The Rest of the Story

Malaise aside, I found today's Early Winter Story...it came to me by way of Twitter: "Cold Start to Fall Continues, 252 More Low Temperature Records Set in the USA This Week"

A closer look tells the real story as they say...looking at the map from the story, all those cold records are Back East...all the Orange Dots Out West are the records for High Minimum Temps! The Red Dots across the Southwest are all Record High Temps. No wonder I've been feeling like I'm doing Beach Time this week! Call it My Last Hurrah if you like, but I'm thinking Winter will get here sometime around the first week of December. We've opened the Mountain in December's First or Second Week for at least the past two years...if not three years.

Given the Cooling Trend in effect since the end of the 1997-1998 El Niño, it's interesting that the Mountain's Opener has been trending later. Could it be a fingerprint of the swing to the Cold Side of the PDO?

El Niños were around in 2004-2005, and again for 2006-2007. Perhaps the 2007-2008 La Niña somehow held things up too? I'll need to do a spreadsheet and plot this stuff so I can get some idea if there's any correlation with ENSO Events and OpeningDates. Oh Darn! My Install Disc is Up The Hill...I guess it'll have to wait. Ahhh...back to Daydream Beach...

Feeling a little guilty given the level of my sloth today, I scanned the Remote Sensors and saw a warming trend at 7300ft...no Snowmaking tonight! It's Midnight, and the temps are hovering around 42F

On the 11 O'Clock News, Sacramento's TV Weatherman teased a "chance of rain next week" but nothing in the Discussions I've read said anything concrete about precipitation. Hmm...could be "Weather Center Boredom" setting in again...Uh-oh, clear across the Pacific, there's another typhoon...here we go again...Gentlemen, Start Your Marketing!

Craig Ferguson's just named the season "Flummer"

Flummer is starting to feel like a well-worn favorite Old T-Shirt...dare I say it...
perfect beachwear!

Still Longing

How long will my malaise linger? I can't really concentrate today. It's kinda like Spring Fever...Fall Version. The warm temperature comforts me...lulls me into a soft warm place of daydreams...lazily wasting away the day...it's kinda nice, and surely relaxing.

It won't last long however...I saw some Snowmaking Fans at the base of My Mountain on the webcam this morning. Then I checked the Remote Sensors and the Reno NWS Discussion...I guess they needed something to do for a couple of hours, because there's no Real Snowmaking Weather Window on the horizon.

Next, I took a cursory look around the 'Net and didn't find any "Early Winter" stories...it seems the latest round of Early Winter Syndrome has finally waned...good riddance. Winter will come when it's time. My sister and her husband are going camping in the Sierra Foothills this weekend...enjoying the warm Fall days...sweet!

Enough procrastinating...I've got a garage to organize...it's cozy warm out there too.

One Fine Day

Today is, in fact one fine day here in the Inland Valley...yessir, a fine Fall day. I'm still in weekend mode here at CorduroyPlanet. I've been getting some loose ends tied up, before the weather changes enough to call me back up the hill.

I was out and about most of the mid-day hours, enjoying the warm Fall day...since last week's big rain event, the leaves are starting to turn autumn colors, the hills are showing the green of newly sprouted grass, and the light has that special Fall Glow. These are the kind of days that start me to longing...Winter is coming before long, I best wrap up my Summer Projects...I'm already looking forward to saddling-up my Snowcat, and building the Mountain.

I checked the Mountain Sensors...it's another fine day atop the Mountain, too. Temps still are avoiding the freezing point, as they have for most of the last twelve days. Boreal finally updated their Mountain Webcam Image...it's not pretty, unless you believe that ski season should start no earlier than Thanksgiving! I wonder if Boreal's remaining patches of snow will last until the mercury starts to get into freezing territory, and their Snowmakers can make more Manmade on top?

Before I get reacquainted with my Mountain, there's one more Fall Touchstone that must be touched. Dungeness Crab Sportfishing Season opens November 7th. California's Dungeness are so delicious, I prefer them to New England's Lobster by a wide margin, and crab fishing is another way for SturgUrge and I to spend a few hours on the Briney Deep.

We made our first Crab Trip on the last weekend of last year's crab season in our local waters. We caught one keeper Dungee, a mess of Red Rock Crabs, and one really nice Halibut over two days fishing during an overnight trip to Tomales Bay. On that trip, we threw back a dozen Dungees that were just 1/8 of an inch undersized. Weather permitting, we'll be back out there to keep some of them now that they've been growing, unmolested for three months!

Dungeness Crab are a big deal on San Francisco Bay Area tables, and are the hit appetizer for the Thanksgiving Spread.

I can't hardly wait!

Just Missed

I've enjoyed a nice weekend. Buoyed by the return of Fall Weather, and relieved that Hurricane Rick defied the models and shrank to a Tropical Storm, turned right and became a Non-Event for Southern Baja. In the mountains, temperatures are trending warmer and the sun is shining! Boreal has thrown a wrench into my Schadenfreude Machine however, by leaving a three day old image on their mountain webcam...a snowy, foggy scene with moisture on the lens. The remote sensors don't lie though...the thermometer at 7300ft shows only two tiny dips into freezing temps over the nine days since the Big Storm came through!

BajaBabe phoned last night to enquire about the Orionid Meteor Showers while I was immersed in a Science Channel Show on NASA's New Horizons Mission that's launched it's probe towards Pluto. This one is really cool...light, fast, and it carries a Dust Particle Counter designed and built by college students, the first flight-ready detector by college students to fly. Pluto is so small and so far from the Sun, that it's atmosphere freezes and falls to the surface of Pluto during Pluto's Winter! New Horizons launched in January 2006, and will arrive at Pluto in July 2015

The Orionids are pretty good this year, the moon is just a crescent so seeing is good as Earth flies through the debris left behind by Halley's Comet. If you're in Dark Skies, you'll be able to view 30 meteorites per hour over the next couple of nights...tonight at 2AM PDT is the forecast peak of this years shower. The "shooting stars" appear to radiate from the Constellation Orion, hence their name: Orionids.

I spent some time over my weekend researching a Handheld Device like an iPhone that works on my cellphone network...I'm really stoked to get a device that I can view weather satellite and radar images with in RealTime, while up on my Mountain in my Cat. While I was surfing thru the Geek-Gadget Web World I stumbled upon a Skiing Robot! This one's from the Jožef Stefan Institute in Slovenia. I was disappointed in the video...the robot skis fine...but missing in action...the Corduroy!

I'm Outta Here!

There's not much worth saying today...

It's cooling off here in the Inland Valley...it's a symptom of the little wave of low pressure that's coming ashore tonight. It'll stir things up some, but it still won't qualify as the Pattern Change.

My weekend is at hand, but I'm keeping an eye on a couple of items:

Hurricane Rick strengthened to Catagory 5 Saturday afternoon, and models have it making landfall Wednesday...a day earlier than modeled before. The storm track has trended south, and Cabo San Lucas is in Rick's crosshairs now.

Atop the Mountain, temperatures remain high. For those who are keeping score, Tuesday the 12th was the last time temps dipped below freezing at 7200ft...noon Wednesday was the last time the mercury was in the 30's, and highs through the six day period remained in the mid-60's until today. Today the temperature rise stopped at the mid-50's about noontime.

I'm wondering if Boreal will get their Snowmaking up and running before all their snow melts away...

Around the rest of the country, many new weather records fell this week, notably many cold records were set in the Northern Tier, though Florida set some High Temp records at the same time.

The lead story at Anthony Watts' Site chronicles the 4500 new records.

Tonight I'll be seeing the Premier of the documentary "Not Evil Just Wrong" by film makers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney. More on the Unintended Consequences of Environmentalism's Anti-Human Bias...A Real Inconvenient Truth?