Changing Places

Or, as the rest of the country says, “who?”

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Politics — Rep. Duncan Hunter drops out of race for GOP bid

Rep. Duncan Hunter, whose long-shot bid for the Republican presidential nomination never really got off the ground, dropped out of the race Saturday night after a dismal showing in Nevada, which was seen as the last hope to salvage his candidacy.

“The failure of our campaign to gain traction is mine and mine alone,” the Alpine Republican said in a statement. “But we have driven the issues of national security, the border fence, the emergence of China and the need to reverse bad trade policy. Because of that, this campaign has been very worthwhile.”

Hunter, the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, has made those issues the hallmark of his 14 terms in Congress.

Darwin kills a rubber tennis ball

Interesting article on natural dog training and how to deal with an overly aggressive dog. I really liked his point that so much of our play is actually based on forms of hunting, and while some of us accept this with dogs, we sometimes fail to see it in ourselves.

I think much of the aggression in humans can be similarly channeled, if we re-direct people’s aggressions into more acceptable forms of play. Perhaps this is why sports are so important to us as a society…

Roxie is my only aggressive golden, way more so than most goldens I’ve seen. I’m sure she was improperly socialized, just as she was improperly fed (30 pounds overweight when I got her) and trained (she would counter surf and eat things left on the counters). But she is never aggressive while walking with us, or even in interaction with most dogs. For her it is mostly territorial. She will bark at the neighbor’s aggressive female, Rosie, through the fence, but if they are together out front where she can see Rosie, at most she will growl a little. I guess the best thing would be to get them in a situation where they could really play together.

Natural Dog Training

The name of the game, is game. Once the dogs sense who, or what, the prey is, then there can be a game and at such a point, then there is no chance for violence {I think he means between the dogs, of course there could be violence against the “prey” – DW}. Games, the essence of a social nature, have indeed evolved from prey-making which is why most games involve a ball, the ball being the surrogate for a prey animal. Once every individual is in accord on what or who the prey is, they fall into phase and the game can begin. What our language clearly reveals through a multitude of expressions and word derivations is that hunting is the basis of a social nature. This is one of the most important things we can learn from dogs about our own human nature.

Stirling sums up some of the reasons why I have supported progressives in the last few years. It’s not out of any ideology – it is because it is the only way out of the mess we’ve created and ending the downward spiral of the American economy. I truly think those who don’t see this are simply blind to the reality of the situation we’re currently in as a nation.

Relief, Restructuring, Stimulus | The Agonist

In our present circumstances the progressive movement has put forward the most coherent vision that addresses these three points. Relief can be expanded by ending Iraq and ending tax breaks for the very wealthy. Restructuring can be best pursued by ending the weak dollar policy, and making a non-carbon based energy system a long term goal, and universal, provider-patient health care, ideally under a single payor model a short term goal. Stimulus will be accomplished by specific spending programs designed to make these two goals possible. The conservative, moderate and reactionary movements have not come close to creating as coherent a vision of what needs to be done and how to do it.

Right now the conservative-reactionary coalition proposes a tiny deficit based stimulus/relief package, continued weak dollar policies, continued expenditure on Iraq, continued deficit spending as far as the eye can see, no effective steps to contain energy, health care or food inflation, and no money being allocated for the inevitable financial bailouts, other than to sell Wall Street to Dubai one bank at a time.

The moderate movement proposes that we should do all of this, only with more civil discourse.

There are clear choices, and while the voting booth is a woefully inadequate instrument by itself to reach them, it is one of the tools we have. Which, not coincidentally, means making sure that t works as well as is possible, as opposed to as well as is convenient for particular interest. Among these clear choices are whether we are going to restructure away from a series of very bad choices made this decade, and towards better ones.

So far the progressive movement, and only the progressive movement, has made this commitment.

Did you know the Republicans are now declaring a war against change? Uh oh.

And as a female engineer, I am even more special!

Yay.

Economist’s View: Alex Tabarrok: “Reason to be Highly Optimistic about the Future”

Amazingly, there are only about 6 million scientists and engineers in the entire world, nearly a quarter of whom are in the U.S. … But if the world as a whole were as wealthy as the U.S…, there would be more than five times as many scientists and engineers worldwide.

Considering the oath of office is to SUPPORT THE CONSTITUTION.

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Haven’t we had enough of Bush’s efforts to change the constitution?

Hullabaloo

“I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution,” Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. “But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that’s what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.”

Done, Huckabee, you are DONE.

My 22 year old has decided to relive his childhood this evening and invited his friends over for a Lego building party. Just look at the fond memories in his eyes…..

And his friends….

Do they ever grow up?

And you should, too!

Really though I can’t stand it when my gums get inflamed, so I try to avoid it. These days, I rarely have any problems.

A healthy smile may promote a healthy heart

Each year, cardiovascular disease kills more Americans than cancer. And while most people are aware that lifestyle choices such as eating right, getting enough exercise and quitting smoking can help prevent cardiovascular disease, they may not know that by just brushing and flossing their teeth each day, they might also be avoiding this potentially lethal condition.

An article published in the December issue of the Journal of Periodontology (JOP), the official publication of the American Academy of Periodontology (AAP), suggests that periodontal patients whose bodies show evidence of a reaction to the bacteria associated with periodontitis may have an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease.

“Although there have been many studies associating gum disease with heart disease, what we have not known is exactly why this happens and under what circumstances,” said JOP editor Kenneth Kornman, DDS, PhD. “The findings of this new analysis of previously published studies suggest that the long-term effect of chronic periodontitis, such as extended bacterial exposure, may be what ultimately leads to cardiovascular disease.”

Researchers at Howard University identified 11 studies that had previously examined clinically-diagnosed periodontal disease and cardiovascular disease. The team then analyzed the participants’ level of systemic bacterial exposure, specifically looking for the presence of the bacteria associated with periodontal disease, as well as measuring various biological indicators of bacterial exposure. They found that individuals with periodontal disease whose biomarkers showed increased bacterial exposure were more likely to develop coronary heart disease or atherogenesis (plaque formation in the arteries).

“While more research is needed to better understand the connection between periodontal disease and cardiovascular disease, this study suggests the importance of taking of your teeth and gums and how that can help you take care of your heart,” said Susan Karabin, DDS, President of the AAP. “With the number of people with heart disease continuing to increase, it is important to understand that simple activities like brushing and flossing twice a day, and regular visits to your dental professional can help lower your risk of other health conditions.”

Nope, no climate change here!

Snowy Baghdad enjoys White Zone – CNN.com

After weathering nearly five years of war, Baghdad residents thought they’d pretty much seen it all. But Friday morning, as muezzins were calling the faithful to prayer, the people here awoke to something certifiably new.

For the first time in memory, snow fell across Baghdad.

Although the white flakes quickly dissolved into gray puddles, they brought an emotion rarely expressed in this desert capital snarled by army checkpoints, divided by concrete walls and ravaged by sectarian killings — delight.

“For the first time in my life I saw a snow-rain like this falling in Baghdad,” said Mohammed Abdul-Hussein, a 63-year-old retiree from the New Baghdad area.

“When I was young, I heard from my father that such rain had fallen in the early ’40s on the outskirts of northern Baghdad,” Abdul-Hussein said, referring to snow as a type of rain. “But snow falling in Baghdad in such a magnificent scene was beyond my imagination.”

Morning temperatures uncharacteristically hovered around freezing, and the Baghdad airport was closed because of poor visibility. Snow is common in the mountainous Kurdish areas of northern Iraq, but residents of the capital and surrounding areas could remember just hail.

I wonder how they will collect….

The $1.4 Trillion Question

Through the quarter-century in which China has been opening to world trade, Chinese leaders have deliberately held down living standards for their own people and propped them up in the United States. This is the real meaning of the vast trade surplus—$1.4 trillion and counting, going up by about $1 billion per day—that the Chinese government has mostly parked in U.S. Treasury notes. In effect, every person in the (rich) United States has over the past 10 years or so borrowed about $4,000 from someone in the (poor) People’s Republic of China. Like so many imbalances in economics, this one can’t go on indefinitely, and therefore won’t. But the way it ends—suddenly versus gradually, for predictable reasons versus during a panic—will make an enormous difference to the U.S. and Chinese economies over the next few years, to say nothing of bystanders in Europe and elsewhere.

Why then, have to be human?
Oh not because happiness exists,
Not out of curiosity…
But because being here means so much;
because everything here,
vanishing so quickly, seems to need us,
and strangely keeps calling to us… To have been
here, once, completely, even if only once,
to have been at one with the earth –
this is beyond undoing.

– Rainer Maria Rilke

“It is only through letting our heart break that we discover something unexpected: The heart cannot actually break, it can only break open … To live with a broken-open heart is to experience life full strength … When the heart breaks open, it marks the beginning of a real love affair with this world. It is a broken-hearted love affair, rather than the conventional kind based on hope and expectation. Only in this fearless love that can respond to life’s pain as well as its beauty can we be of real help to ourselves or anyone else in this difficult age. The broken-hearted warrior is an essential archetype for our time.”

“We set out on a path that is continually surprising — learning to be ourselves, yet also more than ourselves. As Zen master Shunryu Suzuki points out, “When you are yourself, just yourself, through and through, you are the universe. You are not this conditioned person anymore.” Then, though we may dedicate ourselves to helping this world, our well-being will not depend on the outcome. For we are becoming one with that force in the universe that is forever creating itself anew.” — John Welwood, Love and Awakening

“The soul that rises within us,
our life’s star,
cometh from afar
and hath elsewhere its setting.”

– Wordsworth

Currently reading John Welwood’s “Love and Awakening”. Good stuff, and recommended. Some quotes follow here.

Like the sun’s rays that cause the seed to stir within its husk, love’s radiant energy penetrates the facade of the false self, calling forth resources hidden deep within us. Its warmth wakes up the life inside us, making us want to uncurl, to give birth, to grow and reach for the light. It calls on us to break out of our shell, the personality-husk surrounding the seed potential of all that we could be. The purpose of a seed husk is to protect the tender life within until the time and conditions are right for it to burst forth. Our personality structure serves a similar function. It provides a semblance of security, as a kind of compensation for the loss of our larger being. But when love’s warming rays start to wake us up, our ego-shell becomes a barrier restricting our expansion. As the germ of life swells within us, we feel our imprisonment more acutely…..

The brighter love’s radiance, the darker the shadows we encounter; the more we feel life stirring within us, the more we also feel our dead spots; the more conscious we become, the more clearly we see where we remain unconscious. None of this need dishearten us. For in facing our darkness, we bring to light forgotten parts of our being. In recognizing exactly where we have been unconscious, we become more conscious. And in seeing and feeling the ways we’ve gone dead, we start to revive and kindle our desire to live more expansively….

A soul connection is a resonance between two people who respond to the essential beauty of each other’s individual natures, behind their facades, and who connect on this deeper level. This kind of mutual recognition provides the catalyst for a potent alchemy. It is a sacred alliance whose purpose is to help both partners discover and realize their deepest potentials. While a heart connection lets us appreciate those we love just as they are, a soul connection opens up a further dimension — seeing and loving them for who they could be, and for who we could become under their influence. This means recognizing that we both have an important part to play in helping each other become more fully who we are….A soul connection not only inspires us to expand, but also forces us to confront whatever stands in the way of that expansion….

While our absolute nature, as pure being or open presence, is timeless and changeless….our soul evolves and deepens through cultivating and embodying the seed potentials — for courage, strength, generosity, humor, tenderness, wisdom — contained in this larger nature. The essence of spiritual work is to realize and continually reorient ourselves toward our being, our absolute nature; and this is what leads to ultimate freedom. Yet spiritual realizations often remain compartmentalized, apart from everyday life, or become used as a rationale for living in an impersonal or soulless way. That is why, if we are to live our realizations and bring them into this world, we also need to work on the vessel of spirit — our embodied humanity. Soulwork is the forging of this vessel……If spiritual work brings freedom, soulwork brings integration. Both are necessary for a complete human life.

John Welwood, Love and Awakening : Discovering the Sacred Path of Intimate Relationship

Why this country keeps fighting against providing health care coverage for everyone is just beyond me. Oh, I know the political reasons and those of the naysayers – but why we aren’t all way more upset about this and demanding better health coverage is something I can’t get my head around.

I suppose nobody really gets it until someone they love is in catastrophic care – my mom’s last hospital bill was $350,000 — and that was just the part that Medicare paid. If she hadn’t had private insurance on top of that, there would have been nothing left of her estate to pass along and provide for my disabled sister and nephew as well as leave a bit for my brother and I to share.

I’ve advocated for a while now that we ought to have a single-payer system to cover health care basics and catastrophic coverage. If people want additional coverage on top of that, they can go to an insurer, so there will still be business for them. But this idea that the country can’t afford to pay for health care is stupid – we already pay for the uninsured, through our own higher medical costs. If you think the uninsured aren’t already costing us money, you’re crazy – we pay for it in higher costs and insurance rates. And if you don’t want your tax dollars paying for it – well, I don’t want mine paying for a useless war for oil and subsidizing high oil prices, but I don’t get a choice about that.

We can’t keep fighting wars for oil, ignoring the need for a change to alternative energy, and ignoring the needs of our own people. Companies can’t afford to keep paying for medical insurance, and neither can individuals — and to me this is THE critical question of this election — how to get everyone some basic health care coverage.

Iraq and the economy are the other big issues. If we did a national energy program converting to clean energy, pushing solar and biomass research and exploring other alternative energies, and focused on real public transportation and more sustainable building in our cities, puling people back to the city centers and providing walkable services, we could go a long way towards a real restoration, provide jobs and restart our economy which is seeing the financial ponzi schemes of inflated assets crumbling.

But mostly we have to get healthy again.

Print Story: France is healthcare leader, US comes dead last: study on Yahoo! News

France is tops, and the United States dead last, in providing timely and effective healthcare to its citizens, according to a survey Tuesday of preventable deaths in 19 industrialized countries.

The study by the Commonwealth Fund and published in the January/February issue of the journal Health Affairs measured developed countries’ effectiveness at providing timely and effective healthcare.

The study, entitled “Measuring the Health of Nations: Updating an Earlier Analysis,” was written by researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. It looked at death rates in subjects younger than 75 that could have been prevented by timely and effective medical care.

The researchers found that while most countries surveyed saw preventable deaths decline by an average of 16 percent, the United States saw only a four percent dip.

The non-profit Commonwealth Fund, which financed the study, expressed alarm at the findings.

“It is startling to see the US falling even farther behind on this crucial indicator of health system performance,” said Commonwealth Fund Senior Vice President Cathy Schoen, who noted that “other countries are reducing these preventable deaths more rapidly, yet spending far less.”

The 19 countries, in order of best to worst, were: France, Japan, Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Some countries showed dramatic improvement in the periods studied — 1997 and 1998 and again between 2002 and 2003 — outpacing the United States, which showed only slight improvement.

White the United States ranked 15th of 19 between 1997-98, by 2002-03 it had fallen to last place.

“It is notable that all countries have improved substantially except the US,” said Ellen Nolte, lead author of the study.

Had the United States performed as well as any of the top three industrialized countries, there would have been 101,000 fewer deaths per year, the researchers said.

Yeah, no such thing as climate change….

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Dozens killed by Iran blizzards

At least 28 people are reported to have died in Iran’s heaviest snowfall in recent years.

Eight people froze to death as severe blizzards left 40,000 people stranded in their cars, authorities said.

Although most have now been rescued, another 20 people are reported to have died in car crashes caused by the weather, officials said.

Tehran has declared two days of national holiday, urging people to stay at home to avoid the bitter cold.

The temperature has been down as low as -24 degrees Celsius, and for the first time in living memory there has been snow in the country’s southern deserts.

Stirling is always worth a read, and today’s is especially important if you want a glimpse of where we are headed.

Whatever you do, get out of debt and stay out…. and push for us to end this stupid and costly war.

The Coming Double Dip Recession | The Agonist

The present coming recession is not going to cure any of the imbalances, nor is China likely to do anything other than buy up key US assets.

This means that with the massive monetary stimulus, inflationary expectations on the part of those say, selling oil, are going to continue, and it is not to their disadvantage to allow a major stock slide, when oil remains expensive. They can buy up assets with cheap dollars paid for with expensive oil, and then allow the price of oil to ebb. The corruption in the Arab financial system prevented this play the last time around, with events like BCCI being merely one example of many.

What this will mean is that as the US emerges from the coming recession, there will be intense pressure to raise the value of the dollar, and liquidate assets predicated on a deflationary housing boom. This will require massive monetary constriction, and lead to a second recession very close to the first, probably one which will be deeper and broader, and quite probably longer.

The alternative will be a period of increasing inflation, deterioration of the US position in terms of controlling the world financial apparatus, and ultimately a permanent downward adjustment in US standards of living.

Are there solutions? Not really, we have bought and paid for this recession, and a worse one to follow it. Already. However, while recessions are painful, they are not necessarily entirely evil. A recession shifts the decision making over the future of the economy from those who have possession of assets, to those who have possession of credit. This can mean that the “deep rich” gain control, as they did in this decade, but it can also mean that the social sector and the public sector use this as an opportunity to unify around a long term vision for the society.

This is why the shift in thinking from monetary to fiscal policy is important. Monetary policy gives an economy more of whatever it is already doing. Fiscal policy can change directions. When an economy is essentially in the right direction, monetary stimulus can be used effectively to grow or contract the economy around a trendline. When an economy is fundamentally providing poor incentives, fiscal policy looks better and better. Provided of course one has people running the fiscal policy who are not moral cripples suffering from rectal cranial inversion. Unfortunately for the US, it has replaced a personally corrupt evil stupid congress run by Republicans, with merely a corrupt cowardly evil stupid congress.run by Republicans with Bush Dogs as cosigners. It is that they aren’t personally corrupt. The catastrophic failure of Democratic leadership will be masked by the good conditions of 2008 for Democrats, but unless dramatically changed, will lead to their losing Congress right back in 2010, especially if there is a Democratic President being hammered for the recession.

This means that instead of Americans taking paper losses on the houses and retirements, they are goint to wake up and find a bi-partisan consensus, meaning Republicans plus Bush Dogs, to shave more off their entitlements. The Republican way to do this may well be double taxation: a national sales tax means that people who paid income taxes earning money, will then have to pay sales taxes spending it. The Democratic way will be nibbling away at benefits and technocratic shell games, as “hedonic adjustments’ were used to nibble away at Social Security.

Neither party is stating the obvious, that the various sticky fingers of the financial system, which have deprived Americans of the benefits of lower costs, now add up to over 10% of GDP. Plus the prison-security-military-industrial complex, this comes closer to 20 cents of every dollar boiling away into projects that do not improve the fundamentals of the American economy, but shift money directly from those who work, to those whose job it is to delay the day of reckoning.

I often get comments on my blogroll and how interesting, varied and diversified it is. The common denominator of all of the blogs I read is that they are all excellent trend spotters — those who are aware of change in the world, in the places they live, and in themselves and who are valuing and creating value from those changes in a positive way. They are the way I stay in touch with what is going on in the world in any number of different areas.

The list changes with my current interests, but the best blogs from those interest are the ones that tend to remain there month after month, so the list inevitably gets longer. From time to time I pare off a few who have stopped posting or cut back.I suppose I could go to a feed reader, but that never feels the same to me – there is something in the visible look of someone’s site that appeals to me and tells me something about them.

If you by chance happen to get removed from my blogroll and would like to be re-added, or if you’re a reader not on my blogroll, please just ask. And it is not about exchanging links for me or to boost my ego if I have lots of readers or just a few – I really don’t care all that much. Those who need to read what I have to say will find their way here.

I have no illusions of changing the world, or of changing anyone’s opinions. My preference is to simply enjoy the flow of change, which is life itself. Change is the heart of Tao and the reason I am drawn to it and it to me.

Namaste.

I’ve kissed a few frogs in my day, and many of them were indeed princes.

But my favorite story is of the geek girl who is asked to kiss the frog, and replies, “Cool! A talking frog!” and sticks him in her pocket…. although lately it has been turned into a male nerd joke. When I was a female in engineering, this was OUR joke:

An engineer was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to her and said, “If you kiss me, I’ll turn into a handsome prince.” She bent over, picked up the frog and put it in her pocket. The frog spoke up again and said, “If you kiss me and turn me back into a handsome prince, I will stay with you for one week.” The engineer took the frog out of her pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket. The frog then cried out, “If you kiss me and turn me back into a prince, I’ll be your devoted boyfriend.” Again the engineer took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into her pocket. Finally, the frog asked, “What is the matter? I’ve told you I’m a handsome prince, and that I’ll be your devoted boyfriend. Why won’t you kiss me?” The engineer said, “Look, I’m an engineer. I don’t have time for a boyfriend, but a talking frog……that’s cool.”

But the real story of the frog prince has nothing to do with a prince, but is about restoring the golden ball to the psyche and in return receiving what at first seems to be the burden of an awkward, useless frog to carry around. If one sits with the frog long enough (or maybe tosses it against the wall), it rewards you by becoming something magnificent. When you find “true love” for the things in your psyche that you think are ugly and unlovable, then you have truly come to self-acceptance and the rewards are indeed magnificent.

When we read fairy tales which tell the story of initially playing with a golden ball, then losing that golden ball, and ultimately recovering that golden ball, we are being told the story of the individuation process. Early in life we are, unconsciously, one with the Self, and life is golden. We lose that sense of wholeness as the Self recedes and the ego begins to realize itself – its limitations, its vulnerability, its smallness, its otherness. And then, usually at the Self’s instigation, the ego attempts, often through pain and defeat and suffering, to recover that initial relationship with the Self – the golden ball, if you will – although in a new and more conscious way. Each one of us had a golden ball when we were young, which was suddenly taken from us by fate or design, and here we are, at some stage in the process, whether we are in analysis or not, of trying to get it back. And it is possible. Fairy tales don’t lie. (Yes, it’s possible; but who’s willing to pay the price?)

“We can analyze someone for a long time and the dreams seem to discuss certain obvious problems and the person feels all right, but suddenly he will have a dream out of the blue which starts something completely new. A new creative idea which one could not expect or explain causally, has arisen as if the psyche had decided to bring up something new, and these are the great and meaningful healing psychological events. The symbol of the sphere or the ball primarily means this. That is why so often in fairy tales the hero follows a rolling apple or a rolling sphere to some mysterious goal. He just follows this spontaneous self-impulsiveness of his own psyche to the secret goal.”

You will also notice that balls, when they roll, will often take the most direct route to reach its destination, will yieldingly follow the natural gradient of the landscape, the path of least resistance, and because of its perfectly round shape, will roll as true as true can be. These are additional characteristics of the Self at work in the psyche. Jung stated that the Self, the unconscious, does not deceive us. It may use language that is cryptic and symbolic, but its intent is not to disguise its message. It communicates as truthfully as it can using the language and methods it possesses. Its roll is direct and true.

In the real world, there are some types of frogs that might be hallucinogenic to kiss:

Another possible connection to this process of liminality might lie in the ornamental carvings found on stone representations of the yokes worn during the contests. These yokes are portrayed with drawings of the Marine Toad (Bufo Marinus). Although this species of toad is inedible, its does secrete a fluid through its skin which is hallucinogenic and was probably used in religious rituals which sought to produce an altered state of consciousness. It is therefore thought that perhaps the appearance of this toad on the equipment of the ball players connected the game to the religious system which sought a momentary descent into the Other World. This connection might lie in the other-worldly, trance-like state the ball players would assume while playing, which separated them from ordinary time and thrust them into sacred time.

In the environment, frogs are also an indicator species of the health of the environment. Frogwatching has become a way to help track environmental damage and pollutants.

So you might want to check on whether your internal frogs are healthy and lovable, and maybe cool, or if they might need some loving and kissing….

When my kids were little, I was enamored of the comic strip “Baby Blues“, convinced they must be watching us, or at least living very similar lives. I even had to get a signed copy of their first book, I liked them so much. I haven’t had a chance to get a signed copy of any of the Get Fuzzy books, although I do have several of the comic collections. But this one made me feel like they’re watching us again, or at least, watching Darwin. This is definitely how he thinks!

Hasn’t hit us here yet in San Diego, and we will probably get the least severe weather, but this is a HUGE storm. Well a good Sierra snow pack will help our water situation at least.

If you’re in California this weekend, stay safe, warm and dry….

Wunder Blog : Weather Underground

A mighty hurricane-force Pacific storm continues to clobber California with blizzards, damaging winds, and flooding rains. Hardest hit are the Sierra Mountains, where winds at Ward Mountain near Lake Tahoe were 86 mph, gusting to 163 mph, at 11 am PST. The storm responsible is visible just off the coast of Washington (Figure 1), and has a central pressure near 960 mb–similar to that of a Category 2 hurricane. Blizzard conditions will continue over much of the Sierras, with 2-5 feet likely to fall by Saturday. Travel will be difficult of impossible in the northern mountains of California Friday and Saturday. Snow amounts may reach 10 feet by Monday in some mountain regions of California.

Sunday UPDATE:

We didn’t get very much rain from this storm here in San Diego. Northern California got most of the high winds, snow and flooding. Heavy rains and a broken levee created flooding in one Nevada town. Here’s the latest from Wunderground:

Heavy snow, flash floods, and damaging winds continue to pound California today as a weakening Pacific storm moves inland over British Columbia. The winds have died down considerably in the Sierra Mountains, where hurricane force winds were common on Friday. The storm’s highest winds occurred at Ward Mountain near Lake Tahoe–sustained at 110 mph, gusting to 163 mph, on Friday. Prodigious snow amounts of up to six feet have fallen in the Sierras, with Blackcap Basin in Fresno County (elevation 10300 feet) reporting 71.3 inches (5.9 feet) of new snow as of 4 am PST Saturday. Continued heavy snows are expected in the Sierras through Sunday, with total amounts up to ten feet possible.

At lower elevations, heavy rain has triggered flash floods. In Chino Hills, just east of Los Angeles, a flash flood swept away a vehicle that had gone around a barricade. One occupant was found hypothermic and clinging to a tree, but the vehicle and its other occupant are missing. A mudslide forced the temporary closure of Interstate 15 nearby. Rain amounts exceeding ten inches (Figure 1) have fallen in the mountains of Central and Northern California, and in Nevada, heavy rains caused a levee to burst along the Truckee Canal in Fernley, flooding hundreds of homes.