Plan B Forum

by a troop of malevolent baboons....

Every bit of lawn furniture is flung about, the picnic table is sitting on it's side, even my barbecue tipped over....

The sun is out at the moment, (but the wind is still kicking up) and I understand another one of these storms will be by in a couple of hours....(And we're set to get a whole series of them through the weekend)

Same here, LJ...

The rain is predicted to be non-stop for this weekend.

All we can do is make sure the rain gutters are working and potted plants are protected.

All we can do is make sure the rain gutters are working and potted plants are protected.

Got all that covered, (including my pepper plants) and we're well provisioned with groceries....

(I know this isn't going to get a lot of sympathy from folks who live where you can get two feet of snow, or go two weeks without electricity, but this is unusual for these environs...)

Lord Jim wrote:

All we can do is make sure the rain gutters are working and potted plants are protected.

Got all that covered, (including my pepper plants) and we're well provisioned with groceries....

(I know this isn't going to get a lot of sympathy from folks who live where you can get two feet of snow, or go two weeks without electricity, but this is unusual for these environs...)

Yes after 53 years of living in tornado country I find sympathy hard to muster for you.

So long as the pizza, Chinese, and Indian delivery folks can hold out, I believe we can make it....

More evidence of the US being reliant on China!!

Gob wrote:More evidence of the US being reliant on China!!

We don't have to use China, paper plates work fine with takeout.

That's weird. On Thursday evening we had a downburst wind lasting maybe 10 seconds that sent a lot of things sideways and sounded like an express train smashing into the ground - never experienced anything like that. And since then it's been grey skies/sunny skies and (for us) a lot of rain - even as I type there's a steady downpour going on.

Am I perhaps in California? Lord please not!

Meade

http://www.bonnydoonweather.com/

7.75 in from Wednesday on.

15.2 inches for the year in Bonny Doon*, a nice down-payment for the year's total. Having lived through a lot of droughts here from '75 to now I fret until they get past 45 in. which is on the low end of tolerable. (60 in. + is a 'good' year)

fwiw Downtown San Jose averages around 15.5 in per year which is almost exactly the same as Downtown Los Angeles.

yrs,
rubato

*A reference point. I use them because they have a good website which loads quickly and displays information very well. Rainfall varies widely. Downtown Santa Cruz get about 1/2 as much.



I use this site to fret about water for the rest of the state. SC is completely on local water but most of Calif. depends on Sierra Snowpack. Those assholes at NOAA** predict that global warming will continue to reduce snowfall averages.

http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/snow/PLOT_SWC

** An inside joke. We love all of the earth sciences.

interval .... rainfall, in.
day ........ 1.90 since midnight
month ..... 4.35
storm .... 11.13 since Wednesday
year ...... 18.62 rain year begins july 1 (rainy season starts Oct. usually)

9:18 am

The first rains saturate the ground and begin re-charging the groundwater, after a while there is more runoff to fill the reservoirs and lakes and bring the river flows up to their seasonal highs. The San Lorenzo river has been running quite full since Friday afternoon.

An interesting and relatively unexplored new form of 'green' energy is to use the process for desalinization in reverse. When you run the process in the usual direction (which I'll call 'forward' although it is arbitrary which is forward and which is reverse) you use energy to drive pumps to force water across a membrane which blocks salts and permits the passage of water. If you do it the other way, fresh water passes through the membrane and generates force against a pump you can hook up a generator to create electricity. All you need for this process is a place where there is a supply of fresh water flowing into sea water. In theory you can design a plant which runs in both directions based on the same way that a hybrid car works, and electric motor can be a generator when it is turned the other direction. This way you can get electricity when water is plentiful and make fresh water when it is not. I don't know how the economics work out in detail, but it is an interesting idea in an area like ours with highly seasonal rainfall and a river into the ocean.


yrs,
rubato

An inch or so of sleet and snow yesterday...currently cool, damp, and very foggy.

What a lousy day for a 2-hour drive.

Temps dropped to 26c today and I could've sworn I saw a cloud earlier...

Hope all is well for you LordJim and everyone else out on the wrong left coast.
I saw you guys were supposed to be getting some kind of storm and meant to see how you were making out friday and over the weekend. Hope your power held up (unlike ours) and if you need a generator, come to LI and you can borrow mine.