Rain is on its way

WEATHER TIDBITS

This year in Laguna has been proclaimed as the year of the fog. I

won’t disagree. Neither will the 195 car owners on the 710 Freeway.

I’ve never seen a year with so much ground fog -- not low clouds;

there has been a surplus of that, too -- but I’m talking just plain

thick ground fog.

We thought 2001 was a record setter until October, and now into

November, so 2002 has made 2001 look good. However, significant

changes may be just around the corner.

Right now, here on Tuesday, Junevember 5, three drought breakers

are poised at lower latitudes to swoop down here and demolish the FOG

MACHINE.

They’re already pushing swells ahead of them. I mean, it’s now the

beginning of the rainy season, so let’s rock and roll!

Normally, November produces 1.25 inches. Here’s a wild stat to put

things in perspective -- the measly 4.42 inches we received all last

season? Well, we got that much between 3 and 5 a.m. on the morning of

Dec. 6, 1997! The water temp that day was 68 degrees?! Now it’s 58? a

month earlier than that! Please legalize El Nino every year, please!

Our wettest Novembers:

1940 ... 10.8 inches

1967 ... 8.11 inches

1965 ... 6.97 inches

1984 ... 6.17 inches

1957 ... 5.15 inches

A violent 7.9 quake hit Alaska Sunday, 75 miles south of

Fairbanks.

Amazingly, only one injury occurred.

In Louisiana, water was seen sloshing out of pools, and lakes had

1-foot waves! And a 4.3 hit the upper Midwest on Sunday night and was

felt in three states! The Alaska quake was the third strongest in

U.S. history, exceeded only by the great Good Friday quake on March

28, 1964 of 8.8, also in Alaska, and the 8.2 to 8.4 in 1906 in San

Francisco.

Our planet receives an average of a thousand 5.0 quakes or greater

each year!

* DENNIS McTIGHE is a Laguna Beach resident. He earned a

bachelor’s in earth sciences from UC San Diego and was a United

States Air Force weatherman at Hickman Air Force Base, Hawaii.