Over the weekend, the local meteorologists on the news broadcasts were all talking about a winter storm. For someone who spent multiple winters in the north Cascades of Washington and also in Michigan, it’s almost funny.

Here’s the situation. Low pressure cells northeast and east of San Diego pulled the jet stream down the coast. The jet stream dipped all the way down over southern California. This brought moisture from the northwest, resulting in rain all along the coastal areas which then made its way east. It also brought wind – sustained winds of 15-20 mph with gusts of 30-40 mph.

If you saw the NCAA football game between Notre Dame and USC at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, they had several video clips of the palm trees bent by the wind and periods of heavy rain in the first half of the game.

Here at Mission Bay, we had gusty winds and maybe a quarter inch of rain. The rain fell hard at times, but mostly it was short showers off and on. A few miles east of here and in parts of North County, more than half an inch was recorded. San Diego is an area of micro-climates. The coastal areas are usually more moderate than the mesas and valleys to the east.

Waterfowl riding the storm out at Rose Creek inlet

Rain and wind continued on Sunday. Donna took advantage of a break in the rain to go out for a training run. For me, it was a good day to watch football. Some areas had significant amounts of water over the road and we saw news reports of many car accidents as drivers didn’t slow down and aqua-planed, losing control. Another system is supposed to come through the area late this afternoon or evening. Then we can expect to be back to the usual clear skies and warmer weather – the highs only reached the lower 60s all weekend. This was considered a wintry blast.

Last night Donna was watching NCIS on TV. In one scene, I noticed a guitar on a stand in the background of the living room. Not just any guitar – it was a Pelham blue Gibson Reverse Firebird. That’s a fairly obscure guitar. Next to it was what appeared to be a vintage Epiphone tube amplifier. Whoever was responsible for the set must be a guitar geek. I wonder how many viewers caught it. I guess since I did, I must be a guitar geek.

The weekly football pool I enter has been tough. The way this pool works is you have to assign a point value to each game. We only use the Sunday and Monday games, no Thursday Night Football. That meant there were 13 games in this week’s pool. Each game has to have a number from one to 13 – you only use each number one time. If you add up the numbers from one to 13, the total is 91. You want to assign the lower numbers to games that are toss-ups and the higher numbers to the ones you’re most sure of.

Everyone starts out with 91 points. For each game in which you picked the losing team, the point value you assigned to that game is subtracted. At the end of the weekend, the person with highest number of points wins. Once again, I picked nine winners out of 12 games on Sunday – but I lost too many points. Seattle, Arizona and Carolina let me down. I had 11 points on the Seattle game – that killed my chances. Oh well, there’s always next week.

It’s supposed to stay dry for most of the day, but the temperature will remain in the low to mid-60s. Donna is very busy trying to meet her book deadline. I think I’ll get out for some pickleball in Ocean Beach before the next storm blows through.