7:30 pm – this from the NOAA discussion site: “WE SHOULD POINT OUT TOO THAT IT`S BEEN A FEW YEARS SINCE WE`VE SEEN A WELL DEVELOPED COMMA CLOUD/DRY SLOT SIGNATURE LIKE THE ONE PRESENTLY SEEN OFFSHORE SO BE PREPARED FOR STRONG…POSSIBLY DAMAGING…WINDS AND TORRENTIAL RAINS BOTH ON THE WATERS AND ON LAND TONIGHT AND SUNDAY.”

The gennie is out of fuel, and so I am down for the night and hunkered under the down comforter, with silk long johns, and Egyptian Cotton sheets. In Big Sur, no less. How lucky am I?

Anyway, all 8 photos are up, so scroll down to view them. I am going off line for the evening, but will start up again at around 9 am, assuming all systems are a go. Nite all, and enjoy the storm.

6:30 pm – URGENT – WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA
154 PM PDT SAT MAR 19 2011

…A POWERFUL STORM SYSTEM MAY PRODUCE STRONG AND DAMAGING WINDS FROM LATE TONIGHT THROUGH EARLY SUNDAY AFTERNOON…

A HIGH WIND WARNING MEANS A HAZARDOUS HIGH WIND EVENT IS EXPECTED OR OCCURRING. SUSTAINED WIND SPEEDS OF AT LEAST 40 MPH OR GUSTS OF 58 MPH OR MORE CAN LEAD TO PROPERTY DAMAGE.

5:00 pm – Just found this on today’s San Luis Obispo Tribune. “Resilient Big Sur residents tend to become used to all this. As Kathleen Novoa, Big Sur’s cyber town crier at http://bigsurkate.wordpress.com, wrote in her blog Thursday morning, ‘We will Sur-vive. We always do.'” Cyber town crier? How funny.

2:30 pm – still uploading photos, but in the mean time, I received a road report on Nasty-Fergy an hour or two ago from my son, who drove up the front side from Highway One to the summit. No slides, but plenty of rocks on the road, some about melon sized, so be careful. The next storm coming in tonight and tomorrow will result in even heavier rain, particularly in the Santa Cruz and Santa Lucia Mtns. Brace yourselves.

11 am – continuous rain, sleet, snow, but not yet sticking, although it is beginning to get slippery outside. Still uploading photos, but I did warn it would be an all day process. I haven’t had a chance to update the weather reports, but they are not looking good. My SLO forecaster is predicting 3-5 inches of rain in the coastal mountains. That is not good news for the increasingly fragile state of the south end of the highway, nor for the fixing of the Rocky Creek slip out.

9 am – I have received amazingly only an inch here since yesterday morning when I left for parts east and west. I say amazingly, because what I drove through yesterday was easily an inch an hour in many places and at many times. There was snow this morning at 8 am, but it did not stick.

A couple of quick notes, MST district is attempting to see what can be done to provide transportation to and from the slip out. Also, Monterey County is looking to declare this an emergency so that special funds might become available.

I tried to upload some photos taken by local Cal-Trans worker Brandie Kirby, and by our local CHP Officer Ben Grasmuck last night, but was unsuccessful. So, I will try today throughout the day. I have 3 from Ben, and 5 from Brandie. Brandie’s are high resolution, so they took a long time to download, and will take even longer to upload, but they are worth it. Those probably won’t be completely uploaded until this evening, unless I get a very good fast burst of internet.

I am very confident that I speak for the ENTIRE community when I say to both of you, and your fellow workers, you are greatly appreciated, respected, and honored by this community. During times like this, all of you have to put up with so much, under difficult if not impossible circumstances, and we appreciate you more than you can know!

Okay, one at a time. The next one will be uploaded shortly, but check back throughout the day for news and photos, but I haven’t started the gennie yet, waiting for a break or for my battery power to give out.

Weather not only affecting the road, it is affecting my internet!! Still trying to get all the photos posted. I had to resize Brandie’s as they were WAY to large. Will see what I can do.

These next five photos by Brandie tell quite the story. Each will be marked with the date but the time metadata is incorrect, as one fully daylight photo is marked with 10:30 pm. Without seeing the camera, I cannot guess as to whether it is just the am/pm or some other time discrepancy.