Winter Weather Arrives

Winter weather arrived this week. It rained locally and snowed in the nearby mountains giving the area a fresh clean appearance.

Mashups

While researching the topic of "mashups" I came across a site that literally hits close to home. A mashup plotting the San Andreas Fault through my neighborhood. Here's a link to it: http://geology.com/san-andreas-fault/.

If you are unfamiliar with "mashups" you might want to visit the following site http://www.mashups.com/about.htm and scroll down to the portion that discusses mashups from the Web 2.0 perspective.

Sam Racadio Library & Environmental Learning Center

Today marked the topping off ceremony on the construction in Highland for the Sam Racadio Library and Environmental Learning Center. The weather was ideal, the speeches short, and the event well attended. Everyone attending had the opportunity to sign the final steel beam - a nice touch especially for the nearby elementary students in attendance. The Center is being built with a combination of federal, state, and local funds. Federal funding is coming from the EPA. The building meets the federal standards as a silver level green building. To help ease classroom overcrowding the nearby elementary school will move its library into the Center to create new classroom space while expanding their library collection.

Here are a few photos (first photo, Sam Racadio in foreground; second photo Harriet Fouchier; third photo, me; final photo, children from the nearby elementary school):

Wacky Winter Weather - UPDATE

OK, it's now 8:15 in the morning and it is actually snowing even more. I wouldn't call it a blizzard at this point, but it sure is coming down hard. Of course I am speaking from experience as a ex-pat New Englander. The first photo is taken from across the street from our house and the other is our house; click an image to see a large version (remember: it's not blurry, it's a snow flurry).

Burr - Wacky Winter Weather Hits Highland

It's been a wacky winter weather week in Highland. On Monday and Tuesday we had record breaking heat with high January temperatures in the mid-80's. However, just like the old New England saying, "if you don't like the weather, wait a minute" this morning (Friday) the weather took a surprise turn.

In past years snow was able to fall to just below the 2,000 foot level, but never down to the valley floor. Imagine our surprise upon waking this morning to find SNOW at our house! OK, so it's not enough to shovel, but hey it is snow in Southern California. Here are some pictures.









The first image was taken at about 6:30 am while it was still rather dark outside, the camera's flash caught snowflakes falling. The middle image was taken about 30 minutes later. The final image is of our patio (note the snow is not sticking to the warmer concrete).