SLOweather

Two weeks ago we lit up a new WeatherElement station up on Tassajera Peak (The western-most antenna site on Cuesta Ridge). Friday, we lit up 3 of 5 stations on a ranch south of Cambria. Sometime today I expect a Los Osos station to come on line.

With 5 new stations in 2 weeks, I had to rethink how I link to WeatherElement stations in the county. To do so, we developed Weather Element Networks. Any station can be a member of multiple networks. Now you’ll see links to the county networks in the SLOweather header. I also  moved some of the other pages links to the left side menu bar and deleted a couple.

This evening, here at SLOweather, we had a microcell almost too small to be seen on radar pass right over us. The rainfall was intense enough to knock out our Dish Network TV for 10 minutes or so. (Our old BUD never had a rain dropout, but the dish was so big that wind would cause problems at times.)

We had rains heavy enough to overtop the gutters, and hail the size of peas. On the Davis console, I saw a rain rate of 8.41″/hour ! That’s about a tipper click every 14 seconds, or 4 a minute. Apparently, I missed the peak, as the graph shows something over 9″/hour!

I had a little trouble as I was trying to post this, as our cable Internet went out for a short while, so I tethered to my cell phone.

Here’s a pic of the hail on the deck:

We’ve had the Stations Map for a while.

WeatherElement Station Map

Now that we’re starting sales outside California, it takes a lot of panning and zooming to focus in on a smaller area. So, we developed Networks.

Any WeatherElement station can be a member of any number of WeatherElement networks

For instance, there’s the SLOCity (San Luis Obispo City) Network:

All of its members are also part of the SLOCounty network:

And each station’s home page shows which networks it belongs to:

See the SLO WRF home page and scroll to the bottom.

Vandenberg will try again to launch a Delta IV rocket at 4:12 PM PDT this afternoon.

Live video feed scheduled to be at www.ulalaunch.com/site/pages/Multimedia_Webcast.shtml

Spring arrives tonight at 10:14 PM PDT as today is the Vernal Equinox. This is one of the more confusing ones, because 10:14 PDT today is 1:14 AM EDT or 12:14 AM CDT tomorrow. So, this year, depending on which time zone you are in determines which day is the first day of spring…

This morning I was greeted by a pre-sunrise sun pillar on the way to work.

That was a nice late-winter storm the are had over the weekend, and the showers were spaced well enough to minimize runoff.

Condor Lookout had a peak wind of 61 MPG at 9:01 AM on Saturday, and SLOweather had a small bit of rice size hail at 11:45 the same day.

The WeatherElement stations in the area received the following totals from Friday through Monday morning:

Islay Hill 1.48″
SLO Water Reclamation Facility 1.75″
PGE Energy Education Center 1.34″
Baywood Park 1.31″
Prefumo Canyon 2.71″
The Mission (downtown) 2.46″
Santa Margarita Fire Dept. 2.31″
Point San Luis Lighthouse 1.26″
Creekside Farms/See Canyon 1.80″
Arroyo Grande 1.28″
Condor Lookout 1.87″

We haven’t had measurable rain since 11 Dec, and Dec-March are supposed to be our rainiest months.

Overnight Friday into Saturday morning SLOweather received 2.27″. That was enough to get the ground wet, but caused no real runoff.

Then about 1 AM Monday it started raining again. As of 8:30 AM PST, SLOweather has received another 2.24″ of rain. We saw rain rates as high as 2.1″/hour.

Coupled with the first storm, that’s enough to cause runoff. Our seasonal creek is finally running, and I can hear Prefumo creek raging down in the canyon, 500′ away.

Tonight is the end of Daylight Saving Time, so turn your clocks back 1 hour before you turn in for what is forecast to be a rainy night.

Along that line, if you have a manual or electronic rain gauge, now is the time to clean it before the rest of the rainy season. Manual gauges can accumulate bird droppings, leaves, spiders, and pine needles over the summer. The funnel on electronic gauges can become plugged with debris, stopping rain from registering at all. Another problem with electronic gauge that use “tipping buckets” is that spiderwebs can keep the tipper from tipping even if the funnel is open.

And, traditionally, this is the time of year we are all reminded to use that “extra” hour to change the batteries in our smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors.

Historically, that reminder coincided with “Fall Back” in October, which is Fire Prevention month. But Congress messed with DST and now it happens in November.

On Sunday, John Lindsey wrote about See Canyon microclimates and how they affect the apple farms there. He interviewed our friend Edward Evenson at Creekside farms to get information for the article.

Edward Evenson of Creekside Farms told me that apples need a lot of chill hours during winter to set the trees and kill the unwanted bugs, but enough warmth in the spring to prevent frost.

See Canyon provides a near perfect climate for apples. On calm winter nights dense cold air flows downward along the slopes of the Irish Hills and accumulates at the bottom of the canyon.

Edward said temperatures can be nearly 30 degrees colder at the bottom of the canyon than on top of the ridge.

Read more here.

Katie and the dogs and I made it up to Hi Mountain on Saturday for the Condor Lookout Open House. We had a great time, and I’m sure the approximately 60 other attendees did as well. The weather was perfect, warm but with a nice breeze, and the predicted thunderstorms from the remnants of Hurricane Hillary didn’t materialize.?

For more pictures, see the Lookout’s Facebook page.