We at Infospigot Information Services are great fans of the evening sky, but we’re not often out and about to report on dawn-time sky conditions. This morning was the exception to that rule. According to the National Weather Service area forecast discussions, there’s some sort of low spinning off the coast and sending in a stream of moisture from the southwest, which takes shape as unusually high, fluffy, and abundant clouds hereabouts (are typical cloud cover in the summer months is a dense bank of low stratus). It’s also a warm, muggy morning, also atypical of our Mediterranean climatic regime.
…. And Back Again
We’re back west. And to get here, we took a flight at 6:30 a.m. from Newark to San Francisco. That’s a shot out a starboard window, a couple minutes off the runway. It was a beautiful trip, even if most of the pictures did not turn out.
To get to the flight, we got up at 4 in the morning or so and were on our way from our friend Lisa’s house to the airport at 4:30. The weather on the other coast was summery but not appalling. Meaning humid and warm bordering on hot. I saw in the weather forecast last night that alerts for poor air quality had been issued for parts of the New York area, and a string of 90-degree days are coming up, too. Maybe we dodged some unpleasant, sticky, August weather. I don’t mind missing it. What I will always miss, what memory does not oversell, are the nights, so warm and lush they practically demand you come outside and sit or stroll.
Back by our bay, our summer is in full force, too. Sunny and highs in the 70s. After sunset, the temperature was a breezy 60. Our summers aren’t oversold either: they’re humane and let you go from Memorial Day to Labor Day without thinking about air conditioning. You just need to remember your sweater or flannel shirt for that after-dark walk, and your fine.
Summertime
From the National Weather Service Area Forecast Discussion earlier this evening
As of 8:54 p.m. PDT Thursday … another summer day comes to a close along the Central California coast. Keeping with the trend … afternoon highs were slightly below normal once again. Stratus continues to be banked up along the coast and starting to push into the bays and inland valleys. Profiler network and 00z Oakland sounding from this evening indicate the marine inversion varying from north to south 1500-2000 ft. Local onshore flow (SFO-SAC) maxing out once again above +4.0 mb with strong winds blowing through San Francisco Bay and the West Delta. Tomorrow should to be very similar to today … with widespread stratus coverage during the morning then burning back to the coast by midday. Localized areas of drizzle can be expected as well.
What’s all that mean? It’s gray, foggy and cool here. This week, we could sell that to folks in Portland, Seattle, and just about everywhere else north, east, and south of here. (The picture: Looking across Berkeley Marina to Mount Tamalpais from the I-80 pedestrian bridge, just after sunset tonight.)
Summertime
From the National Weather Service Area Forecast Discussion earlier this evening
As of 8:54 p.m. PDT Thursday … another summer day comes to a close along the Central California coast. Keeping with the trend … afternoon highs were slightly below normal once again. Stratus continues to be banked up along the coast and starting to push into the bays and inland valleys. Profiler network and 00z Oakland sounding from this evening indicate the marine inversion varying from north to south 1500-2000 ft. Local onshore flow (SFO-SAC) maxing out once again above +4.0 mb with strong winds blowing through San Francisco Bay and the West Delta. Tomorrow should to be very similar to today … with widespread stratus coverage during the morning then burning back to the coast by midday. Localized areas of drizzle can be expected as well.
What’s all that mean? It’s gray, foggy and cool here. This week, we could sell that to folks in Portland, Seattle, and just about everywhere else north, east, and south of here. (The picture: Looking across Berkeley Marina to Mount Tamalpais from the I-80 pedestrian bridge, just after sunset tonight.)
June Rain
Just after 10 o’clock tonight, the dog and I walked out the front door for a walk. He stopped on the porch and stared out at the street as if asking, “What’s that?” It was rain, an out-of-season occurrence. My tendency, confronted with weather that’s not supposed to happen at whatever time of year it’s happening, is to say, “This never happens.” Then I try to look it up.
So here’s a brief rundown on June rain in Berkeley, thanks to the Climate Summary and Monthly Total Precipitation tables at the Western Regional Climate Center.
–Years of record: 102 (1893 through 2008, with 16 missing).
–Berkeley mean June rainfall: 0.19 inches (annual mean: 23.45 inches).
–June maximum: 1.24 inches (1907). Other Junes with 1 inch or more: 1894, 1929, 1967, 1995, 2005.
–June minimum: 0.00 inches (38 times).
Five highest June rainfall totals:
June 15, 1929: 1.04 inches.
June 2, 1967: 0.88 inches.
June 8, 1964: 0.69 inches.
June 17, 1894: 0.63 inches.
June 11, 1907, and June 24, 1912: 0.61 inches.
June Rain
Just after 10 o’clock tonight, the dog and I walked out the front door for a walk. He stopped on the porch and stared out at the street as if asking, “What’s that?” It was rain, an out-of-season occurrence. My tendency, confronted with weather that’s not supposed to happen at whatever time of year it’s happening, is to say, “This never happens.” Then I try to look it up.
So here’s a brief rundown on June rain in Berkeley, thanks to the Climate Summary and Monthly Total Precipitation tables at the Western Regional Climate Center.
–Years of record: 102 (1893 through 2008, with 16 missing).
–Berkeley mean June rainfall: 0.19 inches (annual mean: 23.45 inches).
–June maximum: 1.24 inches (1907). Other Junes with 1 inch or more: 1894, 1929, 1967, 1995, 2005.
–June minimum: 0.00 inches (38 times).
Five highest June rainfall totals:
June 15, 1929: 1.04 inches.
June 2, 1967: 0.88 inches.
June 8, 1964: 0.69 inches.
June 17, 1894: 0.63 inches.
June 11, 1907, and June 24, 1912: 0.61 inches.
Snow Again
Here’s what that Friday morning snow in Mount Shasta looked like. Not sure when it started, but it was over by 10 a.m. By noon, it was turning into a nice day. I spent the afternoon on a ranch north and east of town, and it was dry and warm there.
Snow
Drove up to Mount Shasta last night and didn’t get in until very late. I’m up here to do a radio story on a recent Nature Conservancy land purchase that aims to restore some valuable salmon spawning streams up here. But the news right now, as I look out my window onto Mount Shasta Boulevard, is that there’s a steady and from a lowlander’s perspective pretty heavy snow falling. I don’t think it will last long, but I didn’t really expect to see it. It’s beautiful, and I’m hoping that it won’t get in the way too much of my handling a tape recorder and microphone. Pictures later.
North Berkeley Rainbow
Rain Chronicles
This will not be a banner precipitation season for California–though always keep your eye out for the neighbor building boats and inviting in pairs of every creature. But that doesn’t mean it is without interest. For starters, it could well be a significantly below-par year for rain and snow here, which would make it three such years in a row, and that’s never good news. Already this year, the probability of a third drought year is getting spun by the governor and his water people to bolster their campaign for more dams and fancy plumbing. You have to admire their pluck; with the state $40 billion in the hole just to buy things like bullets for the Highway Patrol, stun guns for prison guards, paper clips for the bureaucrats, and adult diapers for the Legislature, the guv and company are talking about getting the taxpayers to spring for another $10 billion or so.
Anyway. Talking rain at work today, someone produced a list that purports to show that a place called Blue Canyon, on Interstate 80 (and the Union Pacific) in the Sierra, is one of the 10 wettest locations in the Lower 48 states (and the wettest in California). It gets 68 inches of precipitation a year. No way, no how that is the wettest place in California. My money’s on Honeydew, a hamlet on the Mattole River in Humboldt County. With our neighbors, the Martinuccis, we actually drove through Honeydew once on our way up the coast. I have an impression of a general store and a narrow bridge. There’s some evidence–disappointingly scanty, to be honest, but it includes an official-looking listing of each state’s wettest location–that Honeydew regularly gets 100 inches plus of rain a year.
And leaving Honeydew out of the picture for a moment, there are at least half a dozen places up on the North Coast–towns like Fort Dick and Crescent City in Del Norte County–and further south–like Cazadero in Sonoma County–all average more than 70 inches a year.
Not that Blue Canyon doesn’t deserve attention. Some with the Weather Service credit it with being the snowiest recording station in the Lower 48 (averaging 240.8 inches a year). But here’s my favorite: in a table succinctly labeled “Mean Monthly and Annual Number of Hours with Measurable Precipitation, with Percent of Hours and Maximum 1-Hour Totals,” Blue Canyon is way out ahead of any California listing: On average, it’s precipitating there 10.6 percent of the hours in the year–928 hours and 30 minutes, roughly. Of course, that would make it just a run-of-the-mill place in much of Oregon and Washington (Portland’s percentage of precipitation hours per year: 10.9).