Oh we get these warnings all the time. Tv weather guys are already on storm watch for 2 days now. It probably won't get here until sunday and then just be drizzle.
It's still developing so they have no idea what to expect and the warnings have been changing everyday of course.

Still impressive...

NWS Los Angeles

"THE COLD AIR ALOFT WILL CAUSE THE ATMOSPHERE TO DESTABILIZE ACROSS
THE AREA...BRINGING A CHANCE OF THUNDERSTORMS THURSDAY NIGHT AND
FRIDAY...SOME OF WHICH COULD PRODUCE SMALL HAIL. IN ADDITION..
SNOW LEVELS WILL LOWER TO 7000 FEET BY LATE THURSDAY...THEN COULD
FALL TO BETWEEN 6000 AND 6500 FEET THURSDAY NIGHT THROUGH FRIDAY
NIGHT...ALMOST UNPRECEDENTED FOR SEPTEMBER IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.
HIGH TEMPERATURES THURSDAY AND FRIDAY IN COASTAL AND VALLEY AREAS
MAY REMAIN IN THE 60S...MORE TYPICAL OF JANUARY THAN SEPTEMBER...AND
NEAR RECORD LOW VALUES FOR SEPTEMBER."

WOW!

Why do you care!
If you lived here you would know that 8 of 10 of these fizzle once hitting Point Conception.

To say this is possibly the most severe storm for September in Twenty years, means that compared to usually getting NO rain in September, we may get a drizzle. Al

"Why do you care!"

Well, if he's anything like me, he loves weather, no matter where it occurs. I was going to post that, mainly for the "20 years" bit, after reading it this morning.

Nothing wrong with being interested in what goes on around the country, is there?

Brenda

Yeah, our storms are B.S.

there are always storms on their way down from the northwest... once they get to the northern part of central california, they fly east to the Nevada Mountains... we get maybe 20% of these during the winter (if that).

I would love a storm though... but hopefully on the weekend. Because during the week, drivers are the worst in the country here!

I understand the skepticism concerning this forecast, but this is a "cutoff low." There's a saying, "cutoff low, weatherman's woe," because they're so unpredictable. They aren't driven along the jetstream, and they tend to wander erratically. You're right, there's a good chance of no precipitation at all, and I'm personally skeptical of *any* forecast of rain in SoCal unless the drops are actually falling. But if any occurs at all from this cutoff low, it could be quite substantial for this time of year.

As a historical aside, some of you may not know that L.A. took a direct hit from a tropical storm on Sep 25, 1939. The storm set rainfall records for September that still stand. There are newsreels showing homes falling off eroded cliffs, and navy ships were damaged at San Pedro.

When I heard this last week I put out my rain gauge...so that means we probably won't get anything measurable.
As much as I want it to be true I am skeptical but hopeful.
Being from the midwest and knowing what humidity is and when it does rain here I hear them say 100% humidity...in a weathermans mind.

I'm another weather junkie and even the slight hope of a good early storm is enough to get me excited. Bring it on! I think I'll water my trees a bit just to season the soil for some hopeful glorious rain! Time to put the trash cans out under the gutter spouts. Crossing fingers and toes that this storm comes down to LA! Was just outside at lunch and it felt blustery and unsettled with some billowy grey clouds already.

You all might get a kick out of it, but I have young kids with fall birthdays and a main benefit of living in CA for me was being able to plan outside birthday parties with no just-in-case-of-rain plan. ;)

I care cause maybe i use to live in Wrightwood, CA and they could see snow! I also noticed no one had commented on it yet.

Everything still looks good. Locally here we should be at 90F Friday :)

"I care cause maybe i use to live in Wrightwood"

The fetching Mrs. Mikey lived in Wrightwood for several years. She left in 1969. When were you there?

With respect to the rain, I'm sure looking forward to some, however, I'm not looking forward to all the news reports with the cameras trained on the gutters....

Mikey,

That's why we don't watch network television :-).

I wonder. Should we take bets on how accurate the NWS is with this year's rainy season prediction? I would be tickled to death if their current prediction of a dry winter were as wrong as last year's prediction of a wet winter was.

Ryan

I dunno Ryan.... if we have another cold winter, I will really whine, after I put my replacement tropicals back in the ground where they'd survive here normally. I hope they're right, because I've put in a majority of drought tolerant plants. :o) Sacramento is much more prepared for a drought than flooding, since half the city is in a flood zone of the same proportions as New Orleans.

Here's the latest. Looks like maybe not the gully washer I had hoped for. Oh well.

Southwest California area forecast discussion
National Weather Service Los Angeles/Oxnard California
935 am PDT Thursday Sep 20 2007

Morning update...12z NAM clearly the better initialized model this morning, though even it is not quite as far offshore as satellite imagery indicates. The NAM is also the driest model, and holds off any significant precipitation until at least Sat morning. Can't say i'm surprised as this storm was bound to make life difficult. No updates expected this morning, but we will have to evaluate how the storm is
evolving today and adjust the afternoon forecast as necessary. Timing and amounts may need to be adjusted. However, it's important to note that even 30 miles difference in the track of this storm will have huge ramifications on the ultimate outcome so this will continue to be a extremely difficult, and at times frustrating, forecast. The good news is that it does appear that at least some of our forecast area will get rain...eventually. It may just be 12-24 hours delayed.

Hi Frank! Good to "see" you again. I don't get over to this forum much anymore but do try and drop in now and then, so I was happy to see your always caring self checking in on all of us. :)

You might recall I am just a few minutes north of WW, south of 138. We had a few sprinkles yesterday and then some good showers this morning until around 10 a.m. It's been cloudy most of the day with a few light sprinkles around 4 p.m. when I was out deadheading the roses. It's been cold, too. I had to turn on the furnace this morning! Now this wouldn't be too bad if I hadn't just returned from Kauai where it was 85 and drop dead gorgeous! We've gone from bathing suits and shorts to long pants and long sleeves. Whaa!! We had rain there on the north shore (Anini Beach) almost every day, mostly in the early morning and late evening, nothing that spoiled our fun, though.

Interesting note: Hawaii has also been in a drought. It's hard to believe when you see all the glorious shades of green everywhere, but some of the botanical gardens had to use their watering systems when we were there and some folks had actually lost plants in their home gardens. Crazy weather everywhere!

I'll let you know if we get snow. It's not unheard of for this time of year although the earliest is usually Oct., as you probably remember. Do you recall the yearly "guess the first snowfall day" that is always posted in the Mountaineer Progress? We still do it. Most of us are always wrong but it's still fun to guess. : )

Diana, waving to ya from the higher elevations where it DID rain!

We had some drizzle here this morning (Thursday) in Vista, north county San Diego, about 10 miles inland. Still had to water the plants. *lol*

We sure got rained on up here in Orland(100 mi N of Sacramento). I have almost 1 inch in the rain gauge. We had a real thunderstorm with drenching rain on Wed. Our weatherman said we had a 20% chance of showers. Boy, did he get it wrong this time. We just don't see that kind of weather here in the summer. We were not expecting to see any rain befor November. Now they say the storm might turn around and rain again on Sat.

My son alleges it sprinkled some Thursday night but I sure didn't see any signs of that wet stuff. It's now 9:00pm on Friday night and I'm looking at the moon.... Not very promising...... Here's hoping for some in the morning....

We got a sprinkle early Thursday morning, like around 3am, just enough to make circles in the layer of dust that is coating everything.

The low is hanging off the coast just on the other side of Catalina. Some rain sure would be nice...I'm not optimistic, though.

Well it finally got here and rained pretty hard here for about 20 minutes. Some lightening and thunder as it passed through. I'll bet the local beaches will be a sorry site in the next few days as the debris from storm drains washes up on shore....

Had a sprinkle around 6pm and a bit of thunder and rain around 11pm but it didn't last long. I heard it again at 3am and 6am but it has stopped now. I checked the rain gauge already this morning and just a half inch.
So it washed everything off and the air should be clean for a little while.

I'm lovin' every drop!

It poured here (Simi Valley) last night, some of the longest thundering I have ever heard! SOOOOOOO EXCITED!!!! By 8am, ANOTHER downpour! Everything is washed clean and soaked, including my dining room (really should have gotten up there to repair that roof last weekend). It's still cloudy and a few sprinkles are coming down here and there, and it's past 1pm. I'm about to run out onto the back lawn in my skivvies and do a dance for the rain gods.

Many southern Californians are cynical of weather reports after this last year when time after time they would predict 20 to 50 percent chance of rain and all we would get here in North Orange County would be a few drops that evaporated as soon as they hit the ground or concrete. Especially heart breaking is to watch the doppler radar on the internet and see the rain clouds split up and go to the North and South of your home leaving you high and dry. My location also seems to be in a rain shadow from Catalina Island. But anyway, I figured we were jilted again when it still hadn't rained by Friday night, but thank God, at 11:30 Friday night it finally started raining, the first measurable rain in 16 months. A final burst of rain for about 15 minutes Saturday morning and I was pleasently surprised to find a total of 1.25 inches of rain in my rain gage. And the rain came while my garden still had some live plants in it and my fruit trees still had leaves on them, instead of in January when everything would have been dormant. I'm happy.

I'm pretty frustrated. Here along the Ventura County coast we got less than 1/4 inch. Higher elevations benefited from orographic enhancement and inland areas enjoyed enough instability to induce thunderstorms. The worst part was learning that PALMDALE of all places saw nearly 1/2 inch of rain!

Ryan

Ryan you probably don't know this but Palmdale is under water restrictions. Residents were asked to reduce by 10% and that didn't happen a few months ago so they need it.
Everybody needs it. With a couple short downpours today brought my total to almost an inch.

gobluedjm,

Nothing personal. My primary complaint is that we didn't get much water. I would have been quite happy if we had received the same amount as Palmdale; I just thought it was a little over the top for them to receive MORE rain than us :-)

Ryan

Ryan, I don't live there so I'm not taking it personal, I just thought the comment was strange. I guess I don't understand why you think they need less. It's not all desert. There are homes and landscaping etc.
I am surprised you being on the coast you didn't get more cuz at the beginning of the storm it was all Ventura cty.
I saw several storms last year that didn't make it far south enough and came on shore in Ventura cty and Camarillo to Fillmore got it all and then headed towards the grapevine and LA cty got very little.

gobluedjm,

I said nothing about who deserved more rain, I was commenting on expectations based on the difference in average yearly precipitation between the two locations.

As with Los Angeles last year winter none of the storms that hit here dropped more than 1/2 of an inch of rainfall and most only dropped a few tenths of an inch.

Ryan

Mikey,
I just read 175 tons of garbage have ended up in Long Beach. The boom and natural bend in the "river" catch most of it.
Very sad to hear that much!I just hope at least half of it is sticks, branches, leaves and debris like that. A lot of that stuff washes down my street in the drains.