Rain Rain Rain, Splash Splash Splash

So a winter storm is heading in, and it may actually rain here, this time, for the first time in over a month now. Finally. I've even washed my car multiple times, which used to be a sure-thing way to make it rain. Not so much anymore. I did manage to get rid of the red sap freckles on my paint from the tree overhead. That was a pain, but it sure looks better now. I've been watching the radar images of the green rain clouds building up on the North Coast near Eureka. Bigger and bigger before they creep inland and dump a huge load of rain in the Coast Range, then across the Valley, then into the Sierras, possibly coming South enough to actually rain here. Or perhaps, like the last storm, go overhead, drop nothing, and a spatter of snow on Donner Pass and points East into Nevada. Its been that sort of winter, so far. Lovely days, though. Very pretty during the brief warm part of the day.

Here's hoping rain actually falls this time.


UPDATE: And it did. Expecting more too.

Went for a walk this morning between showers and this is what I saw:

Slate Creek Mists, View to North

The big upside to being a geologist and cartographer, I know my cardinal directions. The mists in the foreground are from Slate Creek. In the midground is the creek out of Nevada City. In distance, sharply white and billowing, is the Yuba River, which originates at Donner Pass and I-80 follows it for about 10 miles before it drops into a Canyon and becomes a series of lakes and a popular destination for poor gold miners, Washington (not DC). The river winds down out of the High Sierra into the low sierra past many many water pumps, both for impoverished farmers and for actual homesteaders, neither wealthy enough to drill a well. Most of the farmers are growing things that their buyers are asked if they're "cool" or not. I would be "not". Anyway, the view is fantastic today, the air clean and delicious, and the leaves are all soaking wet so no sweeping or raking today.