Mid January Fire Watch. Seriously.

The North Bay Hills have had a Fire Watch issued by the NWS for overnight Monday due to dry fuels, low humidity and strong easterly flow.  You know like we might have in a typical September.  I just read some where this morning that there is no 'normal' in weather.  Got that one straight.  There has been nothing normal about the weather this past year.  Dry winter to start 2013.  Little fog and warm summer days.  Some rain in August, September and October.  And now we are seeing fire conditions to start 2014.  In fact, if we don't get some water soon, we could be having a very destructive fire season this coming summer.  My gut tells me a few things.  First, this is not all due to climate change, but rather falls well within our typical norms of variance here in our maritime climate.  That is not to say that I don't believe in climate change, but rather, just like very cold events, very dry events occur.  And secondly, my gut tells me the rain will come.  Sure, we will fall below average, but I suspect that we will still get up to 65% of average for the water year, which would suggest some above average months are in our near future.  Just not too near.  And now, the weather.

It amazes me how these guys stay put during big swells.  Sea Anemone, Santa Cruz.

Fricking sick out there today.  High 30s at sunrise and low 70s at lunch time.  Sunshine, with a stiff off shore morning breeze lightening up a bit through the day.  Subsiding swell, but subsiding form one of the biggest yet this season.  Head high surf in town and bigger up the coast.  Should be a beautiful winter day out there.  And while that surf does continue to drop, the daytime highs soar through mid week.  Flip flops and t-shirts baby!  75F on Tuesday.  Low 70s for Wednesday and Thursday.  Then we get to experience some of that cold everyone has been talking about.  Only going to reach into the upper 60s for Friday and low to mid 60s on the weekend.  Ah, California is rough.  It is funny to think how my mother wonders how I can endure our cold, foggy summers and our stormy, rainy winters.  I'm not sure either, because it has been some time since I have endured them.

In the last post I suggested a pattern change for this coming weekend and next week.  Over the last several days that has changed on the models.  The GFS has gone the way of the Canadian.  There are storms still projected, but the first, on Saturday, does its best to break down our resilient high pressure.  Hence the drop in temperature.  But it gets sent north and now the thinking is the high will bubble back up, and we could be back into record temperature territory again the following week, as a series of storms gets sent into the PNW and BC.  Not here.  Which is too bad.  We really need the water.  If you drive over the hill, I'm sure you have noticed how terribly low the Lexington Reservoir is.  Well, that is pretty much the deal all across the state.  And there is no snow pack to melt off.  We at least did get a few inches over this past Saturday, and it even drizzled here on the coast for five minutes, but we need feet of water at this point to make any significant impact.  And as of this morning, it looks like it could stay dry, and quite warm, through the end of the month.  Pray for rain folks.