Every couple of years here in the the lovely North Bay / Wine Country / Redwood Empire / NorCal we see some actual weather. By actual weather I mean weather that genuinely merits news coverage. The area immediately North of the San Fransisco Bay has a pleasantly-uninteresting climate, with summers being largely rain-free and only creeping above 100° a few days out of the year. We almost never have days that remain below freezing after 11am, snow is almost unheard-of, we’ve never had a tornado or hurricane hit anybody. The only thing that keeps land prices here from allowing only bona-fide billionaires to live here are those pesky fault lines.

Unlike other parts of the country, we don’t really get a “winter” to speak of, instead getting a season that more closely resembles a slightly-chilly springtime elsewhere. Temperatures dip below 60°, our annual 6-month-drought takes a break, and the hills turn a lovely green. That’s a normal winter. This year, things are taking a more interesting turn, seeing day after day of precipitation, much to the dismay of folks that have recently purchased insanely over-priced homes in places like Healdsburg and Napa.

This tendency is why you almost never hear about us when the national news gives reports. Chicago may be socked-in with snow, hurricanes and tornadoes tear apart the Southeast and Midwest, and everybody’s national weather map has a pretty little rain animation permanently-glued atop the Pacific Northwest, but you almost never hear anything about Northern California. This is why most people don’t know what good internet-based resources we have around:

Paul Grosso’s Weather Page has been steadily providing accurate information from a variety of sources for over 10 years now. It used to be located on Paul’s personal webpage at Sonic.net, but has since graduated to its own domain name and everything. Not the prettiest page in the world, but a great resource. Amongst other things, he provides a great cross-section of North Bay river-gauge graphs.

Speaking of Sonic.net, they’ve recently made available weather.sonic.net which gives information from right there at their corporate HQ on the West edge of Santa Rosa. In addition to providing your typical temperature and wind information, this provides a handy hour-by-hour look at the rainfall during an interesting week such as this.

Well, here’s to hoping you have a dry place on high ground, and a happy new year, folks!