The Mid-West & East Coast are being slammed. In Australia there is a cat-5 cyclone bearing down on Queensland. My brother lives in Cairns, I'm hoping to get some pics/video to share.

The Oz cyclone may be the largest in living memory. 200 mph winds, possibly as much as a meter of rain. That's almost 40 inches.

Here, the storm is already pretty big. Do WZ board members have pictures & video to share?

We moved from Vermont to the Eastern Sierra 5 years ago, and have family and friends there. The CBS affiliate in Burlington has a meterologist with a great sense of humor - he has devised something he calls a "Doose-O-meter", a circular device with an arrow points to various slang phrases indicating the strength/weakness of a storm.

Got an email earlier from my son who said the Doose-O-meter is pointing toward "A Real Doozey"...

These are some of the times I dislike living in California. I love a raging storm and we don't get much of anything in Bakersfield.

Pictures here on Plane Talking. Look at the size of the storms from the sat images!

Just heard from my brother in Cairns via another brother in Brisbane. All well, pretty horrific. No photos as yet - maybe later.

This just in...

I believe Bakersfield is well known for its raging fog.

CaT

And that's just winter.

In summer I seem to recall it's known for the worst air pollution in the country.

Not anymore. The expansion of the city as driven all the farms further and further away which has kept fog levels down.

As for smog yes we still compete for the #1 worst air in the nation.

Valley fog is usually a lot more of a widespread regional phenomenon than that, and usually when I look on a satellite image of California when there is valley fog, the entire southern half (or thereabouts) of the Cental Valley is socked in, including Bakersfield and all its environs.

CaT

Actually what you see from satellite views is the bathtub effect, which is the high fog and inversion layer. That is the stuff that prevents any and all sunshine from coming through all day. It is a dry weather high pressure pattern that brings that. We can have that without the ground fog.

See my San Joaquin Ocean picture:

Once we descended down through that stuff, there was no ground-level fog.

RP is right, that we don't get the bad fog within the city limits like in the outlying areas. Apparently there is enough heat generated from the homes and increased traffic that less ground fog forms.

The ground-level Valley fog that causes the freeway pileups forms at night, more in the outlying areas, and clears up every day by mid-morning. It is worst the week after rain comes through.

Interesting. Thanks for the updated info.

Click on first image to see Central Valley morphing fog.

http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/archives/7364

John