Overnight through this morning the SF Bay Area got another atmospheric river rain storm. The colorful and slightly ominous term describes a rain system that comes across the Pacific Ocean- which, since we're basically on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, is pretty damn much every single rain storm we get. Indeed last year we got at least seventeen ( Read more... )

Today an atmospheric river hit the SF Bay Area up through the Pacific Northwest to Seattle. But it wasn't just a normal atmospheric river, it was a bomb cyclone. While these arguably over-dramatically named phenomena brought high winds north of us on up to Seattle, they were close to a nonevent here in Silicon Valley. We got 0.1" (one-tenth of an ( Read more... )

In the vein of trying new restaurants even if they're not actually new, this past weekend Hawk and I dined for the first time at Original Joe's in downtown San Jose. Well, it was our first time there together; I ate there once with colleagues a few months ago. Either way, while the restaurant is a new experience for us, it's actually one of the ( Read more... )

As I mentioned already this past weekend was a mostly stay-at-home weekend. I hate just being a homebody, though, so we mixed it up with having a friend over on Sunday- and going on an easy hike together. "Easy" was the speed because Hawk is still recovering from foot surgery a few weeks ago ( Read more... )

It's been HOT out here in the SF Bay Area. Records are falling all around the area. San Francisco set a record for this date at 97°. That's also the hottest day this year in SF. San Jose set a record at 103°, San Rafael 107°. Here in Sunnyvale it hit 101° F (38° C) today. And it's not just today. Yesterday was hot, too, thought not quite as hot as ( Read more... )

We've had a surprising hot streak out here in California this week. Originally it looked like yesterday was going to the hottest of a few days in a row, with high temps in the upper 90s here in Sunnyvale, but then the weather shifted a bit. Today got even hotter with a high locally of 101° (38° C). In some places around the Bay Area it was even ( Read more... )

I've posted plenty of times recently about the weather being hotter than past averages (and getting hotter). It's only fair that I share when the weather's cooler than normal, too. The past week or two we've seen slightly below-average temperatures around the area ( Read more... )

As we were forming plans for this past weekend we were adamant about one thing: getting out and going hiking. It had been 3 weeks without a hike! Granted, it was because of the hot weather the two weekends in between we'd stay home, enjoying balmy afternoons at the pool. But with a forecast of just 76° F locally on Sunday it was cool enough for ( Read more... )

Our trek at Henry Coe State Park on Monday wasn't just about mountains, summits, lakes, and (very noisy) bullfrogs. We enjoyed the wildflowers, too. It wasn't a riotous bloom of flowers like we get at peak bloom season, but one special thing was we saw a type of flower we've never spotted before, the Mariposa Lily. And we spotted two different ( Read more... )

Henry Coe State Park. It's a place we known about for a long time. Strangely, we haven't been there in a long time. I believe we haven't been since the early 00s! I proposed it was time to fix that this weekend, so we went there on Day 3 of our not-flying-anywhere Memorial Day weekend. Yes, we got out for hiking all 3 days!


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