Storm Hits, a Bike Ride in the Hills and the Wind Knocks the Power Out

Sunday February 4, 2024 Guerneville CA.

Stormy day

It rained last night and was still raining this morning and it rained all day.

Creeks up

Around  noon, I checked on the creek that goes by our houses.

It’s up a bit.

Thanks Great Grand Pappy

It doesn’t flood here and I thank my great grand pappy for not buying in the flood zone. Thanks great Grandpa. I live in his old house.

Around two I was thinking  I  should put on my rain gear and go for a bike ride up into the hills just for fun and see what was going on.

It was nice and cozy in the house, but sometimes you just have to force yourself to do stuff, otherwise you won’t and miss out.

Bike ride into the hills

So, I put on my rain gear and put my older camera in my pocket hoping it would stay dry.

I rode the dirt bike up into the hills to the waterfall, just to see. It was raining hard and I couldn’t take the camera out for long.

Waterfall

It was flowing pretty good and raining hard.

I thought I’d parked the bike good, but when I looked, the kick stand had sunken into the ground and it fell over. I had to put the camera away and it was just raining too much to take the chance and take it out again.

Warm and dry

I rode around for about an hour before I started to get wet a bit, so headed for home where it was warm and dry.

Cracking trees

Around 4:30, the wind came up big time and the big trees were swaying and you could hear some of them cracking not far from our houses.

Then the power went off.

Generator

Tom lives next door to my place and we share a generator. It wasn’t long before he came over and wanted to start the generator, so we threw all the proper switches on the houses and got it started. We’d gotten a newer, larger one, not too long ago and this one had a battery to get it started which was nice. It took a bit for it to catch and start.

With the kind of wind we had, it will likely be awhile before we get the power back on as there are likely a lot of people without power right now.

Creeks ripping

The creek was up a bit higher than it was this morning.

It was ripping.

Bridge bulkhead holds

I checked the washout on the bridge bulkhead I was working on and which I threw some larger rocks in the bottom just before this storm hit and it was holding which was a good thing.

These storms are going to continue through tomorrow, Monday, so there might be some flooding down in the town of Guerneville and elsewhere. Guerneville floods pretty often. In the fifties and sixties, it flooded most every year and we might be back in that weather pattern which only the old timers know about as most of the people around here are too young to know about that.

I checked my rain gauge and it was just over seven inches so far.

Nice day, I’m warm and dry.