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.
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Kate...when was this particular pic taken? It looks like it was before the video that's on youtube, cause in the video, it shows big chunks of pavement going down the cliff....just wondering...no biggee. Thanks, as usual, for all your reporting!! You rock sista!! :)
It's an amazing view, and I hope this doesn't sound hopelessly naive, but actually looks more fixable that what I pictured. The highway is not undercut, and there is still ground below there to build up from (?) and maybe even hope that the northbound lane can be pushed and pulled and shored up for traffic first. Thanks once more for all the good info. The road here, Hawks Perch/Local Color environs is dead silent. The five or six cars spread over two parking lots are all dwellers/employees/employers and familiar. We had a steady rain through the night, let up now, hail early tis morning for a minute or two. The worry for all is of course the dontinued erosion on the wound.
Just wanted to express our gratitude for your postings, we are reading them often to keep ourselves informed. thank you, thank you, thank you! And we are glad to know that you are home safe and sound from your crazy travels yesterday! Much love! Lynn and Julian @ Namaste Therapeutic Bodyworks
Definitely many thanks to you Kate. You do a great job at keeping all of us updated from fires to road closures and just daily things happening in our community. THANK YOU :) Also Brandie and Ben thanks for sharing all of your photos with us.
Ben Grasmuck,
That shot with the "Rock Slide Area" sign is a classic!
Indeed, the irony! I could imagine, as an artist, and make cartoons of scenarios that might happen if nothing was done. Maybe imagine two speeding tourists flying over the gap in a red convertible, looking up and exclaiming, "Hey, I do not see any rock slides...where are the rock slides?". Oh...maybe that is a silly one.
Driving at a safe speed through Naciamento/ferguson it took me a little over 2 hours to get to Safeway to buy groceries. Your right lots of rocks in the road but nothing too crazy.
G
Good morning, "Big Sur Cyber Town Crier" (you have signed off for the night...it is 9:30 pm)...The tempest has struck. The wind began to REALLY howl an hour ago, and driving rain has added another third inch in the same time. The banshees will be screaming outside the window, and the rain gauge will be loaded up full. I checked the satellite photo, and it is a real sight. The cyclone is wound up tight as a watch-spring with a distinct eye about a couple hundred miles off the coast. The entire cutoff low is only about 500 miles in diameter and all the energy has been concentrated into that relatively small area. IT IS AIMED AT US! Next, I checked the radar returns, and we are covered with "yellow", which means heavy rain. What is scary is a distinct line of RED returns are stretched from San Francisco to SLO about 50 miles offshore. Red returns mean extreme...the sort you see for tornadoes and severe t-storms in the Midwest.
All we can do is hold on and wait...
At 11pm up in Santa Cruz, it is wild, & the radar confirms that this isn't your ordinary storm system. I'm staying up to play with power so long as it agrees to deliver itself unto us. For us, it's electricity or camping gear (of which we have a plenitude). To those in the Sur of it (including our landlord), fare thee well.
The wind has been howling on Happy Hill in Cambria for a couple of hours, even more so than earlier. We're starting to hear falling trees. 1&1/2 inches of rain since it started yesterday. I'll be surprised if Cambria doesn't lose power by morning.
9"00am - We survived.
Numerous showers. The “red” returns turned out to be a band of pouring sheet-rain, which lasted a half hour. Rain gauge at 2.5” storm total, and 1.15 for last night’s deluge. The cyclone’s front is south of us, over Southern Cali., but cold air, full of shower cells is sweeping down at us from the north.