Sun 01.21.17 – I am currently visiting my Mom in Bishop, a small town in the high desert on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Rain was predicted today and the current storm had other opinions on the matter.
I am wildly excited as I love love love snow. It is so exotic! ;o)
Photo of snow falling in my Mom’s front yard taken by Jen with her Lumia 950.
Thurs 01.01.15 – The night before last we had a brief, windy, and cold storm that whipped through SoCal and dropped more snow on the local (lower) Santa Ana Mountains than on the (higher/taller) San Gabriel Mountains. Thus, both yesterday – New Year’s Eve – and today, there was a good coverage of snow on Saddleback Mountain and some of the surrounding hills. It is / was AWESOME, in the true sense of the word.
The last time I saw so much snow, so low on Saddleback was after a freak cold snap just before Thanksgiving 2004. I was so excited about this that after going to dim sum with Erika at Elite in Monterey Park, a picked up Scruffy McDoglet who went on the lam after the gardener left the gate open, and then Scruffy & I drove out Santiago Canyon Road just a bit beyond Irvine Lake to take photos of the SNOW!!! on Saddleback Mountain.
Snow in SoCal is really the best New Year’s Eve gift that 2014/2015 could give me. So Exciting.
Wed 02.16.11 – Photos taken by Ms. Jen in and around Seal Beach with her Nokia N8.
1.43 inches of rain in less than half a day. Tornado warning. Sirens, emergency announcements. Flooding of Electric Ave. Tornado touches down 1 mile south at PCH and Anderson Street. Storm moves southeast quickly. Big winds, waves, and sun in wake.
I will let the video I took with the Nokia N97 tell the story. The first two were taken around 8am this morning on the berm in the southern most part of the Seal Beach. The second two while the emergency sirens were going off at 12:52 – 1:02pm, Electric Ave was flooding, and the tornado/waterspout was coming ashore. The thrid two were in the 3pm hour after the crazy clouds had moved out.
Fri 05.23.08 – Othewise entitled “Winter Storm in Late May”.
The light streaming into my apartment this morning with the cold wind that was making my curtains billow was not the bright light and warm winds of May or even the dull, clouded light of early June gloom, but instead this morning was the completely out of season winter storm continued its assault on the whole of the West Coast (from BC to Baja), as well as the Western States.
The light this morning was intense with a bright gray light streaming in and the curtains puffed out with chilly wind. Now it is Friday evening and I can’t walk the dogs for the rain.
If you live in a wet place, this is not strange. But SoCal is on the edge of the desert. We are a “Mediterranean Climate” in the best of years or a “Semi-Arid” climate in the worst of years. In the best of years the rainy season starts in late Oct. or early Nov. and lasts until March or April, in the worst of years we are lucky to get rain in Feb. & March. Coastal SoCal (within 100 miles of the Pacific Ocean) does not receive the “North American Monsoon” rains in the late summer that Arizona and New Mexico receive. To get rain, real rain, not sprinkles from the inversion layer clouds, anytime from May all the way to Oct. is a very rare event and considered strange.
The last two days with near gale force winds, rain, and chilly weather in late May have been strange. This is weather we expect Dec – Feb, not months later.
Odd, but welcomed. When you live on the edge of a big desert, any rain is welcome.