It's sort of with a mixed bag of emotions that I type this. A few days ago, I received via email a pretty strongly worded weather warning from a prominent weather forecaster. This was sent out to fire agencies across the state. It was one of the most "doom and gloom" warnings I had read....ever. And I read these all the time. Well, the media picked up on it, and the public consumption type forecasts have been sounding pretty ominous as well.
Since I'm a weather geek, I love weather. It's exciting. But I'm also in public safety (and I'm a nice guy too), and I don't wish death and destruction on my fellow man (except for Muslim terrorists. Anyway, I'm going to be watching with GREAT interest the weather as it transpires over the next few days.
The OFFICIAL forecast is that Sunday night, around 1900hrs, The O.C. should start getting the first official storm system. It's not forecast to be the end of the world. It's the next two storms that will. There is a possibility that where I live in Carbon Canyon above Brea that we have the potential to get 20 inches in a week. I know I have lots of friends across the country that scoff at 20 inches in a week, and say that's just an inconvenience. But for us, where our flood control channels are old, our river system not very well designed, a lot of flat lands, and houses built into hills that have been burned away, we have quite a lot of potential for things to go ca-ca pretty quickly.
Rain should be lasting through the week well into Friday. A very cold and "unstable" air mass will move in which keeps the chance of rain, and for a lot of snow. HOWEVER, if the "Pineapple Express" sets up (which basically means tropical "warmer" moisture moving in from Hawaii into So Cal) and all that water falls on snow packs, we could see some major flooding. Big chances of embedded thunderstorms and very high winds as well.
See? It IS exciting. Until you lose power or are stranded in some canyon with no way out. All my updates from now on based on what's happening real time will be done by status updates on Facebook. There you go....
Be safe...check your batteries and flashlights and candles....and let's see what happens. I will tell you after following weather as I have pretty much all my life, I have been disappointed--bitterly so--when "end of the world" forecasts have failed to materialize. I've also been surprised when a benign forecast has been off and we've been smacked (the thunderstorms from hell in 2003 that dropped several inches of HAIL on south Los Angeles in April if I remember correctly).
See you on Facebook....
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