SLOweather

ATMOSPHERIC CONDITION:

An offshore flow will continue to produced beautiful weather through
New Year’s Day with sunny skies, mild temperatures and breezy
weather.

Preliminary storm analysis:

High pressure centered over Oregon will move southeastward while
intensifying. A long wave trough will move to a position off the
the California coastline and will become established. Before it
shifts eastward, three weather systems are expected to move through
our area on Thursday, Friday and Sunday.

The winds will shift out of the south and high-level clouds will move
over our area on Wednesday afternoon and night.

The first weather system in the series will move on shore on Thursday
afternoon with scattered rain showers and fresh to strong southeasterly
winds.

The next and stronger system will slam into our coastline on
Friday afternoon, bringing heavy rain and strong to gale force
southerly winds. Rain will continue through Saturday morning,
ending by Saturday afternoon.

Another strong system is forecast to move on shore on Sunday with
the potential for more heavy rain and high winds. Snow levels will
be lower with this system, perhaps down to 2500′ by late Sunday.

Rain fall totals could reach 4+ inches by next Monday.

ATMOSPHERIC CONDITION:

A ridge of high pressure is building over the Great Basin tonight,
producing moderate and at times gusty northeasterly (offshore) winds.
Windy, dry and mild temperatures will persist into New Year’s Day.

Preliminary storm analysis:

A high pressure ridge will intensify north of Hawaii instead of off
the west coast which has been the pattern for some time. This pattern
favors cold air moving southward from the Gulf of Alaska and storm
development off the California coast.

This condition along tonight’s models runs gives confidence that a
series of storms will move through the Diablo Canyon area beginning
on Thursday (3rd-Jan) and continuing through Monday (7th-Jan).

Southeasterly winds could reach 55 mph+ by Friday, decreasing and
shifting out of the south-southwest on Saturday, then increasing again
on Sunday through next Monday.

Rain (subtropical in nature) is forecast to begin on Thursday afternoon,
becoming heavy on Friday and continuing at a moderate rate through next
Monday. Rain fall totals could reach 4+ inches by next Monday.

We’ll watch this condition very closely and post any changes.

Excerpted from his 29 Dec 2007 forecast email.

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ATMOSPHERIC CONDITION:

High pressure will build north of our area tonight giving cool,
windy and clear weather on Sunday. This condition may produce poor
air quality over the Santa Barbara area as dust clouds and ash move
over their area.

A strong ridge of high pressure will start to build inland on Sunday
with strong Santa Ana winds developing over Southern California on
Monday through Tuesday morning. Fair and warmer weather will persist
into New Year’s Day, especially at the immediate coast where
temperature should rise to the upper 60’s by Tuesday afternoon.

Preliminary storm analysis:

The ridge will continue eastward during midweek. The next ridge will
intensify north of Hawaii instead of off the west coast which has
been the pattern for some time. This pattern favors cold air moving
southward from the Gulf of Alaska and storm development off the
California coast.

This condition along with today’s surface charts and models runs gives
confidence that a series of storms will move through the Diablo Canyon
area beginning on Thursday (3rd-Jan) and continuing through
Monday (7th-Jan).

Southeasterly winds could reach 50 mph+ by Thursday, decreasing and
shifting out of the south-southwest on Friday through next Saturday.
then increasing again next Sunday through next Monday.

Rain (subtropical in nature) is forecast to begin on Thursday, becoming
heavy on Friday and continuing at a moderate to heavy rate through next
Monday. Rain fall totals could reach 5+ inches by next Monday.

About 11:30 AM Thursday, while we were out cutting wood, I saw a brilliant daytime meteor streak overhead to the north-northeast. About 3 or 4 minutes later, we heard its sonic boom.

Sorry, no pictures, it happened too fast.

Here’s a shot I grabbed this evening from the new camera, of the Madonna tree atop Cerro San Luis Obispo. The camera will take images up to 640 x 480. This and the other images have been reduced to 445 x 334 to fit the blog format.

I finally got up to the site on Monday to see what was up with the broken downtown web cam. Once on-site is was obvious what the problem was:

Rather than repair the old web cam enclosure, I decided to install a new pan/tilt/zoom camera. The camera is installed and running, but it will take me a few days to get it uploading pictures the way I want.

In the interim, here are a few shots that show off some of its abilities.

The regular ol’ downtown view…

Zoomed in a little on downtown and the PAC…

Zoomed all the way in on the PAC. The camera has 21x optical and 2x digital zoom. At high magnification, the vibration from the wind is very apparent.

Islay Hill, the RR tracks, and Johnson area…

Madonna Inn…

Laguna Lake area…

Sunset Drive In and south SLO…

The moonrise time is always calculated assuming the smooth surface of the earth (not quite a sphere, but an oblate sphereoid).

So, for us at SLOweather, the moonrise time today was 4:43 PM. However, due the the mountains to the east, it didn’t begin to appear over east Cuesta Ridge until almost 21 minutes later.

Tonight’s December Full Moon (Cold Moon) rises here at 4:34 PM PST, just before sundown at 4:55 PM. The setting moon this morning about 6:30 was pretty cool, surrounded by a faint haze of high clouds. The moon becomes full at 10:16 PM, which is 1:16 AM EST and means that those people in the East and Midwest have their Full Moon tomorrow.

In any case, it should be a nice, bright moon to help Santa deliver his presents tomorrow night.

The moon sets locally at 7:02 AM Monday. Another name for it is the Full Long Night’s Moon, which is especially appropriate, as the Winter Solstice and its longest night of the year, was Friday.

The 2007 Winter Solstice is tonight at 10:08 PM, making today the first day of Winter in the MST and PST time zones.

The shortest day of the year, now days will begin to get longer again. In the Southern Hemisphere, this is the first day of summer, and their days will start getting shorter.

SLOweather experienced about 18 or 19 hours of steady rain yesterday, from midnight until early evening. The total was 2.92″. Peak rain rate was 0.46″ per hour about 12:30 PM, and the peak hourly rain was 0.55″ between 10 and 11 AM. Peak wind gust was 42 MPH just after 11 AM, but afternoon winds moderated to 5-8 MPH. According to the barometer, the front passed through about 2:30 PM.

All in all, it was a good, soaking rain. I observed very little surface runoff from unpaved surfaces, although there was enough from pavement and rock to get the creeks running.