Hello Winter!

Winter finally showed up yesterday. I hope I am not jinxing anything, but we finally got a little rain. I know the rest of the country is probably sick of winter by now, but as usual, California's been languishing in (mostly) dry weather. And in some areas, like mine, our temperatures have been quite pleasant. 

Blue Skies ... for a few hours anyway.

All of that changed over the past two days. We were hit with extremely high winds and record rainfall, for here anyway. We saw 0.75" officially which was a record for the date (according to Miles Muzio, meteorologist). Various parts of town saw a bit more, up to 1.08" in downtown Bakersfield, and Ventura County, home to the recent fires, saw more than 2".

I am not sure Speedy cares about the view.

I got to the barn hoping for massive puddles; we really need the rain. While the horses were standing in some goop, most of the ground was fairly solid, with deeper puddles only in the low places. As always, the arena footing was excellent with only a slight puddle.

That's what you get awith a good base and decomposed granite - drainage!

Knowing that a second wave of rain was due to hit, I saddled quickly and got in a ride. It was not a perfect ride, more on that in a day or so, but at least we got some work done before the next storm hammered us. As I was feeding and watering, the skies grew black as thunder and lightening raged overhead. Thicks drops started to fall. As I pulled out of the driveway, a late afternoon deluge hit dropping another .25" of rain on my side of town.

​Here's hoping (not hoping?) it's dry enough for a ride this afternoon!