Storms: Promised and Delivered

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After light showers Friday and Saturday and a steadier drizzling rain much of Sunday, we got heavy rain Monday morning. Just like the weather forecasters and their models predicted. But the summary of coming weather rarely does justice to the reality. In Monday’s case, a pounding early morning rain gave way to showers and then a long, windy break complete with a few flying patches of blue sky. We went out to the Albany Bulb–the old garbage dump of the little suburb just north of us that protrudes into the bay–and gave the dog a run. How was it out there? Blustery, windy enough that a little swell had come up on the Bay and waves were driving all the way up the pocket beach near the Golden Gate Fields racetrack. It started showering again pretty soon after we got back to the car. The next storm arrived, as predicted, early, early this morning, Tuesday. It was heralded by long, deep peals of thunder that at first only The Dog was hearing–he growled every time one sounded. Just before daybreak, the sky opened up for about four hours of thundering, pounding rain. Water shot down the gutters, and all day after and tonight, too, water seems to be flowing everywhere. We had some heavy showers through the day, and tonight the next storm is moving in. It’s supposed to be more intense than today’s. On my last walk with The Dog this morning, I could have sworn I heard a rumbling in the distance, something gathering itself to roll in across the coast; either that, or a string of diesel engines getting ready to roll up the Southern Pacific tracks just west of here.  

Rain

It’s raining again this afternoon. Off the top of my head, the last day it didn’t rain here was Christmas Eve. It rained every day for a week before that. Up till then, we’d been having a dry December; a dry fall, for that matter. It’s not unusual during our Decembers, Januarys and Februarys to get 10 or 11 or 12 or 14 wet days in a row. What seems a little unusual about the current one is how much rain we’ve gotten. As carefully but unofficially extracted from the UC Berkeley weather station data:

December 17: .41 inches

December 18: 2.33 [Berkeley Flood Terror]

December 19: .18

December 20: .15

December 21: .69

December 22: .81

December 23: .01

December 24 [Ark comes to rest, rainbow and dove appear, etc.]

December 25: .74

December 26: .35

December 27: .23

December 28: .61

December 29: .01

December 30: .94

December 31: 1.51

January 1: .47

January 2: .55

That’s a total of 10.07 inches in the last 17 days (not exceptional during the current storm cycle; my friend Pete told me about one location on the ridge to the west of the Napa Valley that may have gotten 30 inches for the month of December). The total today, Day 18, is .07. So far. The forecast for tomorrow. Dry.