SLOweather

Last weekend I saw a calochortus bud and leaves poking up at one of our serpentine outcrops. This morning I rechecked it, and it had bloomed.

This is a calochortus uniflorus “Cupido” from a bulb I planted a couple of years ago from John Scheepers.

I has occasion to use Google Earth this morning to give a coworker directions, and I noticed that a lot of the local aerial imagery has been recently updated.

The Calle Joaquin/LOVR intersection is there, post-completion, as is the Valle Vista Ranch development off LOVR near Foothill and Temple Beth David.

Based on some landscaping we did at SLOweather, I’d say the imagery was taken mid to late summer 2007. The detail is much better than the previous imagery.

Tuesday night I added 2 new bits of data to the SLOweather home page Current Conditions table. In with Season Total Rainfall, there is now the calculated percentage of received average seasonal rainfall to date (current/average*100).

And, below Today’s Average and Record Temps there is a new entry for Average Precipitation that shows the average seasonal precip to date.

It’s taken a long time to develop these, finding the data source, transcribing 366 days of averages, and then writing and testing the scripts and modifying the web page source to display the data.

Also, there are 3 new animations on SLOweather. Under RADARs, there are SLO and SW US 90 minute NEXRAD loops which include lightning strike displays, and under Satellite, there is an animated 10 hour color-enhanced IR satellite loop.

All of these animations use custom scripts I created to generate the loops.

As of 8AM, measured at SLOweather:

0.29″ since midnight
1.03″ Saturday
0.23″ Friday
0.78″ Thursday
0.15″ Wednesday
0.05″ Tuesday

3.97″ For February 2008 to date
4.66″ For February Average to date

17.65″ 2007-2008 Season to date
17.26″ Seasonal Average to date

So, we’re slightly below average precipitation to date for the month, but slightly ahead of average for the season.

The peak wind gust measured here yesterday was 45 MPH at 4:17 pm. We were out in the spa at the time, and the gust managed to flip the folded-back top half of the cover over onto us. I saw it coming and managed to deflect it with my arm before it soundly clocked us on the heads.

URGENT – WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LOS ANGELES/OXNARD CA
954 AM PST SAT FEB 23 2008
…STRONG AND POTENTIALLY DAMAGING WINDS EXPECTED TODAY THROUGH
SUNDAY ACROSS PORTIONS OF SOUTHWEST CALIFORNIA…
.A POWERFUL PACIFIC STORM IS FORECAST TO MOVE INTO THE CENTRAL COAST
THIS AFTERNOON…SPREADING INTO SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA TONIGHT. THIS
STORM IS EXPECTED TO BRING STRONG AND POTENTIALLY DAMAGING SOUTHERLY
WINDS IN ADVANCE OF THIS VIGOROUS COLD FRONT. BEHIND THE FRONT…
STRONG WESTERLY WINDS WILL CONTINUE ACROSS THE ANTELOPE VALLEY
THROUGH SUNDAY AFTERNOON.
CAZ034>039-240030-
/O.CON.KLOX.HW.W.0012.080223T2300Z-080224T2000Z/
SAN LUIS OBISPO COUNTY CENTRAL COAST-
SANTA BARBARA COUNTY CENTRAL COAST-SANTA YNEZ VALLEY-
SAN LUIS OBISPO COUNTY INTERIOR VALLEYS-CUYAMA VALLEY-
SANTA BARBARA COUNTY SOUTH COAST-
954 AM PST SAT FEB 23 2008
…HIGH WIND WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 3 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO
12 PM PST SUNDAY…
A HIGH WIND WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 3 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO
12 PM PST SUNDAY.
SOUTHEAST TO SOUTH WINDS WILL INCREASE TO 25 TO 40 MPH THIS
AFTERNOON AND WILL CONTINUE ACROSS THE AREA THROUGH SUNDAY MORNING.
THE SOUTHEAST WINDS WILL BE VERY GUSTY WITH WIND GUSTS TO AROUND
70 MPH EXPECTED OVERNIGHT. WIND SPEEDS OF THIS MAGNITUDE CAN TOPPLE
TREES AND POWER LINES AND LEAD TO POWER OUTAGES.
A HIGH WIND WARNING MEANS A HAZARDOUS HIGH WIND EVENT IS EXPECTED OR
OCCURRING. SUSTAINED WIND SPEEDS OF AT LEAST 40 MPH OR GUSTS OF 58
MPH OR MORE CAN LEAD TO PROPERTY DAMAGE.

I wasn’t aware of what time the eclipse was to start, but as I walked outside in my back yard in Cambria I heard something very unusual in that the heard of cows about a half mile away were mooing very loudly and sounding pretty distressed. I came back in and saw on TV that the eclipse was about half way through. As the eclipse became total they became silent again.
Steve

I received this from Cathy Gregg, The Lightning Lady:

—

Okay,

Here are some shots of tonight’s lunar eclipse. The atmosphere was a little tricky in getting shots but some of them
came out okay. I need a 1200mm lens…HEEHEEHEE!!

In photo # MG_870a the planet on the bottom left corner is Saturn.

Thank you Steph for going out in the cold, coyote infested dark to keep me company. Oh, and the last shot MG_873 is
for you. It looks like Jupiter… scary :-{

Cathy L. Gregg

The clouds and fog have kept us from seeing much of the eclipse tonight, and I haven’t been able to get any pictures.

If you managed to take any good photos of the eclipse and would like to share them with the SLOweather community, please send them to blog2008@sloweather.com and I’ll post them here. If you upload them to a photo sharing site, send me the URL and I’ll post it as well.

Based on a glance outside, and at the forecasts, it seems like we might have a chance at seeing the lunar eclipse this evening.

To summarize the timing as posted here yesterday:

5:42 PM PST Moonrise
5:49 PM Sunset, just 7 minutes later
5:43 PM Partial eclipse begins locally, just after moonrise
7:01 PM Totality starts
7:26 PM Totality midpoint
7:51 PM Totality ends
9:09 PM Eclipse ends

Wednesday’s full moon will rise locally at 5:42 PM PST. Sunset is at 5:49 PM, just 7 minutes later. This is the Storm, Snow, Wolf, Hunger, Trapper’s or Ice Moon, depending on your persuasion.

More interestingly, this will also be the evening of a full lunar eclipse, the last one until Dec. 2010.

The partial eclipse begins locally at 5:43 PM, just after moonrise. Totality starts at 7:01 PM. The totality midpoint is 7:26 PM, totality ends at 7:51 PM, and the eclipse ends at 9:09 PM.

Whether or not we’ll be able to see it here is another matter. At this time, both SLOweather and the NWS are forecasting mostly cloudy conditions for Wednesday night.

At 7:30 PM Sunday, I checked the 85% moon and saw a halo or ring around it.

(Shot freehand with a Nikon D40 on Auto, braced against a gutter, then enhanced with Paint Shop Pro to bring out the halo a bit more…)

There’s a rhyme about that:

“When there’s a ring around the moon, rain or snow is coming soon.”

A ring around the moon may signify that bad weather is coming. Ice crystals that create the ring are in high altitude, thin cirrus clouds that normally precede a warm front by one to two days. Generally, a warm front is associated with a low pressure system or storm.

You can read more about the eclipse on Wikipedia.