OT: Geez, Can it rain anymore in the SF Bay Area ???????

Don't worry...it's leaving San Fran and heading to LA...even here in the Mojave were predicting 10" and possible flash flooding.

i sacrificed a goat, two chcikens and a christian to the water goddess for your salvation. lmk if it worked.

the difference just between here and v-ville was amazing. the had the winds, we just have the gloom and the humidity must be 80%. i hate that damn fat air.

Send some to NM, it's drier than a popcorn fart here. John

i thought grants looked a bit browner than usual.

Thick air sucks, unless you're skydiving...

We got the wind and the cold, and just a sprinkle of spit...we'll likely get it tonight. Surprisingly, folks were flying this morning, but I can't even see Black Mountain now.

oh, and you kept the virgin for yourself ??? :-)

Craig

ditto, the top of ft erwin is gonzo. the house across the way is hazy. i've parachuted but that was before skydiving. unless you count roman candles. that's what made me quit.....

Gliders tried to make me quit...the engine-out crown down at Cal City had a nasty habit of liking to hang out over our LZ because it was cleared and there was usually a big summer thermal bubble there...many of us had stories about flipping off glider pilots as we fell past them.

The Glider jocks at Elsinore are much more accommodating...they're likely also smarter and realize that a body slamming their aircraft don't do them any more good than the jumper either...I liked those guys. Almost hit one of theirs on the deck, though...late reserve ride.

Jump ops at Cal are no more - I hear the owner sold the DZ property to the city last year.

in this town?

no surprise there. soon your lz will be wet or rocks. like good farmland, good lz's are going going..........

_90 mph_ winds? You got a full-blown tropical typhoon going there or what? Best of luck, sounds like you'll need it. =-O

Pat

Rain? What rain? You mean this little 10" drizzle?

Look up Inverness, CA, January 4, 1982. The rain gauges overflowed at

12" and it poured for another five hours after that. Estimated rainfall was 30" in 24 hours. The decomposed granite hills disolved, the only road through town was waist deep in mud for five miles. Sixteen homes totaled, fifty more damaged. No deaths of serious injuries.

As LZO for the Inverness FD I had the dubious honor of commandeering a helicopter during the disaster. A KGO Jet Ranger arrived a few minutes after we got word of people trapped in a house that had washed into Tomales Bay. The tv crew happilly turned over their chopper as long as the cameraman could go along. I told them that if a rescue was necessary he would probably be left behind on a dry spot to be picked up later. He wasn't too happy about that, but he went.

As it turned out the people on top of the house were not waving and calling for help. Out of sight from the shore their boat was tied up while they tried to salvage what they could. The were waving and hollering "We're fine, we're OK". While we were gone someone back in Inverness had a heart attack. We were able to load her and get her to a hospital in fifteen minutes. The pilot flew a couple of dozen sorties over the next week, bringing us needed supplies. KGO paid for everything and would not accept payment.

Later on I heard from another modeler back east asking what was going on. The cameraman had filmed the whole thing including the commandeering and it was on network news that night. I never saw it, but for several years I had an audio tape from the waether report of

1/3/82 stating that there would be "scattered showers" on 1/4/82!

So far with this storm one section of fence came loose and my table saw flipped over and got drenched. Several fences and trees down and one house lost a lot of shingles, but that's about it. The third storm is passing through now with thunder, but not a lot of rain. All in all good modeling weather, even if it's by lantern light. :-)

Hang in there,

Tom Pat Flannery wrote:> snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.net wrote:> > floods, 90 mph winds and god knows what else.=A0 afraid to see just how> > much water is in the garage when I get home....looks like a long night> > with the wet vac.> >=A0=A0 > > > _90 mph_ winds? You got a full-blown tropical typhoon going there or what?> Best of luck, sounds like you'll need it. =3D-O> > Pat

tom, please email me!

At standard conversion ratio, that 12 inches of rain would yield 120 inches of snow; even with compaction under weight, you would be talking

8 to 10 feet of snow on the ground, without figuring in the depths of the drifts. Here's some deep snow from my home town from March of 1966: should have seen it after the kids shoveled out all the sidewalks in town; they ended up half-dead and wealthy, and the city blocks looked like the trench fortifications of the western front from WW I. On average, it was around four feet from the sidewalk to the top of the snow layer. We only got out of our house on the morning of second day after the storm, when I crawled out of the bathroom window of the first floor through its top half, so we could shovel pits in the snow blocking the front and back doors up to around chest height. :-D Meanwhile, down in California, around 2/3 of a million people are without power

I really got a kick out of the national TV news tonight BTW - they discussed the flooding after the levee failure over in Nevada due to this storm. They pointed out that luckily any further precipitation would fall as snow, not rain, and therefore pose no threat of further flooding. I hate to tell them this....but snow....falling into water, or onto soil of over 32 degrees F is going to melt, and the form it comes out of the skies as makes no difference at all in how deep the water gets.

Pat

shhhh, wait until dawn breaks over marblehead with an audible crack..... (old massachusets joke.)

it really chews puppy turds. i need that nice skinny air so that my sinuses don't start yodeling.

Now I can chuckle a bit. Humidity in the desert. Who'd a-thunk it!

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.