Design Wall Destruction

I went into my workroom yesterday and was greeted with this design wall destruction. At first I didn't know what I was looking at. The studio assistant pushed it a little too far on the climbing wall activities I guess. Nothing is broken or truly damaged. And thankfully I didn't have a project up there that had taken a lot of time to arrange and wasn't pinned up.

The storm was absolutely raging, but my DH went into Mr. Fix-It mode (just to have something to do I think) and headed out to the hardware store. Luckily he made it back just before the highway was closed down due to an enormous tree plus power lines coming down. He purchased a pine molding in an L-shape and showed me how it was going to be installed. He offered to stain/varnish one side and paint one side white (the part up against the white felt, but I thought both sides varnished would be fine. The quick-dry varnish actually dried so he was able to install it 

As neither of the panels is affixed to the wall at all, they are both just propped up within this frame that is attached. This solution was to screw the molding into the side frame pieces, flush on top of the felt-wrapped panels. So now they're pretty snug and held in tight, at least along those edges.

He's also going to put in a piece up along the top, but it has a different sized (and bigger) space between the panel and the frame trim. So that will require some wood-working power equipment to trim the piece of wood he bought down to the right size and shape to fit in the space. 

Here's how it looks, not at all distracting to my eye which is the main thing. There really isn't a way to attach the panels to the wall, so hopefully these two side pieces will help keep it all a little bit more stable for now. I don't want to have to forbid Korben free access to my workroom, but that may end up being the solution. 

Our power has now been out since yesterday afternoon so who knows how much more you'll hear from me over the next few days. Depends on when the internet goes down. We had one 22 mph wind gust yesterday afternoon, this is measured at the ground level, not up at the tree tops, more open spaces in Boulder Creek got up to 50mph! The amount of rain was a lot, 12" since 1/31, so that's some saturated ground at this point. No trees fell down this time, but a lot of big branches did. That's what I'm cleaning up today while the rain hopefully takes a break.

Wandering Wednesday - Bumbling Through the Bomb Cyclone

 

The miserable winter continues Wednesday edition. We were hit dead on with what's being called a bomb cyclone yet again. This storm has brought us almost 4.5" of rain in a day and a half. On top of the near continuous rain over the last three months. It's much too much, and our hillsides are literally oversaturated. This is the new view out my studio window, more on that below.

This gif shows the storm really well, there were two big rotating storm systems that were also rotating around a central point, something called the Fujiwhara Effect, and that just sped up the winds incredibly.

I took this when I briefly went outside with Meg, she was too scared to go though. This was nothing compared to the really strong gusts.

We have had really windy days over the many years we've lived here, but there's never been a windstorm like this one. I unfortunately watched as four redwoods toppled below our house. Luckily for our downhill neighbors, they fell in the right place. It reminded me a lot of seeing the cannery collapse during the 1989 earthquake, just utter destruction actually happening before my eyes. Like something out of the movies. The wind gusts continued for most of the day, the highest being 33 mph, which is incredible in the protected area where we are. Downtown Boulder Creek which is more open (less trees), that gust measured at 40mph. 

So, I saw those trees fall, the tops of the remaining redwoods are shredded and sparse now. But at the same time, another group of redwoods toppled.

We didn't used to have a view of the sky in this spot before. That's because there was a clump of about four redwoods blocking the view. As you can see, they're no longer there, as they also fell. We had heard something, but the wind was so loud we weren't sure, and we definitely were not out walking around with all the giant branches falling (they're not called widow makers for nothing)

It paused a bit in the ferocity so we bundled up and went out to see why we could see the sky. I noticed the decimation of the magnolia tree I just posted about on Sunday.

I'm so glad I took those pictures on Saturday. So those little spiky trees behind the magnolia are what's left of the redwoods that were formerly behind it. We could see broken branches on the redwoods to the left and further on down the hill.

Finally I looked down and saw the roots sticking up out of an enormous mud ball. That little hillock looking thing is where the trees used to be standing.

It's incredible, all those trees just gone. We can see our neighbor's house for the first time ever. 

Our power has been out since the winds started yesterday around noon. Thankfully the internet is still on. All of the roads are a mess, and we're not driving anywhere anytime soon. Unfortunately, and unrelated to the storm, last Wednesday our hot water heater went kaput, and the new one was to be installed today. But our plumber can't get here from there, so at least another day of heating up water for sponge baths. 

wheee fun!

Too Hot

 

Welp, this is what I did yesterday. Survived the heat. It got up to 86F inside the main part of our house and it was too much for me. Supremely grateful to have a house, even one that's so hot, and to not have to be working outside. 

I just realized that I didn't send in my submission to Quilt National which was due yesterday. Not meant to be this time I guess, putting it on the calendar for two years from now.

We have a room air conditioner set up in our bedroom, so I'm holed up in there already today, woking on hand stitching stuff and coloring in more postcards for voters. And all the pets are lined up on the bed soaking up the cool air just like yesterday.

Yesterday, I made us a nice cold chopped Greek salad for lunch, and DH made grilled salmon and cold soba noodles and steamed broccoli for dinner. He set up our camp stove outside and cooked the noodles there to not heat up the kitchen. I think I'm going to use our Instant Pot outside today and make some good beans.

It's crazy y'all. It only cooled off to 69F overnight, so who knows what will happen today. At least our area didn't have one of those very frequent localized power shutoffs, and the CA power grid just barely made it through peak demand. We did have one fire started (not sure how) near one of the state parks near us, but it got handled quickly. Fingers crossed for today. I've got to go water everything...again.

Seeds and Fog

We had a few windy (for us) days and the sheer amount of redwood seed blown down onto the deck was really remarkable. In theory, you can gather these up and grow your own redwoods. Our property has two groves of redwoods, so we've already got plenty, thanks. But the redwoods are visibly quite stressed by the recent fire, the unusual changes in the weather, like years of drought, extreme and sustained heat waves, greatly reduced amounts and days of fog, etc. And that in turn results in more seeds being dispersed by the trees, pretty good planning there on the part of the trees, huh?

There is a special project within the USGS, The Pacific Coastal Fog Project, where they concentrate on monitoring and studying the changes in the fog along our coast that the plants that grow here are acclimated to. They're trying to model what to expect as far as fog amounts in the expected coming warming years.

I was joking the other day about how we're going to have to have county trucks going up and down the roads in all our redwood groves dispersing fog pretty soon just to keep the existing trees alive. I follow @KarlTheFog on twitter, which is a fun account that personifies the famous SF fog. We need one of those for the Santa Cruz Mountains.

 

Rain Again

We've had this cool weather station set up since April this year, it was our anniversary present to ourselves. And it hadn't gotten much of a workout besides telling us how darn hot it was this year. But this past weekend, we found out it has an actual sense of humor. "It's raining cats n dogs." Indeed.

There was a lot of rain forecasted, the media is using new terms like atmospheric river, and bomb cyclone. But it turned out to just be a rain storm "just like we used to have." We've missed having rainstorms like this, really and truly, it was just part of life and part of the fun of living in the mountains. A bit of an adventure or whatever. But now, there's the worry of the steep mountainsides that burned in the fire coming down in a debris flow with too much rain at once. That means evacuation orders or warnings for a lot of people in our town. Not us, thankfully, as our home is on the other side of the highway and river. 

We did all the usual things to prepare, put away the outdoor cushions, took down the sun shades we put up for the summer, tarped up equipment, cut some firewood, cleared our drainage ditches, that sort of thing. Then we hunkered down inside, nice and cozy and hoped for the best. We expected to lose power, but we only did very briefly. Our neighbors down the street are out though, they are on a different power transmission line that we are. 

It's fun having the weather station, our total for the storm of 7.47" was a little less than some of the other measurements in our town that I've seen, but I think the spot where our station is located is a bit protected from rain (and wind too).  It's remarkable to me that on October 3rd, it was 100F, and we hadn't had any rain at all since April 25th. It's been a long, hot, dry summer, and all this rain is so very welcome.

As I woke up this morning, it was absolutely pouring, at an inch an hour rate according to the weather station. And then it stopped as the sun rose higher. Then this was the view out our front door. Pshew, we made it. No big slides happened, our power stayed on (?!?), and the roads are mostly open. I'm glad that our county is playing it safe and issuing evacuation orders, just in case, but it's going to get old for the people affected, especially as they aren't providing vouchers for housing like they did during the fire evacuation. We had a bad slide back in 1982, and ten people were buried in their homes in mud. And that was without a burn scar on steep hillsides, just an epic amount of rain. I expect that if we continue to have normal rainstorms, the just-in-case evacuations will continue.

Enough about the weather, back to getting some sewing done!

Hold the Mud, Thanks

 

We got almost 2" of rain over the weekend. But most importantly, not all at once or too fast. We're very worried about a new thing around here now: debris flow after the fire. Our mountains are very very steep and the soil may not stay in place after everything that's gotten burned.  A lot of the plants and trees are integral to holding the hillsides in place. 

We happen to be on the "safe" side of the highway/river so thankfully we're not impacted. But we're still worried about our community. There are warning signs up all over the entrances to town, and the local authorities have been working really hard to contact everyone and have people be prepared to flee. They're worried about a Santa Barbara style catastrophe happening here. We get a whole lot more rain than Santa Barbara ever does, and we sometimes get incredibly intense rainstorms. 

 Welcoming the return of the rain is of course, still an annual thing, the continued survival of the forest and our community is depending on it being a gentle rain season for this year and probably the next several years. We're hoping for the same amount of rain as usual so that the forest gets what it needs, but having the rain arrive spread out evenly over the months instead of concentrated into a few weeks. I'm

Great California Snowpocalypse of '11

 For several days this week, all the news and weather people were incessantly talking about snow actually for real, oh my goodness, coming to our area.  Fairly rare, not unheard of, but still, they made it out to be a Really. Big. Deal.  Slow news week maybe??

 This is how much we actually got.  Maybe a 1/4" or so.  Not much of a "snowpocalypse" as they made it out to be.

What do you expect for this mild part of California though?
Very pretty while it lasted, hilariously confusing to cats, and no one had to shovel anything.

View Through Rain

Phone was finally fixed today (hooray), so now I'm racing around online trying to catch up. It seems like more than a week went by for some reason. I was really discombobulated without having the lure of an online hour or two to get me through my morning studio time. Not that I have to make myself go be creative or else, but it was a routine that was working really well for me, and I felt adrift without that routine.

I replaced that with reading instead, and read a whole lot of books last week, including (finally!) Twilight, which I read in less than a day.

It keeps raining, and I keep taking pictures of it, since that is what is going on.

These are from waiting in the car one recent evening, for my son to finish up his martial arts class.

I think the neon lights are really beautiful being spread out and combined in the rain. Especialy the purple cloud created from the red/blue OPEN sign.

How I Spent My Holiday Weekend

This is what the road down our hill looked like yesterday. A couple big trees that had been perched up on the mountainside fell over in the big rain/wind storm, causing a small mudslide. No big deal, except, they of course fell into the power lines. Very big deal. The fire department and tree service people were there right away. But they couldn't do anything because the live wires were wrapped up and in and around the trees. Several hours went by before the power company showed up and got to work.
It was a problem because this is the only passable road down the hill for a few hundred folks that live up here. It is possible to walk down our little street to town, but you can't drive anymore. Dear husband had to walk down and up twice, once with the teenagers that were having a sleepover and needed to get home, and once to fill up the gas can for our generator. It was quite a social scene with more people than usual out of their houses (in the pouring rain) griping about the power company and scheming on how to get down off the mountain.
We had a LOT of time for reading and quiet, which was a nice way to spend the holiday.

Power didn't go back on until 1:30 am, which I know because of course we had left the bedroom overhead lights on. What a way to wake up. Nice to have the power back on.
Today we're having a ton of hail! And wind, which knocked the power out again for a few hours. Good time for a nap, so I took advantage.
Here is what the trampoline looks like. Wouldn't that be a cold and slippery jump?!

And I'm fascinated by the sizes and shapes and colors of the hail.

Well, that's why I didn't post yesterday!

Rainbows at Sunset

This past week we had an almost thunderstorm , all of about 17 raindrops fell, just enough to make my car look crappy. Luckily no thunder or lightning (which caused all those fires back in June). My husband was driving home from work and he mentioned he was seeing rainbows, so we ran outside to look around for some. Sure enough, even at sunset there was this rainbow. Haven't seen one of these in what seems like a very long time.
A rainbow at sunset.
Sunset as seen through the redwoods.

I found that these pictures worked best with the automatic flash left on, which surprised me.

Looking Up

I've been looking up at the sky through the trees a lot lately. And occasionally snapping a picture or two, like through these oaks. Looking at a tree in this way makes it into such a graphic image, so much of the detail is lost in the shadowy contrast between bright sky and shaded tree. Much easier to see the shape of the branches versus the leaves.
These pictures were taken on the strange day last month when it rained for about 10 minutes, along with thunder and lightning. It was just starting to cloud up when I took these pictures. It had been about 95F and very still.
A big breeze came up, it got cooler very suddenly, the sky got really dark all of a sudden. Then these huge raindrops fell, like three or four times the size of a normal raindrop. We ran around and enjoyed it as it was such a treat, and oh my goodness it smelled so heavenly.
You probably have to be a Californian from my area to realize how extraordinary this was. It almost never rains in the summer here, and if it does, it doesn't usually rain in them iddle of a super hot day. And we certainly don't get thunder and lightning, even during the rainy months it is very unusual. I just looked up the average precipitation and it is .2 inches for the month of June.
Unfortunately the lightning started a whole lot of fires, and there wasn't enough accompanying rain to put out those fires. Many of those fires are still going (like the huge one in Big Sur) and I hope the firefighters can get them out soon.