We Love The Stars Too Fondly

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.

When we had some unexpected showers (and rainbows!) on Thursday, this was the view from my office window when I was suprised by the sound of rain hitting the screens:

In about 48 hours a not-so-unexpected storm should hit and last for a couple days. It’s big enough to be a major story in the local news, online, and we’re starting to get Flash Flood Warnings about it already. It’s apparently also supposed to be a cold storm, so while our first snowstorm in the Sierra Nevada Mountains normally isn’t until November or even December, this one could drop decent amounts at higher elevations all the way to the Oregon border and beyond. That works for me – that’s where all of our water comes from and a healthy snowpack is always good news.

We’re not likely to get snow here from this storm. We *DO* get snow every now and then most winters, since we’re at 3,588 feet and the snow level often drops to 3,000 feet or lower. But not this time. The snow level’s only supposed to be down to about 6,500 feet. There are however several peaks off on the horizon that go up to 10,000 or more (Mount San Antonio, “Old Baldy” is just to the left of the view in this picture, visible between the houses to the southwest, and it goes up to 10,068 feet) and they’re likely to all get snow.

I’m looking forward to the pictures late next week after the storm moves through!

We had unexpected showers off and on all day. At least, they were unexpected to me, the weather folks might have seen them coming.

We had our third pretty good shower going on and I suddenly saw sunlight through my west-facing office windows. I know what that math adds up to, so I headed to the east-facing wall.

It was spectacular!

The light leaking through the clouds was extremely bright on the left side, with just a hint of the outside arc.

The clouds were still nasty, and there were some fascinating effects as sheets of rain drifted in and out of the sunbeams.

This little dude kept popping up over the wall and getting into my face, since I was standing next to the feeder it wanted. There were three other feeders available, so I didn’t feel like I was putting it out too much, but it obviously disagreed.