By Michael Dorausch, D.C.
Los Angeles, California: Hurricane strength winds, mudslides, and as much as 10 feet of snow is not typical weather for any part of California. A series of storms have began hitting the state, with the northernmost parts of California experiencing the most rain and heavy winds. At the time of this post it’s raining in Cloverdale, Fairfield, Sacramento, Stockton, San Francisco and surrounding areas. Parts of Los Angeles are experiencing scattered showers.
With news of massive storms hitting the coast of California, people undoubtedly are going to be searching for information related to local weather patterns, road conditions and flight related data at potentially affected airports. I compiled a list of resources to help those of you searching weather-related information, which has been made available below. Websites like the one for San Francisco International Airport are experiencing large amounts of traffic, so don’t be surprised if such websites are temporarily unavailable. News from San Francisco Airport suggests that: Due to current weather conditions many flights are delayed. Please contact your airline for flight status.
The web provides us with opportunities to receive up-to-date information regarding whether patterns throughout the nation. The image to the left is an enhanced water vapor map of the nation provided by satellite. You can view an animated version of that map here.
You can also view an animated version of an enhanced infrared national satellite (see that here) which shows visible weather patterns affecting the western coast of the United States. The satellite images typically show clouds and cloud movement and they are often compiled from data received via a number of government satellites.
You may or may not be aware of this, but search engines like Google now provide weather information directly in search results, making it easy to quickly view California storm related information. Using a combination of the city or region you’re searching for and the term weather, you’ll typically get relevant results just below the search bar. Some examples that will likely be popular searches this weekend include: california weather, sacramento weather, san francisco weather, palo alto weather, and west los angeles weather (the coastal region of Los Angeles).
While using a keyword and city combination will provide relevant weather data, searches such as “bay area weather” will not typically provide the same results. However, thanks to Google’s 2007 algorithm changes, news results are now incorporated into regular organic search results which typically will get you relevant news data above the fold for searches such as bay area weather. Performing a search such as california storm should work as well (note: relevant results are usually only provided when there is actual news to report – otherwise expect to see standard organic search results).
Using various web sites, you can also get map data for the California coastline. From weather.com we can get current map data for cities and regions such as San Francisco, San Diego, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz.
If you are traveling in and out of California here are some airport web sites that will likely come in handy during the next few days. Sacramento Airport, San Francisco International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport and Oakland International Airport.
For those of you on the ground it may be a good idea to check with the California Highway Patrol traffic information page.
If you’ve ever been to the state of California you may have noticed that we typically handle rain and snow different than people in other states. I grew up on the East Coast so heavy rains, lots of snow, and driving on ice are not new to me. However, living in Los Angeles, we may experience as much rain in some parts of California this weekend as those cities have received in all of 2007. I’m as much out of practice at driving in bad weather conditions as any other local. Let’s be safe.
Slips and falls, car accidents and injuries, and lots of heavy sandbag lifting is inevitable over this stormy California weekend. California Chiropractors urge you to use caution when lifting, watch out for slippery surfaces, and please drive responsibly and carefully.
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Michael Dorausch is a chiropractor practicing in the Marina del Rey – Culver City area of Los Angeles, CA.
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