Sunday, August 20, 2023

Tropical Mousefart

 










2AM - Clear as a bell, dry, some very high altitude thin stuff moving up from the SE.

4AM - The softest drizzle seen in these parts in some time, not even loud enough to hear from inside the house. Light breeze, maybe 5-10MPH.

6AM - Cloudy, no rain, no wind.

Now - Barely daylight, raining almost hard enough to call rain, wind 6MPH from the NE

Updated forecast for the day: Maybe 1-2 inches of rain, wind gusts up to 30MPH, mainly 10-20. Thunderstorms possible. Your asthmatic granny could blow harder than that putting out birthday candles. Santa Ana winds gust up to 60MPH, FFS, and people are out walking in them since ever.

I'll probably sleep through this today.

Gone by Monday noon.

Yawn.

This isn't likely to hit hard enough to wash the truck.

Hurricane Hilary was already downgraded from Cat 4 to Cat 2 just from dragging along the Baja Peninsula.

Looks like another overhyped weather-pocalypse that fizzled, up here.

Mexico may be another story. We'll see.

UPDATE: 1320 Local - If the media hadn't hyped this like it was going to drown the state, and there were no weather satellites whatsoever, this would have been regarded as a slight summer shower day. Like we've had half a dozen times here since Memorial Day, with several of them being orders of magnitude windier and rainier than this has been.

16 comments:

Tucanae Services said...

"Hurricane Hilary was already downgraded from Cat 4 to Cat 2 just from dragging along the Baja Peninsula."

The parallels are uncanny.

Robert said...

Thanks for the weather report!

My relatives in Florida had all kinds of advice about hurricane parties for my relatives in San Diego.

Looks like none of that advice will be needed.

Except my San Diego folks are planning to take Monday off and stay home. Sounds great to me.

I might follow the same plan - and I am not even in California.

Aesop said...

About all anyone's going to need to survive this non-event is some tabi socks, and those Japanese wooden shoes with the inch-tall blocks on the bottom.
I've splashed more water getting out of the shower than this thing has dropped so far.

Anonymous said...

On Friday people at work were freaking about 4 to 5 inches here when the forecast was under 1 inch total.
Now the forecast is under a quarter inch across 2 days. The nice part will be a drop in temperature from highs of 95 to low eighties - and a reduction of dust levels for a couple days.

SiGraybeard said...

Remember the classic, "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day?" That's what most tropical storms are, except they're a blustery day that comes with a press agent reminding everyone to "be afraid... be very afraid." The worst place to be is in the bottom of a valley that collects rain over a large area and dumps it into a small area.

Other than that, it's just a rainy, blustery day.

Jim Wetzel said...

But ... but ... but ... CLIMATE CHANGE!!!

Toirdhealbheach Beucail said...

Aesop, this was our experience with Hurricane Hugo some years back. Warns of dire disaster, just a series of gentle winds and not even any rain.

That said, stay safe. And thanks again for the recommendation on the Wilderness Medicine book. In my recent hike I had an unexpected encounter with Acute Mountain Sickness; at least I knew what to expect.

John Wilder said...

Enjoy your nap.

Skwab said...

The Earthquake was worse, but not by much.
Been raining in Bakersfield for the last 7 hours.

Anonymous said...

For two days, I've gotten calls from concerned kin asking where am I going to go? Like, evac.
I tell them to stop watching the damn TV. The strongest gusts haven't so much as knocked over a lawn chair.

Strong gusts in the mtn passes but that's because of - duh - the sharp terrain, i.e., not storm related.
Rain maybe 2" over 72 hours here.

Seeking said...

Let the fear mongering resume. Masks, evacuation, jabs, WFH and/or cataclysmic weather. Pick 2 or more to begin before year end.

Michael said...

How about a after action report on your AO from the "Mousefart"?

Still cruising around in a burlap robe wearing Japanese geta and tabi socks?

I'm still sharing that image of the lifejacket and end is near sign.

Inquiring idiots want to know.

Greg said...

It is amusing to me, here in the Oregon Outback, that we're getting a decent soaking from this as the track of the storm is straight up Nevada. The western side of Oregon, normally the wetter side, is getting nothing. We'll be back to dry and hot in a few days, but for now, it's a nice break.

Loco Gato said...

Well the weather monkeys screwed the pooch this time. Up here in Atascadero, by Paso Robles, we were to get soaked. Nope some pretty lights in the sky and enough rain to pockmaark the dirt on my van.
Oh! Look! The sky is falling!
again n again n........

Aesop said...

After Action:
What hurricane?

It rained harder here in June. The wind blows harder in Santa Anas.
The mountains got the worst of it, and some spots in the desert had roads washed out by flash floods and mudslides.

If the weather tards had just STFU about this, no one would have known it was anything but a summer rain shower.

The ER recieved ZERO traumas all night, because everyone stayed inside on a wet Sunday night.
And every accident reported leading up to the storm was jackholes driving too fast in the rain, hydroplaning, and spinning out. Every. Single. One.
Pure idiots, getting Darwinian lessons.

The top of the truck still has dust on the hood, despite several hours of moderate rains here. The rain gauge outside says there was barely 2" of rainfall from the entire storm.

Cloudy overcast this AM, and 88°, sunny, and scattered puffball clouds now.
Other than a couple of palm fronds on the street, you'd never now yesterday's storm even happened.

And sadly, TPTB panicked leading up to this, and ran around warning the homeless wastrels to get the hell out of the riverbed hovels they camp in the night before the rain, so unfortunately, none of them were washed out to sea to feed the sharks and crabs. Dammit.

Biggest loser: the U.S. Navy. they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to flush the entire San Diego homeported fleet away from the area, including a nuclear carrier, while puddle pirates rocking 25' cabin cruisers rode the storm out in port with no ill effects.
I can already hear the catcalls on Cha. 16 when the fleet comes skulking back in a day or three:
"Hey, Navy, sorry your 1000-foot sugar-coated aircraft carrier and cruisers couldn't handle a little rainstorm, but if you need it, we've got a spare bunk up for'ard, and a couple of life preservers in case you need a teddy bear to hug the next time it rains."

Anonymous said...

Think of the money saved by not having to disburse Climate Change Combat pay.

Forget the year, maybe 1986, when Pearl was emptied because of a tsunami warning. The wave was forecast to be ten inches. In actuality, it wasn't even that. We stayed dockside in Kewalo Basin (which has strong surge anyhow).