It was just like Winnie the Pooh said in his famous song “Hum For a Blustery Day”:

Oh the wind is lashing lustily
And the trees are thrashing thrustily
And the leaves are rustling gustily
So it’s rather safe to say
That it seems that it may turn out to be
It feels that it will undoubtedly
It looks like a rather blustery day, today
It sounds that it may turn out to be
Feels that it will undoubtedly
Looks like a rather blustery day today.

And that is what it was today around here. Lots of wind (20-40mph) with gusts up to 60mph (convert to kph at your own risk). Semi-trucks toppling over on the freeways and bridges, trees crashing into houses and cars.

And then there was the rain, falling at rates up to 2 inches per hour …

The rain rain rain came down down down,
in rushing rising rivlets …

… bringing flooded streets, streams overflowing, and the usual idiot drivers thinking that their cars can drive fast through flooded areas without problems.

And the snow up in the mountains, with predictions of 4-6 feet of snow in 24 hours.

I decided to work from home today.

I had a nice view of the blustery-ness. The trees around my house aren’t that big, so no problems at my place. A tree at my mother-in-laws house did lean over a bit, causing a branch to crash through the eaves, but not into the house/attic area. Other houses were not so lucky.

Sacramento (CA) is known as a city of trees, with lots of trees (elm and others) that are quite old (some 90+ years). Even though this was the first significant rain of the season, those trees have somewhat shallow root systems, and the strong winds did topple quite a few of them, unfortunately into quite a few houses and cars.

But even with all the damages, there were no injuries reported.

In the mountains, the snow turned blizzardly, which shut down Interstate 80 for a time. This is the highway over the Sierra Nevada (the pass is at 7200 feet). Built in the 1960’s (?), it was deemed an “All-Weather Highway”.

Except during blizzards.

(Yeah, I know. This is California. A couple of feet of snow is nothing to you folks, such as those in the frozen reaches of Minnesota. But it is exciting news around here; the local news stations pre-empted the entire morning TV schedule to talk about the weather. The advantage to that is that we didn’t have to listen to anything about Iowa and something called a “caucus”.)

More rain this weekend, so the plan is to lay low and inside. As long as the TV and the Internet connection works, I’ll be happy.