Switcheroo

Cold this morning.  36F recorded several places in town.  The clear sky and cool air mass conspire to make a very chilly morning.  We've had a lot of mornings this past month and a half that have fallen below 40F.  Brrr.  Today will be splendid, if crisp with a high in the mid to upper 50s.  Then everything flips around come Wednesday.  Clouds move in this evening, keeping the lows in the mid 40s.  Current forecast is for rain by noon, perhaps even earlier.  But very light at first.  We may even get through the daylight hours with only light showery weather.  Mid 50s expected.  Then, around midnight, the heavy rain arrives.  It is a fast moving system, but rain could linger into the mid morning Thursday.  Overnight lows barely drop into the 40s and rainfall totals are expected to be about an inch in town and a bit more in the local mountains by noon Thursday.

Another system is hot on the tails and we will barely, if at all, see a break in the action.  Rain tapers after sunrise on Thursday as the first system moves through to our south.  Showery weather may persist through the day Thursday.  Clouds likely will.  But we could have a decent day.  Lows continue to hang in the mid to upper 40s and highs in the low to mid 50s.  A colder and wetter system is to arrive mid day Friday.  Timing is still up in the air as it will depend in part on the movement of the storm prior to it.  We could be looking at widespread precipitation over an inch across much of the state.  Hopefully we continue to move in this direction and have a positive impact on the drought.

We got out into Fall Creek over the weekend to go search for some water falls.  We had an amazing hike over Ridge Trail, down S Cape and along Fall Creek.  We found the upper bridges washed out.  My five year old thoroughly enjoyed us building a temporary stone, fallen branch and bark bridge to ford the first time.  His stompin' boots aloud him to ford the second time by just walking through.  The adults went bare foot.  And the third time.  There were sink holes to climb across and mud bogs to tentatively traverse.  As well as optional river crossings on the low road.  He kept on wondering aloud, "what will our next challenge be?"  It was awesome.  There were also many recently downed trees.  It would have been wild, and dangerous, to be out there in the storm.  But highly recommended for the next time the sun comes out.

The forecast is for another storm Sunday into Monday morning.  Another hits just south of us on Tuesday and impacts mostly SoCal - which would be good for them.  After that we could see a return to high pressure and maybe an entire ten days of sunshine.  We need the water, but it would sure be nice to dry out.  More to come.