Weather or not?

There was snow all around us. A SDSU Calexico colleague sent gorgeous photos of snow in Jacumba. The contrast of the snow white against the tan boulders was striking. A light gray cloud hovered over the landscape. Another friend sent a brief video of snow falling in Upland in San Bernardino County. It wasn’t sticking but flakes were falling.

We were braced for cold rain on Saturday. The rain came but it was, as predicted, light. The National Weather Service stated: bet you can’t see it, to less than a tenth of an inch. Is that amount even measurable? Before you could say Joe Biden, the sprinkling stopped and the walkways dried. It was cool and breezy, but I was disappointed. Looking at the dark gray clouds, I was hoping against hope that we’d receive a downpour.

Newspapers and digital news outlets have been filled with stories and gorgeous photos about the very rare storms bringing snow to low elevations in Southern California. One newspaper headline read, “SoCal will see snow for the first time in years. Could it snow near you?” Yeah. When pigs fly. There was even a video of an El Centro family up at the Golden Acorn playing in the snow. Their toddler was enjoying the cold, white stuff. My recommendation was get out of your car. Throw a snowball, and quickly retreat to the casino to warm up and lose your gas money home.

On KPBS news, I saw a report about a sixth grade class that went to Cuyamaca Outdoor School in Descanso and happened to be there for the snowstorms. Many of the students had never been in snow before so it was a special treat on top of their science studies.

The sledding looked like a lot of fun. And it was when I was a kid. But the shoveling of entry ways to homes, or digging out your car was a lot less so.

When there’s a steady snowfall, what do you do? The entry way to the house is all shoveled, but the snow keeps falling. My mother was the queen of rock salt. She kept bags of it in the vestibule. She’d sprinkle rock salt around the entry door of the house. It usually worked melting the snow as soon as it fell.

But not to worry. We won’t see snow in the Valley. On clear days we can see snow on the mountains to the west of us, but not on Mt. Signal as in the 1930s. The weather that does affect us is high winds. And we have had plenty. As a result of the double monsoons that brought high winds last October, we have had a downed giant sumac branch in our backyard.

Our wind warnings go like this: Winds on Tuesday will be 10 to 20 miles per hour with chihuahua-strong gusts. Keep your pets indoors. On Wednesday, winds will be steadily 20 to 30 miles an hour with gusts sending clothes-line laundry to Yuma.

The current storms downed another sumac branch last Wednesday. This one fell east into our neighbor’s yard. It was about 12 feet long and fell onto a utility shed. Yikes. I trimmed off the green canopy. Vince arrived with his compact chain saw and did some acrobatic cutting. Finally, my dear wife returned from school and performed an incredible clean up. By Saturday a person came by and picked up all the cut logs placed in our front yard.

The stars put on a show on a recent night. It was a cloudless sky with a waning moon. Yes it was cold but beautiful. Thank our lucky stars that we have been a unique sanctuary from most harsh weather in California. The sun does ‘ spend the winter’ here. Oh, and the summer too.