Modern Buddy

They didn't say So Cal would blow away!

Hope everyone is tucked away safe from the Santa Anas.

nothing materialized in San Diego. My spouse and I both decided not to ride based on the warnings, and car pooled. There was barely a breeze yesterday!

Scooted from West LA to Malibu to my bosses house yesterday for a holiday party. Luckily on the way it wasn't too bad, they had warned 60 to 90 mpg gusts in the canyons!! (I took Topanga up - slightly squirelly once I had some elevation ). I know it was devastating to the east. News is filled with how Pasadena got hurt.

Santa Anna winds come FROM the east and head to the ocean. Everything gets screwy, and some places with usual wind had none (like my drive there - eerily calm).

Rode home in 80mph gusts. Pretty hairy. Scooter cover blew away sometime in the afternoon. I think it came down in North Carolina. Riding in the debris the next morning was a whole different adventure. So many cars swerving to avoid things, trees down, traffic lights out, big fun. Calm and sunny today. Ho hum...

Pretty amazing photo gallery from LAT:
http://framework.latimes.com/2011/12/01 ... valley/#/0

I'm not quite as far NE as the worst of it, but there was plenty blowing around here.

One friend in Pasadena was blocked in and stranded yesterday with trees down all around her house, streets closed, no power. Another friend had a tree fall on her car. One more had the front windows of his house blown out when a nearby transformer blew. Several are without power, possibly for an other day or so.

Riding home Wednesday night meant dodging all kinds of stuff flying around and being blown across the road. Mostly branches and palm tree husks. The husks are like big, heavy shavings of wood that are well suited to going airborne and skittering across the ground.

So, yesterday, when my wife suggested taking the car to work, I acquiesced. She doesn't often ask me to not ride, but her concerns were well-founded. All heck was breaking out, as Skootz described.

The winds aren't just affecting SoCal. These are spread over as may as seven states! A friend in New Mexico says they're suffering from it as well and power is out for around 18,000 people in ABQ.

Must be that "California Sunshine Tax" I've heard about....

WOW, couple of BIG trees down. The one even had its Christmas lights on already

The damage I'm hearing about and seeing is a lot like tornado damage, but spread over a much wider area. Tornados are fickle and will destroy one side of a block, while the other is unscathed. This, not so much.

I put together a Flickr gallery of some pretty striking (to me) images:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/82788703@N ... 250039311/

D00d... what happened over there? 0.o

ericalm wrote:Pretty amazing photo gallery from LAT:
http://framework.latimes.com/2011/12/01 ... valley/#/0

Wow...picture 16 really shows how strong those winds were...to rip up concrete with a tree!

One comforting thing I noticed in all these pictures is that the houses seemed to fare pretty well, as long as no trees came down on them.

I should have posted to warn you guys it was coming. we had 102mph recorded here. Semi truck pushed over on freeways. Roofs sucked off of houses. Other parts of the country are used to severe wind, utah isn't. Definitely crazy.
http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&si ... -continues

http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&si ... thern-utah

If your bored. Check out the photo galleries.

Just wondering, are crazy winds/windstorms like this a seasonal norm for the west/midwest?

I'd like to know before I possibly maybe end up over there. Although the chances are much slimmer now.

LunaP wrote:Just wondering, are crazy winds/windstorms like this a seasonal norm for the west/midwest?

I'd like to know before I possibly maybe end up over there. Although the chances are much slimmer now.

Extremely high winds are common along the Front Range of the Rockies in Dec and Jan. In particular in the Boulder area. I lived there for a while and the wind meter at the local airport disintegrated at 95mph once. Those winds are not uncommon, but don't stay away from the west just because the wind blows.

Skootz Kabootz wrote:Rode home in 80mph gusts. Pretty hairy. Scooter cover blew away sometime in the afternoon. I think it came down in North Carolina. Riding in the debris the next morning was a whole different adventure. So many cars swerving to avoid things, trees down, traffic lights out, big fun. Calm and sunny today. Ho hum...

Skootz I believe I have your cover.

We had some winds up this way too, but nothing like you SoCal folks. But I have to say, the next time I use the term "when pigs fly", I'll mean it literally!:)

Raiderfn311 wrote:

Skootz Kabootz wrote:Rode home in 80mph gusts. Pretty hairy. Scooter cover blew away sometime in the afternoon. I think it came down in North Carolina. Riding in the debris the next morning was a whole different adventure. So many cars swerving to avoid things, trees down, traffic lights out, big fun. Calm and sunny today. Ho hum...

Skootz I believe I have your cover.

lol. It's been a great cover for me. Use it in good health. Funny, I've always used a cover when my scooter is sitting out for a long period just to dissuade people from f-ing with it. To leave it parked now without a cover, even if just for week or two while I get a new cover, makes me feel very vulnerable. At work I've taken to parking it right in the middle of a pack of 6 big Harleys, cruisers and sport bikes for protection. They're my scooter bodyguards