this morning…

Thunderstorm Warning UPDATE II 08/30/07 ==============

Subtropical moisture streaming in from the south towards San Luis
Obispo County has produced numerous thunderstorm and rain showers
over the last eight hours. The Diablo Canyon Ocean Lab rain gauge
has recorded 0.11″ of precipitation. Weather stations in Los
Osos and Morro Bay have recorded over 0.25″ of rain.

Thunderstorms and scattered showers will continue to affect the
Diablo Canyon area this morning. At 0500 this morning Doppler Radar
indicates thunderstorms off the Diablo Canyon coastline moving north
towards Cambria/San Simeon.

Thunderstorms and scattered rain showers will continue along our
coastline will through 0900 this morning, becoming partly cloudy
and warm by this afternoon. These thunderstorms can be accompanied
by lightning, gusty winds and rain showers (at times heavy).

Tonight, we’ve had pretty good thunderstorms and rain rolling through the area. As I write this, it’s about 1:00 AM. The electricity went out for a minute or so about a half hour ago.
We’ve had 0.06″ of rain, with a rate of 0.16″ per hour.

Just received this update from John Lindsey:

Thunderstorm Warning UPDATE 08/30/07 ============

Doppler radar is indicating severe thunderstorms about 1.5 miles
west of Diablo Canyon, moving north towards Montana De Oro/
Los Osos at 12:30 this morning. These thunderstorms will be
accompanied by lightning, gusty winds and rain showers
(at times heavy).

These thunderstorms are expected to continue through 0500 this
morning.
=============

Let’s see… We’re under Severe Thunderstorm Warnings from the NWS…

I haven’t seen the lightning tracker look like this in a while…

Or the Lightning Probability map feature our area so prominently…

A small convective cell with lightning passed from south to northeast of SLOweather, over the Irish Hills, from 9:35PM until 10:15PM or so this evening. At it’s closest, the lightning strikes were about 2 miles away, based on flash to thunder times, and there were perhaps a dozen visually observed strikes.

I tried to get a picture, but my efforts were too little too late.

However, maybe I’ll have better luck later on. This just in from John Lindsey from Diablo Canyon:

Thunderstorm Warning 08/29/07======

Subtropical moisture is streaming northward towards the Diablo Canyon coastline tonight. Doppler radar shows numerous thunderstorms moving north over our area. These thunderstorms are expected to continue through tonight, ending by 0400 on Thursday morning.

These thunderstorms will be accompanied by lightning, gusty winds and a chance of rain showers.

I stopped by the hilltop this morning and cleaned the spider webs off the camera windows. The views are a lot clearer now.

…rising over Islay Hill… (I still think Full Red Moon is more appropriate…)

I just ran tonight’s Wxsim SLOweather forecast.

Tonight: Fair to partly cloudy in the evening, becoming fair after midnight.
Patchy light fog in the evening, then light to moderate fog after midnight. Low
53. Wind west-northwest around 5 mph in the evening, becoming east near calm
after midnight.

It looks like the viewing should be pretty good tomorrow morning.

This year’s August Full Moon rises locally 7:24pm PDT tonight and sets at 5:33am Tuesday morning. It doesn’t become full until Tuesday morning at 3:35am PDT, so technically, then, tomorrow is the date of the full moon.

Known variously as the The Full Sturgeon Moon (good fishing moon in the Great Lakes), Full Red Moon (I’m betting on this one, this year, due to the Zaca Fire haze) , the Green Corn Moon, Grain Moon, Dog Day’s Moon, Nut Moon, Mulberry Moon, or Dispute Moon (Celtic…).

More interesting though, is that this full moon includes a full lunar eclipse for those of us on the Central Coast. It starts at 1:51 AM Tuesday morning, is total from 2:52AM to 4:22 AM, and finishes at 5:24 AM.

The smoke plume from the Zaca Fire moved pretty far to the northwest overnight, and was east of SLO this morning at dawn.

Parts of the SLOweather area are under another Red Flag Warning Tuesday, into Wednesday morning.

From the NWS…
—
Red Flag Warning

RED FLAG WARNING
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LOS ANGELES/OXNARD CA
350 PM PDT MON AUG 13 2007

…RED FLAG WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 8 AM WEDNESDAY MORNING FOR THE MOUNTAINS OF SAN LUIS OBISPO…SANTA BARBARA…VENTURA AND LOS ANGELES COUNTIES DUE TO HOT TEMPERATURES…GUSTY WINDS AND VERY LOW HUMIDITIES..

.HIGH PRESSURE ALOFT HAS PRODUCED VERY WARM AND VERY DRY CONDITIONS OVER SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. TODAY…MANY MOUNTAIN LOCATIONS SAW SINGLE DIGIT RELATIVE HUMIDITIES WITH CONDITIONS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE THROUGH TUESDAY ALONG WITH VERY POOR OVERNIGHT HUMIDITY RECOVERIES. IN ADDITION TO HOT TEMPERATURES AND BONE DRY CONDITIONS…GUSTY WINDS ARE EXPECTED OVER MOUNTAIN LOCATIONS DURING NIGHT TIME HOURS…WITH THE STRONGEST WINDS EXPECTED TUESDAY NIGHT AND WEDNESDAY MORNING. THE COMBINATION OF LOW HUMIDITIES…HOT TEMPERATURES…GUSTY WINDS AND VERY DRY FUEL CONDITIONS HAS PROMPTED THE ISSUANCE OF A RED FLAG WARNING FOR THE MOUNTAINS UNTIL 8 AM WEDNESDAY MORNING.