Bay Area Storm Watch

That comment belongs to reddit with a very high karma count. I LOLed here.

Web 2.0: making your top-of-the-line i7 desktop feel slower than an 80s mainframe.

But at least you don't have to declare types on the variables! Such productivity!

It's because most of the rainwater will end up back in the sea via sewers, rivers, etc. Snow becomes snowmelt --which happens slowly so it does not become runoff but filters into aquifers, reservoirs, etc.

I don't think it works that way.

A few of the large California reservoirs, like the San Luis Reservoir and Lake Berryessa, get their water from storm runoff in mountains that don't typically accumulate much snow, but a large amount of the water storage in California comes from Sierra or Trinity snowpack.

Unfortunately, a lot of California storm drainage is designed to move the water to the ocean as quickly as possible, to prevent flooding. I think most of the rainfall in the Bay Area that doesn't soak into the ground will find its way to the delta or to the Bay rather than a reservoir.

Think of it this way: cumulative snowpack is a massive year-round reservoir in California. See e.g. http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/environment/article3505269....

Here are the reservoir levels. http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/resapp/getResGraphsMain.act...

First time I was in California, it was September. I get off the plane and the recruiter picks me up in a convertible.

"See that cloud?" he points.

"Yep"

"That's the first cloud I've seen in almost three months"

I found that a strange thing to say.

A couple of months later, I get off work and go back to the apartment. I'm watching Jeoprady and they do one of these "Action News Storm Team 7" break-ins. They cut to the meterologist who's pointing out breaking news on the triple doplar jetstream radar or whatnot.

It's rain. Looks like a tiny shower, maybe 500 yards across.

The guy says "Looks like this storm will be headed across I5 very soon, so motorist should be extremely cautious"

In fairness, we get like 20cm of rainfall per year. :)

This doesn't have anything to do with the commenter above: they're looking at the wind speed for their area, not the wind in alaska. If the wind speed on the site is radically different from the speed outside their window, then coming to the conclusion that the site's wind data is low resolution is perfectly valid.

I am on first floor in Sunnyvale and not much wind. What is my altitude.

Several units at my office have told everyone to work from home tomorrow, hopefully that's happening at a lot of places.

Yep, it is a few minutes past midnight and I can hear the light rustling of trees. No rain or anything 'stormy' yet.

A little windy in MTV but no too much outside the norm.

Gusty in RWC. Mostly calm but the gusts are definitely >15mph.

Cancelled my flight from SEA to SFO, which was supposed to land at 9AM Thursday. Pretty sure whether indefinite delays or cancellation I wasn't gonna get on that plane.