N1cky

All week I've been hearing warnings about the 'Storm of the Century' which was due to hit today, but has now been delayed until tomorrow.

As far as I can tell it's going to be raining and a bit windy, sounds like a normal English weather forecast.

Had all the be prepared warnings, to which I've done bugger all. However, we've just received an email from the school district saying at the moment school will be open tomorrow, with lots of advise on how to prepare my student. So maybe it's going to be a bit worse than I thought.

My daughter was supposed to be doing a practice run of getting herself home through walking and the train, tomorrow. I think we'll revise that.

Anyone else actually making an effort to be prepared for this? Will it be like Armageddon??

Bob

It's not been to bad down our way, supposed to be a massive storm and potential freezing rain....did get a lot of rain and it was cold so it froze pretty quickly on hitting the ground, but not that cold to be actual freezing rain and do much damage.

Except a lot of the towns hedged bets on it being freezing rain and it being a bit later, so didn't grit the roads before hand....so it was a nightmare in the morning.

Stuck with rain for the rest of the week...could be worse, some areas did get pounded with more snow.

Michael

It may possibly be the storm of this century but that is only 14 years old. I' not sure what news you were watching but it was always supposed to be a short lived storm dumping buckets of rain between midnight tonight and 6 am in the morning and then scattered showers later. However the current report indicates significant rain into Friday.

The two major storms that we will have are "pineapple express" storms which are storm originating near the Hawaii Islands picking up a lot of moisture and moving quickly across the pacific. These storms bring heavy rainfall but not that great for the snow packs. We still haven't establish the normal winter storm track which originates near Alaska. Until that track is established with several strong back to back storms, we won't know if we will have a wet or dry season.

It looks like the storm is slowing (likely means means more rain with the front longer over California making it worse than originally expected) and won't hit the bay area until about 8 am Thursday instead of the earlier 2 am projections. When the heavy rains start, expect it to remain heavy and last probably 4-8 hours or possibly more. You can watch the storm track by clicking on 'precipitation' on the lower part of the page and then 'play'.

San Jose, CA - MSN Weather

Ben Lomond/Boulder Creek in the Santa Cruz mountains is what usually gets the largest rainfall in the south bay and will likely exceed 10" for the storm.

markonline1

Storm of the decade, not century. And considering there weren't any major storms that I remember last year, that's the worst storm in 3 years, which all of a sudden doesn't sound too bad LOL.
California braces for "storm of the decade" - CBS News

Michael

San Francisco, Novato, Oakland schools close Thursday for storm - SFGate

Mozzo

I can remember visiting San Diego around this time of year during a Pineapple Express and the rain was so thick I could hardly see where I was going. Heavy rain has happened for a long time. Read "Two Years Before The Mast" and Richard Dana gave accounts of how stormy and treacherous the coast of California has always been.

Freezing rain, however would be pretty unusual, and I could imagine newscasts hyping it.

Alan17

If I recall from last time this happens the worry is that one of these Pineapple Express storms "stall" in one place that they dump loads of rain in the same spot in a very short space of time. That causes all the flooding problems. Worst one I've been in was also in San Diego about 10 years ago and it was up there with the worst rainfall I've seen.

If we do get freezing rain down here though I'll be preparing for an apocalypse on the roads........

scrubbedexpat091

Hope it doesn't dump as much water as the pineapple express has been dumping on Coastal British Columbia, we have been getting slammed all week with huge amounts of water, places are flooding, rivers are higher then I have ever seen them, and its just been unpleasant.

We have been getting close to 100mm of rain a day for 3 days now, and have another rainfall warning tonight.

You know it's a lot of rain when BC has rain fall warnings. The ground is saturated, and rivers are working overtime.

Michael

It's supposed to be the worst in Marin country with heavy rains (possibly an inch or more per hour) for about 5 hours straight. Currently San Jose appears it will only be getting the heavy rains for about an hour. 5" is not real bad if it is over a three day period.

Lucybell33

We are in the Santa Cruz mountains, and did finally get around to ordering a generator in anticipation of this storm - not that it's turned up in time, of course!! However, we have neighbours who do have generators if the lights do go out. Other than ordering the generator, I just did a quick trip out to Costco for water, soup, milk, plenty of wine etc. Just in case...

There's some concern up here, as we do have greater risk of mudslides and trees going over, but at the moment there is no plan to close the school - even if the power goes out there, they have a generator. They're a hardy lot up here in the mountains!

By the way - it's been raining hard since around 4pm here. On top of the 12" of rain we had last week. I may as well have stayed in England!!

md95065

I am planning on working from home tomorrow - no point in tempting fate by driving over Hwy 17 in heavy rain - there is a very high probability that there will be accidents on that road tomorrow and even if you don't get directly involved in one it is no fun sitting in traffic waiting to get past the wreckage.

Hotscot

It's fine right now here in Sacramento....10.00 pm

Thinking of driving down the 395 tomorrow on the way home

There's a pizza joint in Lone Pine, The Pizza Factory, the guy who works there looks like Kenny Rogers

He's also called Kenny Rogers...

scrubbedexpat091

This is some of the heaviest rain I have seen here in 11 years, rain this time of year is common, but the amount falling is just insane. Storm 4 comes tomorrow, its tapered off a bit while we wait for the next one.

We also had many area's break record high temperatures today, Abbotsford, BC was the countries hot spot at 22C which is also a record for that city. Record heat in December who would have thought.

Whistler which is a ski resort has been a mess this week, been raining all the way up to the peaks making the snow a went mushy mess.

The winter snow pack melting is also causing rivers to rise significantly, some city's have seen some pretty bad flooding.

Hopefully we get some snow to replace the lost snow pack, without a healthy snow pack, I see significant water restrictions next summer here.

N1cky

Radio reports were saying 'Storm of the Century' and from Wednesday onwards. TBH I wasn't really paying much attention until I received the school email.

So far it's been a bit windy, and we had light rain overnight, for the last hour or so though it's been absolutely bucketing it down. Very much like an English winters day. I'm quite enjoying it.

Michael

I don't think the heavy rains still have hit yet in the south bay so hang on to your pants when it hits.