16,660 miles

unreal. almost 17 thousand miles.

I'll be traveling a swath of land from about santa barbara, california to about the top of Vancouver Island, or, north of wilmington, NC to the top of New Foundland if the west coast does spark your appreciation for distance.

buenos aires (34,49.20) is about where vandenberg afb is (34,43.47) and jacksonville, NC (34,49.45).

el calafate is about alert bay, top of vancouver island, top of newfoundland

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storms on the horizon thurs-sun...

A LOOK AT RAINFALL STATISTICS FOR LOCATIONS AROUND OUR FORECAST AREA SHOWS THAT YEAR TO DATE RAINFALL IS RUNNING ONLY ABOUT 65-80% OF NORMAL. MOST...IF NOT ALL...OF THAT DEFICIT WILL BE ERASED LATE NEXT WEEK AND INTO THE FOLLOWING WEEKEND IF THE MEDIUM RANGE MODELS VERIFY. THE GFS AND ECMWF HAVE BEEN CONSISTENT IN FORECASTING A VERY WET PATTERN FROM THURSDAY THROUGH SUNDAY (JAN 3-6)...WITH PROGRESSIVELY WETTER SYSTEMS SLAMMING THE STATE OF CA DURING THAT TIME FRAME. THE INITIAL RAIN EVENT COULD BEGIN AS EARLY AS WEDNESDAY NIGHT. A HAZARDOUS WEATHER OUTLOOK WAS ISSUED EARLIER TODAY TO CALL ATTENTION TO THE START OF THE WET PATTERN OUT AT THE END OF OUR CURRENT FORECAST PERIOD.

from the weather geeks...sounds like these two weak storms are bringing us closer to a much needed big storm. My guess is that they are talking about 7 to 10 inches...we'll have to see.

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4.9 in Ben Lo

compared with NOAA gauges

0.55 Moffett
1.41 SFO
1.46 SF
2.03 davenport
2.05 Loma Prieta
2.43 Soquel
5.58 Ben Lomond
5.72 Venado

looks like earlier claims of beating Venado were a product of chosen periods...

3.7 inches

finished with about 3.7 on my deck from Sun-Tues.



cleared up real nice right after, now a heavy fog is coming up from the san Lo.



...and the arroyo de pedro has water in it for the first time since late May!

ah some rain. now time for mushrooms.

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rain in the sc mtns.

So I am over 3 inches since sunday, making this the biggest rain event so far in my stay in the mountain.

Right now the river is about 90% of normal flow and the average for this storm is over 200 cfs at the Big Trees Station.

I queried the month mean stream flow of the San Lorenzo at Big Trees...about two miles south of here...data goes back since 1936

The highest point I have ever seen this gauge at any point is 12,000 cfs

The highest monthly mean since 1997...

cfs
1,853 Feb 98 (highest on record from '36)
1,172 Jan 97
841 Feb 00
746 Mar 06
470 Jan 05
470 Dec 02
466 Dec 06

other notables...month of love creek slide...1,167

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rain begins

we've got almost 0.5 inches already...about 1am. Sounds like we could end up with 3 or 4 after a couple of days.

1.2 inches

A nice soaker came through the santa cruz mountains yesterday and this morning. The rain event had lots of orography; from the radar it looked like none was falling at the coast. But there was not much orographic difference between the Ben Lo raws site 1.18 and my own 1.2, as usually I would expect. That should be enough to get those mushrooms rolling again. Now we are expecting wind...

in case you missed the amazing waves on Tuesday...some said mavericks had a 70 foot wave...a new surf legend for SC....
http://www.santacruzlive.com/blogs/video/2007/12/05/sentinel-video-high-surf-in-santa-cruz/

the high seas of December

The seas were quite spectacular today. At Cape Mendocino they got to be 30.4 feet at one point when I checked. The waves were about 15-20 feet in Monterey Bay. I think they were kicking up enough moisture to make fog about 80 feet high. This pic was taken from West Cliff over near Its beach. There were lots of rescue folks out there. One guy got rescued from Woodrow. Another surfer died over near Pebble Beach out near those famous cypresses. The waves were supposedly huge there. Some said 50-60 foot walls of water. And there was 0.14 more in Ben Lo.

another 0.05

Ben Lo had another minor sprinkle. The energy in the air is definitely changed. The brisk wind out of the south is not common. The waves are set to be big the next few days. Cape Mendocino is reporting seas of 22.4 early this morning.

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surprise showers

They said santa lucias, but obviously some rain made it to the sc mtns. This rainbow was dipping into the summit area near mt. Umunum. Ben Lomond got 0.03. The high was 50. It was very chilly out there today.

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