…Comes again so many days!
This is the view of the lake from inside the RV over the past several days.
Last winter was sunny, warm, and dry. This winter is cloudy, cool, and wet. But California needs the rain to repair the devastation of the last decade of drought. Unfortunately, many areas are flooded and mudslides from barren mountain sides are closing streets, especially near Los Angeles.
Jeff and I venture out one cool, windy morning to check out the lake.
So cool… these photos look like they were filtered in black and white! Also notice how high the water has risen at the pier.
This is what the pier looked like in October.
We head southeast to the sandy beach where tent campers and RVs with no hook-ups spend the night.
Erosion breaks down the sand creating watery veins off the lake.
The clouds and wind cast a gloomy shadow across the lake while the sun struggles to take over.
To the west the Ortega Highway is shrouded in clouds.
Then we turn around looking back from where we started, toward where our RV is parked…
The black and white view is gone. The sky shines blue and a rainbow peeks in and out.
According to the National Weather Service, Los Angeles has received more than 13.52 inches of rain between October 1, 2016 and January 23, 2017. That’s a 216% increase from the norm! Floods, mudslides, overturned trees, and deaths have occurred.
The Ortega Highway, our mountain pass lifeline into San Juan Capistrano and the Pacific Ocean is also closed indefinitely. Part of the roadway, about 1.5 miles east of Gibby Road in Orange County, has been damaged due to the recent rains.
ocregister.com
Originally thought to be a sinkhole, city workers from Lake Elsinore say the damage is actually a “slip out”, where water sliding down from the upper slopes pools into a culvert and starts to erode the highway underneath. This undermining of the road bed under the asphalt has created at least a 2-foot void. Further geo-technical assessments will determine exactly how far down the pavement has been compromised. (Lake Elsinore Patch, January 2017)
According to KTLA News, engineers think the damage is even more significant than first believed. Unfortunately, the equipment needed to assess the damage is in Sacramento, CA. (ktla.com)
ocregister.com
wandering gypsy Laurel 