SLOweather

The local forecasts are calling for snow on the mountains in SLO county Friday night and Saturday. John Lindsey has mentioned it on KVEC Wednesday morning and in his emailed forecast, and the NWS is advertising it in their point forecasts.

I checked the NWS forecasts for Tassajera Peak and for Hi Mountain, and both indicate a high probability of snow for Friday night and Saturday.

In my more than 35 years here in SLO, I’ve seen snow on west Cuesta Ridge several times, and posted pictures of it here in the blog a few years ago. It seems like every 2 or 3 years we can see snow on the ridge lines from town. Once, probably in the winter of ‘76, I witnessed snow falling in town, big wet flakes that melted as soon as they hit the ground. Maybe we’ll see that again this weekend.

In his Thursday forecast, John Lindsey mentioned this next storm could produce strong to gale force (25 and 38 mph) winds. At 3:47 AM this morning, the NWS issued a Wind Advisory for the area.

Does anyone have any guesses on what the peak wind gust will be at Condor lookout on Hi Mountain from now til Saturday afternoon, when John says the front will have passed through?

At about 3,200′, the Lookout usually experiences higher winds than we do down in the city. For instance, yesterday, the peak gust at SLOweather was 33, while at the Lookout it was 57 mph.

Just in time for this next series of storms, thanks to my programmers.

Just this morning I noticed that the Season Rain figures for all WeatherElement sites are incorrect. The source of the error has been identified, and our programmers are working on it.

John Lindsey and I just returned from an expedition up to Hi Mountain to reinstall the WeatherElement station. It looks as if the new antenna is performing well, and it’s uploading data to the server.