SLOweather

I received this notification from the Cambria Fire Chief this morning:

CAL Fire and State Parks Hearst Castle are planning two prescribed vegetation fires today to reduce existing fuel loads. They will commence, (weather and resource permitting), at 1000 hours near Hearst Castle and the second burn will be near Washburn Campground just north of Cambria sometime after 1100 hours. The3se prescribed burns will put up a lot of smoke and may generate a tremendous amount of calls. We will be providing backup and assistance as needed.

Second note: The Chalk Fire began just north of Nacimiento Ferguson Road in the Las Padres National Forest, on Saturday, and has now burned over 1000 acres. The smoke column is visible from Hwy. 46 and the upper elevations east of Cambria. The fire is moving in our direction and may approach the San Luis Obispo County line in a couple of days.

Be prepared and stay alert to our changing conditions. Remember, until we receive 1-2 inches of rain our Coast area is extremely vulnerable to wildfire, as our watershed and fuels  are at their driest point.

This morning, the NWS is calling for a 20% chance of showers and thunderstorms for our area today.

“A SLIGHT CHANCE OF SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS WILL PERSIST ACROSS

THE AREA THROUGH THE EARLY EVENING. WHILE MOST AREAS WILL
RECEIVE LITTLE TO NO RAIN...HEAVIER SHOWERS OVER THE MOUNTAINS AND
FOOTHILLS MAY PRODUCE BRIEF HEAVY RAIN AND LIGHTNING. LOCAL DENSE
FOG WILL CREATE HAZARDOUS DRIVING CONDITIONS ACROSS THE COASTAL
REGIONS THIS MORNING."

Earlier, there was a line of showers off-shore headed NW from the
Channel Islands toward Santa Barbara, and at 9:30 AM, lightning
is being detected in central and SW Kern county.

For the weekend, John Lindsey at PG&E says there's a chance of light rain on Saturday:

"A few of this morning's models runs (NOGAPS) are indicating a strong
weather system moving into Oregon early Friday, with the associated cold
front passing over northern California late Friday night with
moderate rain then moving southeastward into San Luis Obispo County on
Saturday with light rain."

Today, for Date Day, Katie and I had breakfast burritos at the Avila Grocery and Deli and then stopped at Avila Vally Barn. It’s sure punkin season there.

A couple of weeks ago, we saw the new baby goats for the first time. They’re in the pen closest to the parking area. Cute lil guys…

Monday is the Autumnal Equinox, the first day of Autumn. Autumn arrives at 8:44 AM PDT as the sun crosses the equator southward.

Since the first day of Summer, back in June, the days have been getting shorter. Monday is one of the 2 days of the year with equal amounts of light and dark, and the amount of daylight will continue to decrease until the first day of Winter in December.

Hurricane Ike is a reminder… Are you prepared for the next emergency? Here along the Central California Coast, we are coming into our peak fire season (remember the N. California lightning storms of a couple of months ago?), followed by winter and the potential for large storms. And, there’s always the potential for earthquakes; the longer we go, the greater the the chance for The Big One. We pretty much dodged a bullet with the San Simeon quake almost 5 years ago.

In short, you should be prepared for you and your family to be fully self-sufficient for 3 days. Food and water (including enough for your animals), prescription drugs, clothing, a radio, tools, shelter, first aid, etc. This is especially true for us.  SLO County’s main access in and out is US 101 north and south. Anything that severs that isolates us. (1, 41/46, 58 and 166 are minor routes and, if open would be overloaded.)

So, here’s the SLOweather challenge…

Right here, right now, as you read this, The Big One hits… Could you and you family survive in place with what you have, for 3 days? No water from the tap, no supermarket, no electricity or gas, no Starbucks ? Remember, after 12-24 hours the food in your refrigerator will go bad without electricity and doesn’t count. And, sure you’ve got a full box of Bisquick in the pantry, but how are you going to cook it?

What if you had to leave your home? Where would you go? What would you take? Assuming the phone system still works, who would you call? (It’s usually easier to call out of a disaster area than call in, although, even in the San Simeon quake, every phone system (wired and cellular) was swamped for a while.)

Rather than publish a list of links here, go Google “emergency preparedness”. You’ll find links for everything from US government sites with lists, to commercial operations that will sell you fully stocked emergency kits.

You may have noticed the newly added weather station link bar with weather stations for the Islay Hill area of SLO (Tank Farm Road and the railroad tracks), the San Luis Obispo Water Reclamation Facility (SLO WRF, 35 Prado Road), the PG&E Community Center (Ontario Road between San Luis Bay Drive and Avila Road), and the Cambria Fire Station on Burton Drive. SLOweather has been involved in getting all of these sites on to the Internet. The first 3 are a part of our growing WeatherElement.com project, while Cambria was installed and hosted through Innovative Concepts.

It’s interesting to compare the data from the individual sites. Islay Hill, the SLO WRF, and SLOweather are pretty much in a straight, almost East-West line  4.4 miles long, with the SLO WRF site in the middle.

During the Friday, 15 August 2008 lightning storms 3 weeks ago today, the Islay Hill site received 0.06″ of rain. SLO WRF 0.03″, and SLOweather 0.01″.

And, at 9:15 Friday night, Islay Hill is 61.4F, SLO WRF is 60.3F, and SLOweather is 58.4F. You can clearly see the gradients across town.

Our WeatherElement.com team is working on adding more information to the WeatherElement sites (highs and lows, graphs, etc). And we are also working on adding more sites to the WeatherElement network.

I’m not quite sure where that high temperature spike came from today.  Here at SLOweather, we hit 90 degrees F and a desert-like relative humidity of 15% at 12:48 PM. Then the wind shifted around on-shore and in 40 minutes the temperature dropped 10 degrees and the humidity rose to 40%.