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Hurricane Hilary - SoCal Takes a Rare Hit

mfrench

mfrench

Addicted Member
I spent the day readying for this, and am exhausted. I'm looking forward to it, and seeing what it brings.
It probably won't be a true hurricane by the time it gets here, rather it is said to be a tropical storm; but, it is still a historic storm for the area.
We are in northern San Diego County, fwiw. Here, we have a coastal hills range, and, a mountain range to the east, both pretty well parallel, and, great at guiding storms towards us.

Tales, preparations, etc., welcome.
 
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mfrench said:
I spent the day readying for this, and am exhausted. I'm looking forward to it, and seeing what it brings.
It probably won't be a true hurricane by the time it gets here, rather it is said to be a tropical storm; but, it is still a historic storm for the area.
We are in northern San Diego County, fwiw. Here, we have a coastal hills range, and, a mountain range to the east, both pretty well parallel, and, great at guiding storms towards us.

Tales, preparations, etc., welcome.
Click to expand...
I grew up in Vista
 
mfrench said:
I spent the day readying for this, and am exhausted. I'm looking forward to it, and seeing what it brings.
It probably won't be a true hurricane by the time it gets here, rather it is said to be a tropical storm; but, it is still a historic storm for the area.
We are in northern San Diego County, fwiw. Here, we have a coastal hills range, and, a mountain range to the east, both pretty well parallel, and, great at guiding storms towards us.

Tales, preparations, etc., welcome.
Click to expand...
I live quite a bit north of San Diego (Palmdale), but have made preparations. I'm thinking it'll be down to a tropical depression by the time it reaches us in the high desert. It'll be a lot of rain either way, which we need.
 
Morgan D said:
I grew up in Vista
Click to expand...


I like to think of us as being in Rainbow. But, we're listed as Fallbrook. We have a seasonal upper tributary of Rainbow Creek that flows across the rear of my acre, and, that is a large part of todays preps. For that reason, I like to relate to Rainbow, more than Fallbrook.

I'll start with my other big tale, part of yesterday and todays work load effort,....
About 3 weeks ago, we had three large eucalyptus trees taken down. The trunks were 3' wide+, and cut to 20" lengths to fit my Fisher stove.
Then, about two days later, I rented a log splitter, and split a huge pile of firewood. This just happened to be on the hottest days of this summer. Nothing like earning winter heat on the hottest days of the year.
So, I set the splitter up in the shade of the remaining Euc trees, and started splitting.
This shady spot just happened to be right smack dab in the middle of the seasonal stream dry creek that I built, to direct it away from the house, and down the side of the property.
Did I mention that I split logs in the dead-center of the bottom of this creek, because of the shade?
I split huge logs, and threw the splits into a splits pile above me, and once again, they were thrown to the bottom of the creek bed as being the closest, easiest throw.. I figured that I had until early november to get the splits stacked.
Then, suddenly, that timeline got all fubar'd by the approach of the storm, and I had a 5' tall, 15' long pile of splits blocking the creek channel.
Yesterday, and this morning, I stacked the splits in my firewood area, and got the creek bottom cleared out, save for the huge pile of cast-off, tear off debris from the splits; its a messy job.
So, it was essentially 8 hours of hauling the splits to my stacking area, and I stacked likely 2+ cords, and have an equal amount to still move. But, the creek is opened back up, and that stack of leftover pieces will only serve to bolster that shoulder area of the creek bed.

edits: fat tired fingers hitting all the keys around the targeted ones.
 
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That eucalyptus wood burns hot and pitchy doesn't it? My family were pioneers in Ramona. One of the old boys planted eucalyptus hoping they could use it for RR ties. It warped too badly when it dried to work for ties. I think his trees are still there.
 
Yes to burning hot. But, we get a chimney-smith out regularly, and we're coming up as dry-sooty, but otherwise clean. Our Fisher insert is a super efficient burner.
Our other choices are Oak, at a kings ransom, or, avocado, which is like burning rolled up newspaper. Euc burns great, and our stand of them has gotten us through 12 years so far. But we're down to our last three, which are massive.
 
We're just outside of Palm Springs - right in the centerline of the Hillary cone. It should be blown out by the time it gets here, BUT, we could get many inches of rain, and it only takes about 1/2" to flood many major boulevards.

7:11 pm and I can hear the wind kicking up!
 
Many years ago I was involved with an attempt to BBQ a whole hog over a fire made with euc. 5 hours later and tons of cut euc. the pig was still raw on the inside. In the fire pit there never was any trace of coals, like with other wood. It went from fire to ash in the drop of a hat. Live and learn.
 
mfrench said:
I like to think of us as being in Rainbow. But, we're listed as Fallbrook. We have a seasonal upper tributary of Rainbow Creek that flows across the rear of my acre, and, that is a large part of todays preps. For that reason, I like to relate to Rainbow, more than Fallbrook.

I'll start with my other big tale, part of yesterday and todays work load effort,....
About 3 weeks ago, we had three large eucalyptus trees taken down. The trunks were 3' wide+, and cut to 20" lengths to fit my Fisher stove.
Then, about two days later, I rented a log splitter, and split a huge pile of firewood. This just happened to be on the hottest days of this summer. Nothing like earning winter heat on the hottest days of the year.
So, I set the splitter up in the shade of the remaining Euc trees, and started splitting.
This shady spot just happened to be right smack dab in the middle of the seasonal stream dry creek that I built, to direct it away from the house, and down the side of the property.
Did I mention that I split logs in the dead-center of the bottom of this creek, because of the shade?
I split huge logs, and threw the splits into a splits pile above me, and once again, they were thrown to the bottom of the creek bed as being the closest, easiest throw.. I figured that I had until early November to get the splits stacked.
Then, suddenly, that timeline got all fubar'd by the approach of the storm, and I had a 5' tall, 15' long pile of splits blocking the creek channel.
Yesterday, and this morning, I stacked the splits in my firewood area, and got the creek bottom cleared out, save for the huge pile of cast-off, tear off debris from the splits; its a messy job.
So, it was essentially 8 hours of hauling the splits to my stacking area, and I stacked likely 2+ cords, and have an equal amount to still move. But, the creek is opened back up, and that stack of leftover pieces will only serve to bolster that shoulder area of the creek bed.

edits: fat tired fingers hitting all the keys around the targeted ones.
Click to expand...

:hug:
 
Its strange, we we're getting an offshore/santa ana wind direction right now. I guess the large low pressure system is drawing wind towards itself. They're a low-moderate strength, but steady.
 
They say that this is the first to hit the SoCal area,.....

Back in June '78, I grad'd from high school. That first weekend after that, we had a monster of a hurricane storm that blew up from Baja. But, it stalled and turned westward, and ended up spinning off of the south end of San Clemente Island. You could see this ominous black headwall outer edge of it spinning and all lit up with internal lightning.

My friend and I were both local surfers, and had surfed together for most of our lives. We decided to go hit the south side of the peninsula that we lived on, and, the waves were immense and perfect, and were lining up on the reef perfectly. They were what we called double and triple overhead waves, and were wrapping perfectly around the reef. It was the rare perfect day, and we were the only two out.
The wind and rain though,.... wow. The wind was offshore, hard and steady. The rain was pounding so hard that it was like a hard wall. But what happened with each wave was crazy. The wind held the face of the wave up, and when it broke, it feathered the edge of the wave, and, added an intense extra layer of suspended water. We were being hit by bucket loads of water just falling from the sky, both fresh and salt.
The tube rides that day,.... wow.
 
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