High rainfall totals due to surf

As high tide is approaching, along with the deep swells due to the storm, my rain gauge is really racking up the inches. It is not due to a fault with the sensors but rather all the spray from the roaring surf hitting our roof.

Thank god our seawall is holding up nicely so far...

Weather station back online

The weather station powering coastalpacifica.com has been completely refurbished and is now back online. In addition, it is now once again roof-mounted, for greater accuracy in wind speed readings (it had been deck-mounted for the past year).

Thanks to Davis Instruments for the quick turnaround in doing the repairs.

It feels good to once again know exactly what's happening at the coast...

Some serious surf -- video attached

Wow

Wow, the past day or two have been absolutely intense.

A major storm went through with near hurricane-force winds at the coast (exceeding hurricane force in the hills). We have had 2 power outages, the first one lasting about 18 hours and the second one lasting 4 hours (which is why coastalpacifica.com was down).

The coast, and our backyard, has been pounded. We took about 10 huge wave hits to the house, completely destroying anything with dirt and plants. Our neighbors two doors down had their back door smashed in; our next door neighbors' seawall had the middle section collapse. The neighbor on the other side has had his large berm partially destroyed. And we continue to sit in our livingroom in complete awe as wave upon wave smashes up against our sliding glass doors. The fact that they have not been blown in has stupified me -- these things, built by Milgard, are tough!

We have finally gotten smart; later this year we are going to lose the last bit of gardening we have and go completely concrete. If it weren't for all the mud, rocks, and plants shoved up against our house we would be in pretty good shape (except for our hot tub cover, which got bent by a wave).

Anyway, there are a lot of people to monitor the weather data updated on coastalpacifica.com; unfortunately, the waves -- which have actually been going over the house and onto the street -- have knocked this completely out of commission. This is a big bummer, since I personally rely on this data (as do a bunch of surfers). I will need to replace the entire unit.

For those of you who can't imagine what it's like living right on the coast, here's a picture from our livingroom Christmas day while we were opening gifts. Suffice it to say that these pics are mild compared to yesterday and today. I may post some video later...

Rain Gauge

Rats -- it appears my rain gauge is not registering. I see a "low battery on station" message flashing across the console, so I will replace that this weekend and see what happens.

Stay tuned...

Lost contact with outside unit

It looks like I've lost communications with the weather unit. It may be a dead battery, or it may be something more serious.

I will tend to it this weekend...

Wind readings are back online

I rushed home from work early today so that I could install the replacement annenometer that arrived yesterday.

Wind readings are now back online. Feels good to be back...