So just where is this Valley Center place anyway?

We have recently moved to Valley Center CA, and I am finding (not surprisingly I guess) that not too many folks outside of the San Diego region know where Valley Center is. So I made a little map that I’ve shown to some folks to put it in context – thought I might as well put it out here too…

View Larger Map

So there you go - Valley Center. It's a wide sprawling area. Nice and quiet too!

Rain Rain

This was supposed to be one of those huge storms that causes a lot of damage. Didn't really turn out that way. Here's the totals I got from what was supposed to be three storms one after the other this weekend. They were predicting up to 5 inches of rain.

1-5-08 9:30 AM .75
1-5-08 11:15 AM .9
1-5-08 2:30 PM 1.0
1-5-08 6:30 PM 1.05
1-6-08 7:30 AM 1.3
1-6-08 2:00 PM 1.35
1-6-08 2:30 PM 1.45
1-6-08 4:50 PM 1.45
1-6-08 9:45 PM 1.5
1-6-08 11:00 PM 1.55
1-7-08 6:30 PM 2.0
1-8-08 12:30 AM 2.0

It was a good amount - but not what we were all expecting.

A Change in the Weather - Or at Least the Forecast

As is all too common down this way, the forecasters stories of doom and gloom to come the a "Trifecta" of rain storms has turned into one storm with a fair amount of rain, and another coming in that will be just a little rain. Better to be on the safe side I guess, but these guys seem to consistently be off by more than just a little bit.

Anyway - here's the local report. At 6:30 PM we had 1.05 inches. It sprinkled a little then pretty much stopped. It's now just after 12:30 AM and I just heard rain starting up again. Must be the 2nd? 3rd? storm we were warned about getting started up. Supposedly it will be on and off again rain all day Sunday as bands of rain pass through the area.

The Latest Local Report / Forecast

OK, just finished reading the latest predictions (10:40 AM article) from the San Diego Union Tribune (locally known as "The UT").

They are still saying this is just the first of three storms. That the heaviest rains from the first storm are over. Second, stronger storm should roll in this evening - raining on the playoff game. Then a third, colder storm Sunday night (no mention of potential rainfall amounts) that should bring snow to the local mountains.


-- From the article --

As of 9:30 a.m., the La Jolla Indian Reservation had received the heaviest rainfall at 6.5 inches, and nearby Palomar Mountain was close behind with 4.4 inches.

Julian reported gusts of up to 49 mph.

Forgot the Latest Rader Map

Here's the 11:30 AM radar map from The Weather Channel - looks like there is still some action headed our way, but pretty weak throughout the county.

Lots of strong stuff still pounding the Bay Area.

Early January 2008 - First Storm of the Year

I thought I'd try tracking the rainfall from this storm.

Now, you have to be aware that my rain gauge is old, dried and broken from the sun and heat (and dogs running by it) - so if anything my reading will be a little bit LOW, because most of the lip around the top is what has broken off. This is for eastern Escondido CA.

The rain started here about 9 PM, slowly, on January 4, 2008. Picked up throughout the night.
At 9:30 AM on the 4th we have exactly 3/4 of an inch.

I'm thinking that once again this storm isn't going to be as big and bad as they have warned us it will be. It was been big and bad up north yesterday in Sacramento and San Francisco.


Radar image from The Weather Channel at 9:40 AM on Jan 5, 2008.

It looked much worse last evening. Looking right now at northern CA it looks like there is still ice and snow falling. Last night it looked like Yosemite and Tahoe were getting pounded. I have a coworker skiing at Mammoth this weekend - They were expecting 7 - 10 feet of new snow!

Santa Ana winds - Oct 22, 2007 - Witch Creek Fire

Here's a short video that shows how strong the Santa Ana winds were blowing in Escondido the morning of October 22, 2007. This is the same day the fires burned through this very spot.

Quick note related to the fires

Just a quick note. I forgot that not everyone reading these postings and viewing the photos will know the status of us and the house. We are fine. The house is fine. The property burned about 95% - and very close to the house, but it made it. Smoky. Lots of ash in the yard (and some in the house). But we have a roof over our heads. =)

What did us in - October 2007 fires - AKA Lessons Learned

Yes, we had cleared 200 feet or more from the house. We have a fenced area of about 1 acre around the house. That area is mostly dirt. No grass. No shrubs. Trees, all watered. Roses, watered. Two gardens, watered - actually very lush this year.


So what did us in? A combination of two items. One, lots of fallen oak leaves. These are all over generally, but actually mostly cleared out by the high Santa Ana winds. Second factor was a tall palm tree just outside the fence. Damn thing just had to be on the eastern side didn't it.

This tree has been growing for years and has never had the old palm fronds cleared off. You can see in the photos below how this tree looked before and after the fire. These old fronds caught fire, and once they had burned down a bit, they flew off in the wind and flew towards our house like flaming fire grenades. I'm sure many hit dirt and burned out. But quite a few hit oak leaves and started a LOT of spot fires that then spread throughout the yard.

If that palm tree were not there I am 99% sure that we would not have had any fire within that fenced area. I can see all around the outside where the fire came to the fence and stopped.

So what have I learned?
Keep that clear area clear. That means raking up those dry dead leaves too.
And stay away from tall palm trees! If you have them, have the old dead fronds cleared off.
It just might mean the difference between having a home to return to or not.



Before the fire reached us.


Upon returning after the fire.

Some of my October 2007 fire images

I have a ton of photos, mostly post fire, that I have taken around the property. I thought I'd share some of them here.

10-22-2007 7:57 AM - Looking east and a little south towards the Wild Animal Park and Ramona. Was watching this glow all night and tracking the progress of the fire on the CHP Dispatch site - best place I've found for up-to-the-minute information at the begging of an event. Especially at night.


10-22-2007 7:57 AM - My hope was that it wouldn't make it to that ridge above Eagle Crest. Or, that it would pass to the south of us.


10-22-2007 9:15 AM - This photo doesn't really catch the thickness of this smoke at this point. It was all moving as a big single mass that seemed to be breathing. It was freaky.



10-22-2007 9:20 AM - It was getting really think. Hard to see the sun even. Note that white house out on that point - it won't be there by the end of this day.



10-22-2007 9:43 AM - This is one of my "Before and After" photos - this is our small tomato and melon garden by the west fence. Do you love that fancy gate? Those leaves usually aren't there, but the Santa Ana winds coming out of the east had blown those all there.



10-24-2007 3:57 PM - This is the same garden "After" looking from the northern side. The juicy tomatoes survived, but their vines did not. The melons almost survived - but they were pretty cooked.


10-22-2007 9:43 AM - Another "Before and After" set. This is our inner gate with all these leaves blown up against it. Those white things are plastic kitty litter buckets that we use to carry things around. This is a deep pile of leaves.


10-24-2007 3:28 PM - The After shot. Note that the plastic buckets are gone - there is a faint square mark on the ground where each one was when we left. Where the fire didn't outright burn, it smoldered along under the leaves traveling to other areas.



10-22-2007 9:43 AM - There are the trees just south of the house, right next to it. It is hard to see the avocado trees because 95% of the leaves had been blown off of them. Left to right the is the side of a big pine tree that has survived many fires, two avocados, two big clumpy junk trees that we cut down to the ground 11 years ago and they just grew back, another avocado, and an oak in the corner of the image. This view today shows the pine, one of the avocados (trunk burned but should be OK) and the oak. Just a bit different.


10-22-2007 10:44 AM - This is the view from our top gate as we were leaving. The fire had jumped the 15 and the wind had shifted blowing this smoke (and therefore the fire!) towards us about an hour before. In the foreground is our neighbors house - the house made it, that big outbuilding did not. See below for the "After" images.


10-26-2007 12:25 PM - This was the first day we could drive in on the roads. This is the same view as the photo above. Note the outbuilding (in shot below too). A quick glance and it looks like things are in pretty good shape. Looks like the trees are sill all around the house. Our neighbor even told us that we were totally fine, nothing happened - hard to see sometimes till you get close.



10-26-2007 12:26 PM - A little more detail of our place in the background and that burned outbuilding in the foreground.


10-22-2007 11:04 AM - Here begins our evacuation story. One reason we left when we did is we heard on the radio that they had opened up the I-15. We were going to evacuate to San Diego to Jen's parents place.

When we drove by North County Fair there were flames right across the street at the golf place. Scary. Then what we saw was a little troubling. About 200 lookie-loos all over the roads pulled over. All across the bridge over the freeway. Hard to believe these folks didn't have something a little more important to be doing.

This image is from the park-and-ride on the west side of the 15 at Via Rancho Pkwy. This is looking south over the McDonald's. That is the hillside next to the on ramp. Guess what - the on ramp was closed. Traffic was not allowed back on the 15!

So we thought we would wait here a bit and see if it opened up. This is the most direct route to San Diego. At about 10:30 we called our neighbor's and they had just gotten the Reverse 911 evacuation call and were leaving. We never did get a call.


10-22-2007 2:36 PM - We gave up on waiting at the park-and-ride because the ash and smoke were really thick, and we needed to get to San Diego, and we were hungry. We had both trucks - I had the F-150 with as much stuff as we could cram into it and the 3 cats. Jen was in the much smaller Escape with the 3 dogs. Yes, 415 pounds of dog actually fits in there pretty well.

Here are the two trucks sitting in the PetCo parking lot. We stopped at McDonald's for lunch and ran it over to PetCo where they were great. They set up a table for us, we brought all the kids in and sat and at in air conditioned splendor. It was great to get out of the smoke.

I took this shot on a trip out to listen to the radio and try to get an update on the 15 being open. Reports were sketchy, but what I was able to piece together is that it was opened very briefly by CHP, but then Caltrans shut it down till they could asses if the bridge the fire went under was safe.



10-22-2007 1:06 PM - How were the cats taking it? They were a little upset. Here poor Sunshine is getting squished by her big brother Sam - he's an 18 pounder! Poor kids were freaking out.



10-22-2007 3:43 PM - With all that was going on, the oddest part of the day might have been our drive to San Diego. We finally gave up on the 15 opening anytime soon and headed out the 78 to the 5 south. It was like being in a Twilight Zone TV show. It looked like the population of the county was running north up the 5 to get away - and us and 20 other idiots were driving south into the bowels of hell. Traffic was totally packed, stopped in many places, heading north out of the county. I have never in my life had such a wide open drive on the 5. It was eerie.



10-24-2007 2:54 PM - We were able to get onto the property for the first time on Wednesday, two days after the fire burned through. This is from the top of the property on the cemetery land. Remember that white house I asked you to remember from one of the first photos? Right in the middle of this image is the point that house used to be on. You can see all the brown avocados in the valley where the fire burned up through them.


10-24-2007 2:54 PM - This is panned to the west just a little. This is looking towards our house (you can just barely see the roofs on the right). Upper left is another burnt pad where a really nice large home is gone. All these trees in the foreground are burnt. Hard to tell with the leaves still on, but those leaves are all fried.



10-24-2007 2:56 PM - Panning a little more west we see the top corner all burned right up to the cemetery. Trees in front are burned, the ones behind are not.



10-24-2007 2:57 PM - Jen had heard a report to watch out for snakes. That they are common after fires because their habitat it burnt. Well, just as we were getting ready to go through this fence Jen stops us - there at the northern base of a cactus (that's the side away from the oncoming fire two days before) is this rattler. I found one more a few days latter right near the house as I was tearing out fence post footings. It was curled up in a gap between the concrete footing and the soil.



10-24-2007 3:25 PM - Coming onto the property for the first time we saw this along the western edge that abuts the cemetery. All along the border of the property was burned.



10-24-2007 3:32 PM - These used to be pots of orchids. I think the one on the left might come back. Not holding out much hope for the others.



10-24-2007 3:42 PM - This is from inside the fenced area looking north. These oaks in the foreground actually made it through without getting much damage at all. You might see those clear dirt patches in a number of the photos - middle right of the image here. These spots are like ghosts of trees that had fallen before the fire. Where each of these trees had fallen, there was no brush growing, so when the fire burned the downed trunk to a small pile of ash, what was left was these clear spots of bare earth. Kind of odd looking.



10-24-2007 3:42 PM - Another shot of the house down the valley that was lost.



10-24-2007 3:43 PM - The smoldering nature of some of the burned area can leave odd things behind. This is the base of one of those big bushy trees by the house that we saw in a "Before" photo. The base burned away and the smaller trunks fell over, but there wasn't quite enough fire to burn the rest of the live wood. If this tree weren't green I'm sure it would have burnt up. The matching tree was totally burned even though it was as green. It left a big hole in the ground that was still smoldering 3 days after the fire.



10-24-2007 3:52 PM - This was the big avocado tree right next to the house. This tree survived a big fire 13 years ago. 2/3'rds of it are burned away, this last big fell onto the house. Off all the trees and plants we lost this was the one that broke our hearts. It was a big tree with family history - and it was a good producer.



10-24-2007 4:20 PM - Walking around the rest of the property I took a few shots. This is looking down the valley to the east.



10-24-2007 4:22 PM - Higher up on the property looking south-east.



10-24-2007 4:37 PM - Our dog obedience club (the Hidden Valley Obedience Club) were keeping in touch as much as possible this week via our Yahoo Group. This turned out to be a great way to keep in touch with everyone that had access to a computer. Others would call folks and drop in reports on them.

We had to make some decisions about classes that week - this was going to be the first week of classes! No one had any idea if the fire had gotten near the fields, so Jen and I headed out that way to take a look. This is as close as we got. The National Guard was running this road block at the base of the hill leading up to Valley Center. It was something else to see armed military and their equipment in our streets. We couldn't get to the field, but the police told us that the fire had not come down the hill and everything was fine over there.



10-26-2007 12:31 PM - This is the famous corner that many of you have heard about. On the other side of the house the fire smoldered right up to the edge of the concrete. Here it got over this corner of the concrete and stopped about 8 inches from this all wood corner of the porch. Luck for us there weren't any more leaves of plant debris laying here or this corner might have caught, and if it did, the house would have gone with it.



10-26-2007 1:07 PM - This is what happens to innocent hoses.



10-26-2007 1:09 PM - out on the property.



10-26-2007 1:10 PM - this is what happens to PVC pipe as a fire blows through. This pipe had it's top hardware burned off and was pouring our water for two days before we got there and shut off the water. There was quite a pond here till it soaked in.



10-26-2007 1:11 PM - Looking east.



10-26-2007 1:11 PM - Detail of the pipe before I capped it. I thought the way the PVC pulled away was really interesting. Turns out there were two other leaks as well, but not pouring out water like this one.



10-26-2007 1:12 PM - This is four days after the fire, near the broken pipe. Nice to see that all it will take is some water to get things growing again.



10-26-2007 4:14 PM - Here's a lovely shot of me in my clean-up clothes working on this burnt pipe.


10-26-2007 4:24 PM - It was interesting to see how the smoldering fire traveled. Here it had gotten onto the lower fence posts and traveled along that. Just behind the post you can see some of the fried rose plants.



10-28-2007 2:52 PM - Another shot out on the property.



10-28-2007 2:53 PM - This one highlights the contrast between raw un-watered land, and the parklike grounds of the cemetery.



10-28-2007 3:50 PM - This Coke can almost survived.



10-28-2007 4:09 PM - This is some antique farm equipment that we have stored away from the house. Before the fire you couldn't even see these because the bushes had overgrown them.



10-28-2007 4:37 PM - Close up on a fallen tree trunk "ghost".



10-28-2007 5:32 PM - This is what we found all over the property. This is what is left of a standing tree as the fire burned the trunk down underground as far as it could. You can even see that it then burns the big roots of the tree, leaving those holes out to the side.



11-8-2007 12:34 PM - I thought this one was interesting because the roots here were so big that it left behind these big piles of ash in the holes.



11-3-2007 12:29 PM - And to end on some good notes. The kids were just great at Grandma and Grandpa's for the week and a half we keep them there. Here are all three of them lying together in the family room. It was hard on them not having a lot of room to run and play, but they were very good about it.



10-31-2007 12:23 PM - We returned with the dogs on Halloween and were pleasantly surprised to see that the flock of wild turkeys on the property had survived the fire - well, about half of them were there at least. Hopefully they can find enough food to survive the winter.

That's it for now. I will be posting more photos I am sure.