Category Archives: Weather

November 21, 2025 · 23:37

122 Days

Today is Day #122 in our new house, our Forever Home. Four months, tomorrow.

Not every day, but MOST days I’ll be somewhere here or see something and just stop dead in my tracks and have a, “DAMN! WE LIVE HERE! **THIS** is our house!” moment.

It’s cool. I like it. I hope someday each of you gets to know that feeling, or its equivelant in some other way.

Last night in the pouring rain, shortly after seeing “our” owl, I stopped to look and feel this view. This is the interior courtyard, with my office on the right.

It’s open to the sky, so the rain was pouring in. There are a couple of downspouts that were overflowing and gushing, and the orange porch lighting contrasting with the deep blue of the dusk, cloudy sky, was magnificent.

Insert “DAMN! WE LIVE HERE!” awe-filled feeling.

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November 18, 2025 · 23:26

Clear In The East Tonight

More cloudy, cool, windy, drizzly, with another larger storm coming on Thursday and Friday, but tonight when I went out it had gotten crystal clear in the east. Orion was high, along with all of the other bright winter constellations.

A simple iPhone shot, setting it down on a garden hose box and getting a 30-second exposure. The brightest object, in the lower left, is Jupiter, with Castor and Pollux in Gemini above and to the left of it. Orion’s in the center right and you can clearly see the nebula that’s the center “star” in the “sword.” The “V” shape of Taurus is just to the right of center at the top edge, and the bright star in the lower right, just above the pergola and clouds, is Sirius.

With the chill (it’s down into the upper 30’s right now) it’s not surprising to smell wood smoke on the breeze as a lot of folks are using their fireplaces.

And of course, off in this direction, are the sounds of freight train whistles.

Yep, we done picked a good one for a Forever Home!

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Filed under Astronomy, Forever Home, Photography, Weather

November 17, 2025 · 23:40

Today’s Adventures – November 17th

I had to run out to get cash, which meant that I had to figure out where the nearest Wells Fargo ATM was. I’ve only been living here for four months… Turns out it’s not that far, out in the parking lot of a large mall, across from this.

I literally can’t remember when I was last inside of a Walmart – there is an evil there which does not sleep. Probably like 10+ years ago when I was in Vermont for my mother’s 80th birthday and The Long-Suffering Wife had a travel nightmare getting there and her luggage didn’t make it with her so we ended up going to one to get her some clean clothes.

But I was more or less here to begin with, and I’ve been on a quest for Steak-Umms frozen beef sheets to make homemade Philly cheese steaks and they’re about the only place that carries them out here. How much corruption of my soul could I get over two boxes of frozen meat?

The weather still sucks and another front was moving through…

…so I wore this because it’s comfy and warm.

But coming around the corner in the freezer section of Mordor I ran into a little, old, MAGAat lady who was mortified. She immediately started pointing at my chest and yelling that “people like YOU are what’s wrong with this country! You’re constantly trying to drag down the Greatest President in American History!”

I had questions.

“Oh, really? Which part are you most fond of? The way he raped 13-year-olds? The way he’s shredded and shit on the Constitution? The way he tried to overthrow the government in an actual armed coup? The way he’s destroyed diplomatic and economic and military alliances that in some cases go back over 200 years? The way he’s kidnapping and deporting US citizens without due process? The way he’s taking bribes like they’re going out of style? The fact that he stole thousands of highly classified documents and was selling them to the highest bidder out of the Mar-A-Lago bathroom? The way he bulldozed a third of the White House with no permits, oversight, or…” She was gone, flipping me off without another word. Didn’t answer a single one of my questions.

It was fine. A younger couple, mid-20’s I’m guessing, was coming up behind her, saw the whole affair, and said, “Fuck her! That’s a great sweatshirt!”

I always thought this area was pretty “red.” In reality, it’s far more “purple.” Next year’s elections will be very interesting.

 

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November 16, 2025 · 23:17

I Thought I Had Missed It

SpaceX was launching out of Vandenberg tonight, but with all of the rain (about 2″ over the last two days) and clouds (pretty solid overcast for five days) I didn’t expect to see much. But, eternal optimist and all of that, out I went at the appointed time.

COLD! WINDY! According to a WeatherUnderground station in the neighborhood, it was 45ºF, winds at 17 mph gusting to 22, so not exactly “sweater weather.” But I guess some days it’s better to be lucky than good.

The first stage (that little orange flame over the neighbor’s tree) was visible for about two seconds max. Then it disappeared into all of those clouds up above.

Given the weather up and down the SoCal coastal regions, I guess the bigger surprise is that they were launching at all!

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November 15, 2025 · 23:28

No Context For You – November 15th

No thunderstorms, no gully-washers, no frog-drowners, but it sure has been raining steady for most of the last 24-hours. I’ve seen reports of some debris flows and mudslides on some local canyon and mountain roads, but we’re fine. Plus, like a big chunk of SoCal residents, we’re hunkered down and not going anywhere today.

I do notice that we’ve lost all of our mountains. The low clouds, rain, and fog have hidden them all. I’m hoping when they re-appear we’ll have some more bright, white, snowcapped peaks.

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November 12, 2025 · 23:11

Clouds – No Aurora

There’s a week-long rain storm moving in tomorrow night and I still have piles of boxes outside, so it’s a priority to get them moved inside, or at least under the roof on the back porch.

While everyone else has been looking at aurora from a huge solar storm, we’re just getting clouds. (To be fair, we’re also so far south that if we’re seeing aurora, there are probably satellites getting fricasseed, so it’s a trade off.)

Very pretty and dramatic looking clouds to be sure, especially around sunset and into the early evening.

I’m once again in “feeling like I’ve gone 15 rounds with Mike Tyson” mode – 69 is really, REALLY too old for this shit, but my stupid brain still thinks I’m 29 for some reason and I’m six-foot tall and bulletproof, at least until I try to stand up and start crying and whimpering.

Stupid brain.

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Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Sunsets, Weather

November 3, 2025 · 22:52

Sundog

Often they show up on both sides of the Sun – today there was just the one on the right side.

Rainbows from sunlight off of ice crystals.

The right angles, the right temps, the right atmospheric conditions, and BINGO! The entire visible spectrum from red to violet, spread across a cloud!

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October 22, 2025 · 22:59

Proof Of Life – October 2nd

Last night’s second picture showed clouds to the south over the Cajon Pass – I didn’t think anything of it. I took the photos, came home and downloaded them, wrote my post, hit the “publish” button.

Not ten minutes later the whole house shook with a massive peal of thunder right overhead. There had been 0% chance of rain, no mention of any clouds or storms at all. But for the next hour we had quite the little pop-up thunderstorm.

I might have just loved it.

Tonight the clouds were still hanging around, making comet viewing impossible again, but we did get some gorgous crepuscular rays at sunset.

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October 14, 2025 · 22:49

As The Prophecy Foretold

Okay, so it was more like the National Weather Service than some old crone with a crystal ball or a wizard with a Palantir, but still.

The rain was steady, hard at times, but nothing in the Forever Home leaks, which is good! It was the cold outside that was noticeable – it never even made it to 50ºF.

And yes, the heat in the house DOES work. Still not sure WHERE the furnace or heating equipment is, but fans turn on, warm(er) air comes out of the vents, and the temperature inside slowly creeps up a degree or two.

The other thing that I realize now is that there are three separate gas fireplaces, including one in the master bedroom and one in the living room. It’s not that I didn’t know they were there, and both of our two previous houses had them, but we never USED them. They’re there to hang Christmas decorations and Chiefs flags on! But we’ve tested all of the ones here and know they work – I guess in a pinch they’ll heat up a couple of rooms, right?

Yeah, I know. I’m a clueless doof. This is not news.

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October 13, 2025 · 23:26

Full Feeders

It’s one thing to “know” that the temperature & weather swings are more extreme in the desert – it’s quite another to live here for a while and feel it. While the summer was fairly mild (I think we only had a handful of days that got into triple digits instead of dozens and dozens), now it’s autumn and we’re getting that large and unusually cold storm moving in. The high temperature today was only 58ºF today, and as we speak it’s only 48ºF outside. Tomorrow’s high is only supposed to be about 51ºF, with an inch or more of rain.

In anticipation of there being a lot of cold, wet, miserable, and hungry birds tomorrow, I made sure that all of the feeders were topped off tonight, just as the front of the storm and the first rain started.

The Forever Home does as good of a job staying warm in the chill as it does staying chill in the heat. It’s nippy, but we haven’t had to turn on the heat yet. Which got me to thinking – where’s the furnace? I know that the two thermostats have “heat” settings as well as “cool” settings, and I know that there are two A/C units outside. Are those heat pumps? Are there furnace units built into the A/C units? Are there furnace units on the roof or in the attic? I know what the furnace looks like and where it was located in a closet-like enclosure in our last two houses, but I haven’t seen anything at all like that here.

New home ownership! It’s an adventure! I guess when the time comes I’ll switch the thermostat on and see if hot air comes out of the vents. Assuming it will, I can listen for new sounds to see if I can identify the source.

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Filed under Critters, Forever Home, Photography, Weather