Hi Jim & All,

Since early last evening the entire Bay Area has been hit by heavy rain and so many mud slides, you can't even begin to imagine it. There's a road that runs between Windsor and Calistoga, near the Petrified Forest and they have had so many slides on the road, the CHP page just said the entirety of the road was a slide. High tide will occur around 1PM and roads are being closed one right after the other, right now due to flooding and more slides.

I read the Santa Rosa Press Democrat this morning to learn what happened during the night and it had less drama than the CHP traffic reporting page. It was truly disappointing. I did hear rolling thunder during the wee hours at perhaps 4am, but no lights. Darn. Over the coarse of the last two nights I heard something new. It was the sound of rain hitting water when it landed, instead of land. It's a very disconcerting sound. Hopefully, I won't hear it to often this winter.

What many do not understand about slide conditions is that they can occur up to months after the hillsides have been soaked. I saw this on Porter Hill Road on my way to Calistoga a number of years ago. It hadn't rained in more than a month and the hillside which let go covered both lanes of the road and was hundreds of feet wide. These can be killer slides.

The area where Don and I wanted to scope out an epicenter a few miles north of here is flooded, so there won't be any field investigations today. Oh well, we're high and dry, have heat and electricity, though the cable just went. The winds have been pretty stiff with gusts to 26mph, though that's really nothing. I saw steady 80's in Seattle that lasted for 12 hours.

Petra