I was also wondering if Ingrid was getting any of this precipatation?

I feel like ingrid is fairly close to me ( by Gw friend standards! Haha ) and we have had sooo much rain it’s mind boggling. I’m grateful but also cranky about it bc we need it the rest of the season too not all in one month ! And it’s so cold , and my house is freezing but heating it is the most expensive ever .. so it’s hard to do much but snuggle on the couch with the kids and dog .

I think this is going to be amazing for the garden tho , hopefully kill lots of bad bugs and poppies and these daisies that bloom in the winter look absolutely stunning!

I just need winter to wrap it up and get on out ! I have things to do ! ☺️

I have friends in town who actually did get some snow last week , just enough to thrill the kids . And my friend lives at the top of Palomar and she has so much snow you can hardly see her car , it’s up to the windows now with more to come.

Thus far, over Thursday night (2/23/230 and into today, one inch.

IF the storm sags South, and picks up a tropical system, we will get ample rain . . . If not, not. But even one inch is a blessing. What we DO have, and have had for days, is high winds and very cold temps.

As of 8 am today, we've had about an inch, but we got hammered late this afternoon, so I'm sure we'll be well above two inches by tomorrow morning. More is coming. Jeri's not kidding about the cold and the wind... there was major wind mayhem at my house Weds/Thursday. Here are a couple of pics of my friend's house. She lives on the San Marcos Pass at ~2000 ft elevation, which is only a 20 minute drive from my house, which is 1.5 miles from the ocean. I often have a hard time emphasizing the extreme microclimates we have in Calif to folks elsewhere :-D

That looks pretty!. It’s 18 F here right now.up north by the Great Lakes, we got about 2” of ice & snow on the ground. I never thought you guys could see snow in southern Ca! Hope warm weather will return to your yard pretty soon. Does heating cost more than cooling in Ca?

The. Flash flood warning for my area also included Camarillo - so I think Jeri will get some! We are fine so far. I’m kind of glad I can’t do my chores tomorrow - may sleep in! Was working all day & wished I could just snuggle up at home - but now I’m home & and can’t get my feet warm! Heat is on, in bed, have on socks - still chilled.

Ps - thanks for photos, Susan!

Hi Jackie. You have to remember that SoCal has so many widely-varied microclimates. Parts of the area HAVE gotten blizzard-like conditions. For our little area, we've had high temps in the upper 40's, and over 2 days, we've gotten a tad over 2-1/4 inch of rain.

For us, that is truly remarkable.

There are still massive clouds all around our little valley, so we could get a little more. And in theory, more next week. That is a blessing.

Jeri - congratulations! I hope you get more rain. The weather folks say that we should have rain here off and on for the next 4-5 days. This winter reminds me of what most of our winters were like when I was growing up here.

Jackie

Jackie -- I agree. I grew up mostly in Northern California -- and we got a lot of rain in fall/winter/spring. Way more than nowadays. Even my first few years in SB we had rain on Halloween a couple of times, and some flooding in El NIno years. So this year seems more like the "old days" to me.

My uncle was telling me stories about the "firefall" events they would do each weekend in Yosemite -- build a huge fire on the peak, and in the valley folks would be entertained with music and food -- and then when it was dark, a bulldozer would push the fire over the peak and all the folks in the valley would ooh and aahh at the beautiful firefall. I cannot, for the life of me, imagine that! That's how much climate has changed. One of my former students has worked as a volunteer and then as a ranger for about 15 years now -- when she first started, her water bottle would freeze overnight (in the summers at the higher elevations). Now -- it never freezes. She said that is what makes the beetles so devastating -- because of changes they don't really get an "off" season when they die off and can't reproduce -- so they keep increasing numbers and keep munching on trees and then the trees die from drought & beetle damage, and then the fires become massive...Sigh.

Our rain gauge from this storm is reading just over 3.5" - since we are in foothills I imagine I get a little more than Susan. Thankfully, there are just enough stops/starts that we're not seeing the massive flooding. I think my garden must be sooooo happy right now!!!!

The firefall . . . The real FIRE fall . . . They haven't done it for many years, now, but I saw it, in my teens, and it was a remarkable sight. I'm grateful for the fact that it was stopped, but very very glad that I saw it, back then.

As others have said, this reminds me so much of the past when rain and freezing night-time temperatures were the norm in the winter season. Nothing is very much the norm any more but this return to the past, especially when we had thought this would be yet another drought year, has been a welcome respite. I think the current storms might have given us about 5 inches of rain here, which is pretty mind-blowing. I can remember not so very long ago when a quarter of an inch of rain was a pretty big deal.

Well, We got another .25-inch over night . . . Which brings us up to 3" for the series of storms. (Yeah, yeah . . . I know most other areas have gotten a lot more, but this IS "Pleasant Valley" and rain are not us.)

Today, it's just cold wind. And, yeah, 53 deg. probably sounds warm to many, but for us, particularly when combined with days of gusting West wind, it's pretty danged cold. Houses here aren't made for that.

There may be more rain to come, in a week or so, but the prediction is that it will be more of a "Pineapple Express," and so . . . NOT COLD.

I picked these yesterday to save them from the weather --

"Grandmother's Hat"

and 'Gloire Lyonnaise'

We got tons of rain and snow here I live close to Mt. Baldy. Just 2 hours ago we were getting some snow flurries. But now its just windy, and super cold; I agree with Lily will be one expensive winter for the gas bill!

Gas bills . . . Almost an obscenity.

Those photos look like a snow country, feel your chills. It's cold here 6 months in a year. I WFH most of the time, I set the the house temp to 60F during the day. I like to work in the kitchen instead of the 2nd office, because kitchen has a gas fireplace insert. I keep the kitchen doors closed, and turn on the gas fireplace, the temp in the kitchen during the day is around 65-70F. It's much cheaper to heat a room than the whole house. You could do the same, to use a electric heater to heat a room or one closed area , and turn the temp down for the whole house. You'd save a lot by doing this during your ice age.

Haku! Thanks for posting your snow pics! I wanted to drive to the snow over the weekend (about 35 minutes from me), but the ways in had road closed signs, and people were driving in anyway -- but it looked like a mad-house. So I turned around and carried on (drive from SB to SLO over 154 by Lake Cachuma/Figueroa Mountain). I did stop at the vista point and take a photo of the lake (full!) with the snowy mountain backdrop and dramatic clouds. I posted on the seasonal thread, but will try to post here, too. Houzz is not cooperating with me today, so we'll see.

Jeri -- I watched a video of the fire-fall -- looked amazing, but it also freaked me out a little! Love your photos -- I have a Grandmother's Hat that I bought as a 4" plant from Annie's Annuals. It's finally put on some size this year. I'm hoping it will really come into its own! My Mel's Heritage is still a tiny little bush -- last year rabbits kept eating away it, so I bought an ugly little fence around it, so hopefully this year I see a lot of roses.

Deborah, that's a wonderful image. We drove up to Oxnard yesterday, and Topa Topa and that whole mountain range were snow covered. Such a beautiful sight!

Jeri - I drove to Otto & Sons yesterday & was astonished to see so much snow in mountains behind Ventura! And maybe a bit more tomorrow? I don’t know topa topa - will have to look it up.

Ha! I just looked them up. I think I was looking at the same snow! 😜