One of the seasonal springs on our property has started to run. This particular spring hasn’t produced water in at least 2 years, so this is a good omen. It means that the ground is saturated enough that these rains are soaking in and recharging the groundwater. A quick bucket test showed that it was producing ~1.25 gallons per minute.
Hi Chris,
here’s my story:
Yesterday morning, January 26, I awoke to play with my German Shepard dog Jake
as I walked outside I looked at the neighbors trees, these trees are up to 60′ tall and 2 years ago one of them fell on my property and caused damage, anyways yesterday I noticed a tree trunk almost horizontal….closer inspection showed the broken tree trunk fell onto another tree, causing it to uproot…..
Saturday evening was on storm “patrol”, watching the house and property, and noticed 2 branches from one of my trees on the longwire…this longwire is about 400 feet long….the branches fell on the wire antenna near the termination point, and the wire was holding the branches….I immediately got the (manual) handsaw and set to cutting branches
and clearing from the longwire
Sunday morning I cleared one clogged rain gutter, checked all the other rain gutters (ok), and filled a couple places where water was running off the lawn into a gopher hole near the asphalt….later Sunday I took some photos of the storm clouds and include one
thats all for now….
Thanks!
Tony
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WATCH OUTLINE UPDATE FOR WS 23
NWS STORM PREDICTION CENTER NORMAN OK
1250 PM PST SUN JAN 27 2008
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WATCH 23 IS IN EFFECT UNTIL 600 PM PST
FOR THE FOLLOWING LOCATIONS
CAC019-029-031-037-039-043-047-053-069-079-083-107-111-280200-
/O.NEW.KWNS.SV.A.0023.080127T2050Z-080128T0200Z/
CA
. CALIFORNIA COUNTIES INCLUDED ARE
FRESNO KERN KINGS
LOS ANGELES MADERA MARIPOSA
MERCED MONTEREY SANTA BARBARA
SAN BENITO SAN LUIS OBISPO TULARE
VENTURA
$$
Returning by car from San Jose late on Saturday (1/26/08) evening. Experienced repeated bouts of hydroplaning on Hiway 101 because it was not able to drain fast enough—south of King City to San Miguel. Ignored the 70 MPH speed limit and drove at 50-55 MPH most of the way.
Arrived just north of Cuesta Grade around 12:30 AM (Sunday morning) traveling in driving rain and experienced huge sheets of rain coming from Santa Margarita that hit us with such force and intensity that we were in white out conditions several times; scary to say the least. Creeping at 40 MPH up and over Cuesta Grade with the wind blowing with great intensity. Arriving in SLO, looked up SLOweather.com and saw that it reflected 52 MPH wind gust at 12:27 AM, so imagine what the speed was on the grade when we passed through there.
Glad to be back without having been tossed down an embankment, or via a creek bed. And the wife wanted to maybe stop at Cuesta Park to see how fast the “creek” was flowing. In bed at home was my choice.
Thanks for your 24/7 web site so that we can validate and quantify our experiences.
—Scott—
—
Thanks for the story, Scott.
Still not a lot of rain at SLOweather out of this storm. 0.24″ last night, and 0.15″ this morning equals 0.39″. However, as I write this, it’s starting to rain pretty good.
It was exceptionally windy overnight, though. Before midnight, we had gusts over 40 MPH, and at 12:35 AM Sunday, recorded one gust of 52 MPH.
Rain summary for the last week:
Date Rain
20 0.01″
21 0.14″
22 1.90″
23 0.97″
24 0.74″
25 0.05″
26 0.24″
27 0.15″
========
4.20″ of rain in the last week
7.88″ so far for the month of January, 2008
5.28″ January average rainfall
12.75″ 2007/2008 season to-date
11.84″ season average to-date
107.7% of average to-date
24.36″ seasonal average
52.3% of seasonal average
Thanks, Cathy!
—
Dear Chris,
The first photograph is from January 23, 2008. It is of the entrance to Rancho Guadalupe Dunes. Due to major
flooding the park was closed. This was at 3:50 P.M..
The second photograph is from January 24, 2008 on Betteravia Rd. about 2 miles east of Santa Maria, at 3:23 P.M..
I then headed out Foxen Canyon Rd. to a turnout just above Firestone Vineyards. This is snow in the Los Padres National
Forest around 3,000 feet. Zaca Peak is just above the oak tree in the foreground. It was 41 degrees at the lookout.
This shot was taken at 4:48 P.M.
My rain gauge has measured 3.41 inches for this past storm. I am located near Betteravia & Miller in Santa Maria.
Cathy L. Gregg aka “The Lightning Lady”
All photographs © Cathy L. Gregg
I promoted this from a comment to a full blog post. Thanks for the story, Lynn! I’m glad I wasn’t out there.
Chris
From Lynn Hoover…
—
Lynn Hoover & Evert Van Niekerk (owners of CalPOP.com) went from Morro Bay to Santa Barbara yesterday 1/24/2007 3:00pm going about half mile to 1 mile from shore in a Bayliner 2855 — I wish I had pictures of how funny this boat looked in 50′ waves at point conception — their were gale force wind flags posted at Morro Bay and two big fronts colliding at point conception at the same time — and the wind ripped the biminy right off the boat —- that this boat didnt’ sink was miracle as it traversed the giant waves diagonally for hours… if anyone got a photo of this with thier cell phone or whatever please send it.. “I looked over at my left on a 40′ wave and both of those little oblong bouys were there about 20′ from the bottom of the wave.. and I was thinking– hey– these waves are like buildings I don’t know why this website says 5′ waves– these are 25-55′ and too close together to go over.. this is one BAD AREA right now– and so is every other lighthouse around hereâ€? – said lynn. “I don’t know how we survived it– I’d rather cut off a finger then do that again.â€? â€? I don’t think any boat could have made it through this–if it was any bigger it would probably have more trouble getting out of the way of the waves – and every one of these waves– all 10,000 of them wanted to crush usâ€? — I know that there are all kinds of times when it’s nice and calm– but I’m telling you– when it gets nasty- -it is like a bottle cap in the worlds largest washing machine…â€? I’ll bet there are literally tons of wrecks under this point.. “It was like we just jet ski’d down the coast- -that’s what it was likeâ€?
If one wave would have caught the bow or the stern we would have been history — it almost rolled over– oh about 1,000 times… we were 90 degrees going 45,000 rpm to keep from sliding too far back down the waves.. — anyone driving the PCH around the point yesterday might have seen this… crazy.. .
Please send your storm photos, rainfall totals, or storm stories to blog2008@sloweather.com, and we’ll post them in the SLOweather blog.
In your email, please supply as much detail as possible, especially regarding time and date of observations, and time frame of rain fall totals. Also include how you’d like to be identified in your entry.
In 4 days, SLOweather had recorded 3.75″ of rain. It’s rained every day:
0.74″ rain Thursday since midnight
0.97″ yesterday
1.90″ rain Tuesday
0.14″ rain Monday
=============
3.75″ storm total
12.31″ season total to-date
11.28″ season average to-date
For the first time in 2 years, we are not only average, but above average. Last season, we only had a total of a little over 9″ of rain.
If this event is, indeed, comparable to the 1991 March Miracle, we are in for an interesting weekend.
ATMOSPHERIC CONDITION:
A cold upper-level trough passed our area at 14:30 (2:30 pm) this
afternoon giving gusty southerly winds and periods of moderate rain.
Rain showers and a chance of thunderstorms will develop later this
the evening and will continue through tonight.
The evolving weather pattern is very similar to that of the 1991
“March Miracle”. A low pressure system moving southward out of
the Gulf of Alaska is expected to stall west of Diablo Canyon where
it will entrain moisture from the tropics and intensify to 996 mb
(29.41 in/Hg).
This weather system will maintain a continuous southerly flow over
the region at mid and upper levels of the atmosphere and tap into
subtropical moisture on Friday, bringing the potential for very
heavy rain beginning Friday afternoon through Sunday morning,
especially along our coastal areas.
Snow levels will rise significantly on Friday through Saturday to
7000 feet, but will drop but down to 2,000 feet on Sunday. Heavy
snow totals are expected in the Sierra.
This entire event will produce fresh gale to strong gale (39-54 mph)
southerly winds and heavy rain. At this time, another 3 to 5 inches
of rainfall is expected with this system (Friday through Sunday).
Note: The heaviest rainfall should occur on Saturday afternoon
through early Sunday morning.
A break in the weather is forecast on Monday through Tuesday, then
another cold front will give rain on Wednesday.