Tag: weather

November 4, 2026 – The Real OC

November 4, 2026 /

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” – Unknown. I know, you are going to say that was Mark Twain. He certainly said things like that but his own institute denies ownership. It seems to be an evolving quote that different people have said similar things until it got to a quaint, concise and readable quote. Nevertheless the sentiment is true and that is what I want to talk about today.

I am going to admit something. Sometimes I get caught up in stereotyping. It is one of the mechanisms that we humans use to process large amounts of data. It happens when you are ignorant of a subject, you don’t really care about it and you have other over-generalizations overlapping. I am going to give a couple of examples here.

I have primarily been a knowledge worker my whole life. Because I have never really held a job that works outside day in and day out it was my belief that by the time the calendar hits November, it is always raining and wet. Now, I am not stupid, I know that it does not always rain. Since my kids have been little, most Halloween nights have been dry. But, there have been some where it was really raining. Based on that one piece of data, I cannot say with certainty that Halloween will be dry.

When I started delivering Amazon, it was my belief that I was going to be wet everyday. I packed my raingear and mentally prepared. When I look back, there was only two days that I actually got wet and I didnt pull out my raingear. Not because I am foolish but because it really didn’t rain all the time. Was it sunny and pleasant? No. It was often gray and damp. But it also wasn’t full on raining. In fact, I was surprised that it was actually sunnier than rainier.

Knowing that lesson from several years ago, I completely ignored it and thought I knew what living on the Oregon Coast was all about. Because it sometimes rained on my camping trips over the years, because we do get double to triple the amount of annual rainfall than where I moved 40 miles in land I figured that it was always going to be wet.

Before we get too carried away, it is almost always damp here outside of the summer. This October has had pretty good weather, half of the days have been sunny with high temps near 60 degrees. The problem I have seen is that it takes a long time to get to that daily high and the humidity is high as well. As an example, the thermal energy to dry out the grass to mow is never high enough. I end up with wet feet and a plugged mower. But, the grass keeps growing and it is not raining, but sunny.

If it is sunny, then it is going to be windy. That is mostly true. What happens is that as the inland temperatures heat up, it starts sucking the cooler and moister ocean air east. But, what I have observed is that this phenomenon typically starts around 2-3pm. So, if you want to get out on the lake before noon will be calm, albeit cool because it is almost never ‘warm’. Because I live about a mile from the ocean, it is not quite as cool or cloudy or windy then the beach.

I thought that in the wet season (Oct-June) was just that. That is actually not true. In fact because of the summer wind, some of the best and most pleasant days are actually in the wet season. You don’t get the thermal drive in the wet season and because the temperature is nearly the same all year around it can be unexpectedly nice. The real problem is that is difficult to predict any longer than a couple of days in the future.

I have lived in tourists towns before but never during the peak season. I expected traffic to be a headache. What I found was that traffic can be a pain Friday through Monday but being that I live here, I know the tricks to get where I want to go and avoid the highway except when necessary. The town also starts to roll up after 8 PM so the peak traffic hours are 12-7 PM. I can work around that schedule and route so that traffic is not much of a factor.

End Your Programming Routine: The real Oregon Coast has been better than I expected. Things are still damp and mild steel rusts pretty quickly. I haven’t sweat much and I relish those days where I go inland and warm up as well as dry out a little bit but that is only a season. I am looking forward to establishing my beach head here and really starting to take advantage of what is around me in a more meaningful way.

June 13, 2022 – Baseball, Graduation and Better Weather?

June 13, 2022 /

I was looking back on the years and I wax poetically about graduation at some point every year. This of course is the time that it happens. High school graduation was last Friday and the local university graduation was last Saturday. I love the hope that graduation represents. I love the party atmosphere, people seem to genuinely be in a good mood around town.

High school is really a stage gate. We went to some of the recent end of year awards ceremonies where seniors were recognized. Some of them put in a huge amount of time over the years, 1100 hours dedicated to one discipline. There was real emotion about the tenure ending. However, the exuberance about graduating is really like a caged animals getting released.

College graduation has a quite different feel. I would say it is more of a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment. Because everyone has taken a different walk to get there, there is a different level for each person. Some have their parents, some have their kids, some are with friends because the family is far away and some are alone because that is the the way they wanted it. Each person knows that they have put in the work to meet the requirements to graduate. And so a new life begins.

Graduation is the transition between the school year and summer. When I was a kid, summer was the time to play baseball. I would say that it is was my favorite sport at that point, even though I really wasn’t good enough to make the ‘A’ team or the high school team. So, my participation in baseball waned as I got into high school. But, it doesn’t mean that I lost my appreciation for the game.

When I was younger and seemingly had all the time in the world. I would follow baseball. Later, I made attempts at some points but I guess I just couldn’t dedicate all the time. For a year or two we went to five or so minor league games before kids. The local team was a San Francisco Giants Single A team that was chocked full of future major leaguers like Buster Posey, Tim Lincecum and Pablo Sandoval. They tore up the Northwest Summer League. Unfortunately, that league was shut down in 2020 and never to return.

College baseball is somewhat big here as well. The Oregon State Beavers have won three national titles since 2006. I was listening to the Beavers play Vanderbilt last week and between the two schools they had five national titles this century. That is nearly a quarter of all the titles in that time frame.

Amazingly, they got in two games over the weekend (best two of three). Other events were not so lucky. There was an absolute deluge of rain Friday night which forced high school graduation inside. I have sat in the seats when it was raining before. It rained off and on all Saturday making college graduation hit an miss. And, baseball managed to miss it all. Last weekend, they played in rain that I thought for sure would postpone things.

This seems to be one of those years that maybe things will turn around July 4th. In the ten day forecast, I don’t see any highs above 73 degrees with more rain predicted. Yesterday, the high temperature was only 58 degrees. It feels more like Alaska than what we have been used to in the last five years. That being said, I remember a year in the 1990s that we didn’t get a temperature in the 80s until mid August.

End Your Programming Routine: In Oregon, you can’t stop for the rain. You just have to work around it. I guess what I can say is 20-30 years down the road you will remember bits and pieces about the graduation ceremony but not necessarily the weather. So, congratulations grads enjoy your moment and go Beavers.

April 20, 2022 – Seasons back to Normal

April 20, 2022 /

My kids are playing tennis and it is a sport I really know nothing about. What I have learned is that they do not play in the rain. This year, spring has roared back to the glory of being miserable. I would venture to say that a lot of the winter was nicer than it has been since spring break a month ago.

Since One Drive shows me saved pictures every day for the years previous, I am seeing the recent years weather and I can attest that the weather is worse than when I was building in 2020. Things are not all bad, I know that some years we didn’t even hit 60 degrees until June and we have already had a day near 80. Today isn’t all about weather, what I am trying to say is that this weather seems more ‘normal’ than not to me.

These next couple of days seem to get a lot of attention on the getting gardens started. I am nearing the last annual frost date. From what I see, I am likely in the clear but it was below freezing two days ago. If I was ready to get started, then I would be looking to get starts and seeds in the ground soon. I would be remised to not mention the other two 4-20 and Earth Day.

These three dates are all very close together. My friends in college really got into 4-20. That seems to go part in parcel with the Earth Day culture. This is how I associate or keep track of the last frost date. To be completely honest, I didn’t want to simply write about weather and climate and pseudo holidays but to add some filler into the fact that I transplanted my starts in an attempt to get them stronger for when I do plant them.

As I wrote about last week, I had a lot of germination and a lot of subsequent failure. Once I spent the time to actually transplant, I got a much better look at what happened. All five of my tomatoes made it and in fact thrived. Four habanero germinated, two survived, Five jalapeno germinated three survived. Three banana peppers germinated one survived. Four cabbages germinated, three survived. There were other twos and ones, but I only transplanted the possible viables.

This is my continuation of experimentation on seed starting. I know that in years past the roots outgrew the one inch pots so I am hoping that by giving more space I might save some marginal starts. I guess we will see.

End Your Programming Routine: No garden plants do well in cool, dark places. I have seen multiple times when plants get into the ground and the weather warms up that they become vigorous. I suspect it is too cold and not enough light in the basement. I should move them outside but it is really too cold for vigorous growth yet. So, I will keep monitoring and trying little tweaks to see if I can unlock the secrets.