Sunday, January 17, 2010

MAJOR Rain On The Way For SoCal

The NWS has put out the warnings that starting sometime today, a series of major winter storms will come roaring through Southern California. Looks like six solid days of rain coming here. We've pretty much battened down the hatches here, but I should probably build some kind of dam in front of the garage door. I put new weather stripping on it, but if we get several INCHES of rain over the next few days, I'm not sure if it will keep the water out.
I have to drop the mast my weather station is mounted on this morning.....one of the wind cups broke/fell off the anemometer the other day. As a result, it doesn't start spinning until there's quite a breeze blowing, so my wind speeds are all whacked out. The replacement parts arrived last Wednesday, so out comes the ladder and wrenches before it starts raining this afternoon. Probably be one of my "30 Minute" jobs that'll wind up taking me two hours!

**********UPDATE**********


Installing the new wind cups on the anemometer was a "breeze". Dropping the mast wasn't bad at all this time, as I rolled out my little service cart to set it on, and it took maybe 5 minutes to swap out the broken part. I used some husky spring clamps from Harbor Freight to hold the mast in place while I got the bolts started, which was much better than the last time I did, when I realized I needed six hands to hold the mast, get the bolts started, and tighten them enough so the wall brackets would grab it.
Then I put new extra thick weatherstripping on our West-facing garage door, only to see that it STILL had a 1-1/2" gap on one side, and a 3/4" gap on the other. Either the door was never hung properly when it was installed, or things have settled a whole bunch since it was. After a bit of head scratching, it dawned on me that I had a bunch of nearly indestructible thick rubber pads for use with non-penetrating roof mounts. The GF and I laid out the pads to match the gap, and when we closed the door, the new weatherstrip fit snugly all across the width of the door. And she wonders why I keep all this stuff around! Packed some old towels in the gaps between the garage door and the frame, and went up on the garage roof to wrap a big plastic bag around the ventilator turbine.
Programmed my Uniden scanner to the local NWS channels, made sure all our rechargeable batteries are good-to-go, charged all the batteries in my HT's, and filled up my 5-gallon can with gas and some Sta-Bil in case we need to use my Honda EU2000i generator.
We're battened down pretty well for SoCal.

**********UPDATE_2**********

We've received over 1-1/4" of rain since midnight. The backyard looks like a lake, the rubber pads and towels are holding back the rain from going into the garage, and the dogs have to be seriously 'coerced' into going outside. My weather station is running fine, and the house is nice and dry and warm inside. Maybe the dogs know better than I do!

5 comments:

  1. Heh- yeah SOCAL is NOT used to rain... I remember in 98 when it rained heavily for the first time in a couple of years there were 900+ wrecks in the morning and 700+ wrecks in the afternoon "rush"...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah, people out here do NOT know how to drive when the weather gets nasty. I grew up in Illinois, and learning how to properly drive in bad weather was really important.

    ReplyDelete
  3. We'll miss the first few days of it, Glad we're dropping the trailer off in Mesa, AZ, before we head back to soggy Kalifornistan.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hope you can get moisture without the extra drama!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Rain gauge shows about .12 so far, and it's a steady rain. Back in Illinois we would have called it a "Good Drizzle", but out here in Kalifornia, it's a pretty good RAIN!

    ReplyDelete

Keep it civil, please....

Gloomy, Gritty, Grey Day

 At 1700 local it's as described in the headline; 30*F, 88% RH, completely overcast, snowing like crazy (small flakes, but lots of them)...