Tag: Snow

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Hazy view of mountains with some snow on top, not much lower down. A city skyline is visible between the mountains and a canopy of trees and low buildings.

From yesterday: the first significant snow in the mountains above Los Angeles this winter, courtesy of last week’s storm.

Unfortunately, it’s almost spring. The weather has already warmed up again. Last week I was wearing sweaters and a medium jacket. Today I’m back to short sleeves, and I had to put the jacket away on my lunchtime walk.

And there’s not much of that snow left today.

KQED has some great photos of snow in the Sierra Nevadas after the same storm. That’s more important, as California depends more on the Sierra snowpack for water during the summer.

They’re expecting another storm to come through next weekend. I guess we’ll see how much snow we get. And how long it sticks around.

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Even in sunny Los Angeles, snowflakes symbolize Christmas and winter. It snows here, what, once every 100 years? (And we're likely to wait even longer in the future.)

Giant LAX free-standing letters, with snowflake decals added to them.

Even in sunny Los Angeles, snowflakes symbolize Christmas and winter. It snows here, what, once every 100 years? (And we’re likely to wait even longer in the future.)

Update: The day before I posted this, KCET ran an article (with a photo gallery) on the history of snow in Los Angeles. It turns out it used to snow roughly once a decade…until 1962. It hasn’t snowed on the plain since. It snows in the higher mountains just about every year, and the San Fernando Valley (higher than the coastal plain) got a snowstorm in 1989. But the LA basin? Nothing in the last 54 years. Los Angeles is about 5°F warmer than it was a century ago. Half of that can be accounted for by the urban heat island effect. The rest is atmospheric warming.

Check out the KCET article – they’ve got some amazing pictures from LA snowfalls, mostly in the 1930s and 1940s.

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I was expecting to see more snow on the San Gabriel mountains after yesterday’s storm, but was kind of disappointed…until it became clear that the bulk of the snow was on another mountain range. Saddleback was bright white, visible shining as far away as Carson as we made our way toward Orange County. Snow not only reached further down the slopes than usual, but even the mountains to the south were dusted with white, which has never happened in my memory. (If I have my bearings right, they’re just west of Lake Elsinore.)

Since we were going to the Irvine Spectrum on our way to our evening plans, I figured I’d try to match some scenic views from years past before we headed into the mall to take the kiddo to the ice skating rink and Ferris Wheel.

Mt Saddleback covered with snow. A Ferris Wheel and parking lot with cars in the foreground.

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The rain on Friday dropped the annual light dusting of snow on Saddleback. I caught glimpses of it while out walking with J on Saturday, but the peaks were still shrouded in clouds. Sunday, however, the sky was almost completely clear.

I kind of wish that sign wasn’t in the middle there, but my Photoshop (well, Gimp) skills aren’t quite up to it. Maybe I’ll give it a shot with context-aware fill at some point.

It was awfully hazy toward the north, though, and you can see the San Gabriels are fading into the haze toward the left of the frame.

These were taken at the same spot as the loooong snowy panorama from January 2008, the Misty Mountains from December of the same year, and the cloud window panorama from January 2010. (I should really just come up with something to tag all the photos I’ve taken there.)