Pineapple Express Heading to Cali

[sur4z]

Maybe some of this will trickle down to San Diego

http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/12/10/california-storm/20187287/

[Moose]

Bo, Kim, Dean, Justin and JD Anderson were very nice to share.

[Josh-O]

I hope we get some rain down here in San Diego. My dypsis could use and extra O-natural drinky

[trioderob]

it will come- have no worries about that - maybe 1.5 "

[displaced_floridian]

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SAN DIEGO CA
202 PM PST WED DEC 10 2014

...HEAVY RAIN WILL BRING THE THREAT OF FLASH FLOODING TO SOME OF THE
BURN AREAS...

.A PACIFIC STORM SYSTEM WILL BRING PERIODS OF RAIN...LOCALLY
HEAVY...FRIDAY AND FRIDAY NIGHT. A PERIOD OF HEAVY RAIN WILL OCCUR
WITH THE PASSAGE OF THE COLD FRONT EARLY FRIDAY...THEN SHOWERS
WITH LOCAL BRIEF HEAVY RAIN WILL OCCUR MAINLY FRIDAY NIGHT.
RAINFALL RATES COULD REACH ONE-HALF INCH PER HOUR...AND THAT WILL BE
SUFFICIENT TO BRING FLASH FLOODING AND DEBRIS FLOWS IN AND BELOW
RECENT BURN AREAS. THE BURN AREAS AT GREATEST RISK ARE THE
SILVERADO BURN AREA IN THE SANTA ANA MOUNTAINS OF ORANGE COUNTY
AND THE COCOS BURN AREA NEAR SAN MARCOS IN SAN DIEGO COUNTY. THE
SHOWERS WILL TAPER OFF SATURDAY MORNING.

[displaced_floridian]

Good for surfers. Waves up to 14 feet on the San Diego coast, bigger further North.

[WestCoastGal]

Waiting for the rain to start here south of San Jose. News from north of San Francisco has lots of flooding. Downtown Healdsburg is underwater. News team is showing guys in canoes. Cars stuck flooded up to windows in parking lots like CVS, Safeway, Dollar Tree there. But flooding is reported everywhere. 5-7 inches in 24-hrs is not unusual to hear.

San Francisco among areas of power outages. Substation got knocked out and Union Square/ Market St area affected. 50,000 without power there. Workers who made it in to work are uncertain if they should try to go home or wait out downtown with their offices in black out and other downtown businesses closed. Some Bart Stations are closed due to power outages. Just a mess for commuters. They actually closed alot of schools today and tomorrow which almost never happens here according to news staff.

The yellow/orange/red radar squal line is hitting Santa Cruz to East Bay now slowly working it's way south and eastward. As timing would have it I'm waiting for a delivery today that actually is still scheduled to happen. Figured they would postpone due to weather but checked this a.m. and out for delivery. Feel bad for the delivery guys having to be out in this. Hubby made it into work on the peninsula and expects to make it home late tonight. He's hoping they don't lose power. I'm hopeful our area doesn't get slammed this time around. The width of the heaviest rain has narrowed considerably. Early this morning much of the entire Bay area and north were colored yellow/orange/red for quite a while so not surprised by some of the hourly and accumulated totals.

[WestCoastGal]

It might be too soon to say this but i think the storm has fizzled out. Mostly green on the radar now. Northern areas of the Bay definitely got the brunt of heavy rain and winds that started out last night for them and hung around steady thru this morning. It's suppose to rain throught the day which won't help those areas already saturated. They did say that winds would pick up later and temps will cool off.

[MattyB]

The snowfall accumilation in the Sierra Nevadas will be the most important thing for our drought. The snow in the mountains is our largest storage facility.

[WestCoastGal]

Haven't heard too much about snow in the Sierras on our news. But the snow pack is definitely a deciding factor. Think the news has been understandably more focused on the rain and dangers to commuters and people. Just heard that the Safeway grocery on E. Capitol Expwy in San Jose collapsed for example. Cars are slowly plowing through flooded portions of 101 during "rush hour" which will ironically be extremely slow. The rain seems to have stalled over the Bay area right now and they said nothing to move it out yet, so probably several more hours of the same steady green/yellow/orange/red intensity rain (even seeing some magenta over in Lafayette east of Oakland). Rain maybe til midnight or later. 1/4 inch per hour for several more hours. It's rained pretty much non-stop since late morning here. Steady without as many breaks like last week.

I haven't heard much wind where I'm at but they are reporting that Mt. Hamilton had gusts at 83 mph, Mt. Diablo 68, Los Gatos Hills 64, Los Altos Hills 60. Rain totals mentioned (bay south to north) Cupertino 2.59 inches, Berkeley 2.78, Richmond 3.04, Petaluma 4.85, Santa Rosa 5.21 and St. Helena 5.72 (almost a half of foot since last night).

I haven't ventured outside yet to look at my palms and plants. Our water fountain we had dry during the drought had 5 inches in it from last week and I suspect has now overflowed or will be overflowing before this ends. Should we be concerned about roots rotting on lots of things? Can most palms handle this amount of rainfall without issues? This is our first year with a planted out yard and not sure what to expect. Just hope we don't get high winds given how saturated the ground is now.

BTW PG&E has updated the outage numbers down to 16,900. Given the totals earlier today they have made great progress. Gotta love those linemen.

Are you Southern Calif. guys suppose to get in on some of this rain? Happy to pass it on down to you.

[MattyB]

Your palms will be fine with heavy rain. It's when they sit for weeks on end in cold water logged soil that they can sometimes have issues.

[WestCoastGal]

Thanks Matty. Last weekend we noticed what appeared to be a white mold or something like that on some of the mini bark mulch near the trunk area of one of our mules. We scooped it up and tossed. Figured it formed after last week's rain. The ground area in question gets some shade from the palm fronds, fence and tall canna. This is our first year with mulched beds. Only 2-3 inches in depth BTW. With last week's drenching, today's, and next week's expected rain I'm sure every inch of mulch will be saturated for a while. The highs have been in the 60s but the nights upper 40s/low 50s and we've had foggy mornings. Should we be raking the mulch to air it out a bit?

[Jim in Los Altos]

Thanks Matty. Last weekend we noticed what appeared to be a white mold or something like that on some of the mini bark mulch near the trunk area of one of our mules. We scooped it up and tossed. Figured it formed after last week's rain. The ground area in question gets some shade from the palm fronds, fence and tall canna. This is our first year with mulched beds. Only 2-3 inches in depth BTW. With last week's drenching, today's, and next week's expected rain I'm sure every inch of mulch will be saturated for a while. The highs have been in the 60s but the nights upper 40s/low 50s and we've had foggy mornings. Should we be raking the mulch to air it out a bit?

Please leave the mulch as is. It's supposed to rot slowly and the white mold is part of that beneficial process. The only thing you want to avoid is mulch piled against the base of plants. Mature palms won't be bothered by mulch up to their trunks though.

[WestCoastGal]

Thanks for the advice Jim. We've had compost put down at the start of our landscaping project but not composted anything ourself. Kind of forgot about how organics breakdown. This is the first time we've actually seen mold growing on the top layer of bark mulch though. Been getting a lot of mushrooms growing everywhere too with all this rain.

Saw last night the rain off the coast on the radar and heard it on the roof off and on last night. Raining pretty hard right now where we are just in time for morning commute. Looks like another good soaker over the Bay area and I'm sure some areas really don't need it yet.

[WestCoastGal]

It started pouring again a few minutes ago (just in time for rush hour traffic naturally!) Radar for the whole Bay area has us under moderately heavy rain (dark green, lots of yellow, orange and again some red and occasionally magenta). Suppose to rain thru tomorrow. KPIX is saying December rainfall (up to 16th) has San Jose at 729%, San Francisco at 428%, and Oakland at 455% as a percentage of average. Wettest start to December EVER in Bay area (1849) and already wettest month since December 2005. After this rain another one coming on Friday.

We don't get alot of news from southern California. What's it looking like down there?

[trioderob]

got 1.2 inches past 24 hours

[Moose]

Thanks for the advice Jim. We've had compost put down at the start of our landscaping project but not composted anything ourself. Kind of forgot about how organics breakdown. This is the first time we've actually seen mold growing on the top layer of bark mulch though. Been getting a lot of mushrooms growing everywhere too with all this rain.

Saw last night the rain off the coast on the radar and heard it on the roof off and on last night. Raining pretty hard right now where we are just in time for morning commute. Looks like another good soaker over the Bay area and I'm sure some areas really don't need it yet.

Mushrooms are a good indication that your mulching is doing its thing. The fungus was already active in the compost and mulch, the mushrooms are the fruiting bodies. Happy microbial activity - the earthworms are having a party.