Saturday, February 3, 2024

It's been raining continuously from about 3 or 4 pm from the beginning of the level 3 bomb cyclone

We are lucky that we are on a hill so not in a flood plain. However, the worst of it will likely be from about Midnight Saturday night to about Noon on Sunday. So, at least so far it is only constant rain without the high winds. It's heavy constant rain with about a 12 mph wind so far. However, gusts up to 70 mph or more are going to be hitting the mountains and gusts of almost 50 mph likely are going to be hitting here and bringing trees down because of the water saturated soils especially in the northern Half of the state. In southern California since there isn't as much undergrowth or trees the problem will likely be flooding more than the winds though. So, up here it's trees coming down and flooding and high winds that likely will mostly be the problems you will see in the next 24 to 36 hours or so. I would say it is about a 50-50 chance whether we have power here within the next 48 hours because of all this. But, I have a good generator even if the power goes out to keep the lights and refrigerator and a few other things on.

Later: It's now about midnight Saturday night and the winds haven't come up yet. However, weather people are saying now that they are worried that the storm could stall over California which could really cause a lot of flooding. My wife says if the storm stalls there might not be the 70 mph winds either because those winds would carry the storm inland so a stalling storm couldn't have those kinds of winds and stay in place with those winds happening. So, at this point at least we have no idea how all this is going to go for the whole state of California in this.

But, a stalling storm could mean extreme flooding too for many parts of the state especially Southern California where there are less trees and less underbrush to hold back the water when it comes down especially onto Hills and mountains south of us.

However, despite all that the High Wind warning is still in place from two hours ago 10 pm until 10pm PST Sunday night.

Here the winds at midnight on the coast are still only 13 mph constant (not counting gusts) so far so no local damage from winds this slight near us yet.

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