Wild and Crazy Weather

What a wild and crazy weather week. We'd heard the dire warnings last week about the impending doom of multiple storms throughout the week causing floods, mudslides, earthquakes, poverty, pestilence, despair and all sorts of mean nasty things...... except firestorms. Yep, no firestorm warnings for this week, finally. Officially, we have changed seasons: Firestorm Season is over, temporarily, and Mudslide season takes front row.

We did have multiple storms all week. Pretty much a major all-day storm hit us every day. The worst were Thursday and Friday. Lots of rain, thunderstorms, hail and a tornado just a few miles from our house. We got somewhere between 4-7" of rain total for the week which was less than expected. That's a good thing as all the major wildfires burned vegetation from the hills making them extremely prone to mudslides. The outcome for the week was good. Just a few Tornadoes, rain and minor mudslides. The rain was much needed as Southern Cowlifornia is still in a major drought. And, we didn't have to water the lawn or outdoor flower beds. Also appearing for the first time in almost a year is the color Green. For nine months or more, the hills and mountains have been 256 shades of brown from lack of water. Now, Green is sweeping the areas and making it look like Ohio. Far out! Yesterday, Saturday's sky was the clearest it's been in a week. And it was a cold start at 34 degrees. Yikes, we even had frost!

Here's a picture of our dark red garage roof. Sparkly diamonds instead of red shingles. I had an errand to run just after dawn and I was hoping to get a great winter picture of Topa Topa, the local mountain that is over 6000' high. In the winter, when we have a 'cold' rain at sea level, it snows in the mountains and today would be the first day the sky would be clear enough to see the upper half of Topa Topa. Sadly, we had 'warm' rains everyday except for Friday's very cold rainfall and there just wasn't much snow. I did take the following picture at a stop light getting off the freeway. If the snow was more dramatic, I would have gone to a better location for a photo shoot but it just wasn't worth photographing. Anyway, we had a beautiful Saturday and ditto for today (Sunday). Gonna rain again next week thanks to the El Nino weather pattern that has finally set up. Keep dry and warm, Weedhopper. If you double click on the Topa Topa picture, you'll get a bigger view. Then, use your web browser's 'back' button to return here.