Officially The New Season in L.A.

[furtech]

Ah, the third season of weather Los Angeles experiences: Wind. (After the lovely seasons of Mudslides and blistering Heat and before Fire).

And boy, is it blowing! According to the local (very local: independent weather stations within a mile of my house), the average windspeed is about 15+mph, with consistent gusts between 30-40mph. The fastest gust so far: 59.5mph (that's 95.75kph for you metric types). Thank goodness the humidity is still high (about 50%). They're saying that we could get gusts up to 80mph tonight.

This makes dogwalk iffy: the last time we walked when it was blustery (not nearly this bad), the air was thick with dust. It looked clear until you shined your light into the night and the mica and sand made the air look like a glitter-storm. Oh, and we just had a nearly 50mph gust...there goes the lawn furniture.

They're actually saying that this is the windstorm of a decade: a perfect storm (so to speak) of high pressure areas and low pressure areas aligning just right to create a wind-tunnel in SoCal-- although I'm told it's windy all though California, especially the Central Valley. The last time I remember a storm this bad was the one that unearthed what is now termed "Valley Fever".

I'm really kind of excited, though I should be more concerned with my garden blowing away. One nice thing about bonsai: it's low to the ground.

Comments

[tcreynolds]

take some videos! =D

[lironess.livejournal.com]

I went to the grocery store. Traffic was CRAZY. I went past a park and as I sat I happened to look over and there was this HUGE sand and dust cloud, looked like a scene from the Mummy coming my way I had to hit the AC and the recirculate button as fast as I could I am totally allergic to dust.

It is after 8 and traffic is still a nightmare out there. People were using the lane in front of the store..the one for the parking lot to try to bypass the street and blocking people from getting into the store..total madhouse...

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Yep... It's wild traffic over here too, ... A lot of it to do with nearly all the taffic signals being out

[fenris-lorsrai.livejournal.com]

reading the valley fever entry on wikipedia. DO NOT WANT. at least you're in one of the groups most resistant to the really horrible kind. It sounds really nasty.

but the glitter storm sounds hilarious. stay out there long enough and everyone will look like Twilight vampires!

[dexter-fox.livejournal.com]

Yep. It was howling at our place last night.

[iisaw.livejournal.com]

Looks like it was a good week for me to be on the opposite coast!

[skorzy.livejournal.com]

There was ZERO wind down here in OC. I was actually disappointed.

[oats-a-plenty.livejournal.com]

The wind got up to 40 mph (almost typed MPG, but I'm sure that was a high number too) here last night and 70 on top of Mt. Diablo. I didn't know wind was a season in SoCal, here it's "no rain" and "it might rain" :D

[vulpesrex.livejournal.com]

In the Sacramento Valley, it was windy most of the day Wednesday, about half as strong by Thursday. A few trees were uprooted, there were issues in the feather River Canyon and over Donner summit, and Trucks had a difficult time of it crossing to the west on the Yolo Causeway.

The wind seemed to come primarily from the southeast, locally - and all the pretty leaves which had fallen in the parking lot of the complex here, got funneled down to in front of my doorway, sort of like a snowdrift. I had a leafdrift! But this area around Roseville was - relatively speaking - sheltered from the worst of it.

I am annoyed at the CBS Evening News describing it as "Santa Ana Winds for the record books (oh, and it was also windy in Nevada and Utah and Arizona too)". The Santa Ana winds are a local-to-SoCal phenomenon, most prevalent in the canyons below the San Gabriel, San Bernardino, and San Jacinto/San Gregornio mountains, and usually hot and dry, caused by high-pressure air over the high desert compressing and squeezing through the passes; very strong along the base of the mountains and foothills, but weaker the further out you get. This was MASSIVE, and I'm curious to know if the temps were warm and the air dry, or was it chill, like here?

It would have been a good day to drive to the top of Mt Diablo and get a view of the two valleys and the Sierra Nevadas - it is possible to stare straight down Yosemite Valley and see Half Dome, and look down to where the Tehachapis give way to the Sierras, and all the way north to Mt. Lassen; and I've heard one or two people claim, when the temperature is right and there is a slight refraction, that you can see the white top of Mt Shasta.

Because of the superior view of so much of the land mass of the state, most surveys and maps make reference to the "Mount Diablo Baseline".

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Good to hear u still have power, bud!