[450knotOffice]

OK, I just finished a few days of piloting a jet up and down our lovely state of California and here's what I can tell you. The rain is coming down here to SoCal guys and it is going to be very, very wet and windy.

The winds are blowing briskly out of the East-Southeast right now at LAX which has caused the operation there to switch to an East departure and arrival flow. This does not happen unless something big is on the way. The clouds are layered right now all the way up to Flight Level 370, where it's clear above (for the most part). However, as we flew Northwestward toward the Bay area earlier today the layered clouds became a solid mass from basically 2000 all the way up to FL370 to FL380 (to put that into perspective, that's a solid mass of clouds almost seven miles thick from top to bottom with no layering whatsoever). The jetstream up at altitude is fairly strong over the whole state right now at between 85 knots here in the southern part of the state to over 105 knots over central and northern California. The ride at all altitudes within the clouds is continuous light to moderate turbulence and doesn't abate until just about FL370. The weather in NorCal is as bad as I've seen it in a few years with winds at the ridge level over the Santa Cruz mountains near 80 knots, which created a he11 of a bad ride for the descent and landing into San Jose today for all of us stuck flying in it. In fact, at 1000 feet above the surface, we had 50 knot gusty winds (and heavy rain) blowing at about a 45 degree angle to the runway heading which caused 20 to 30 knot negative airspeed loss wind shear almost all the way down the runway. On the surface, the winds were still blowing hard from the south at 25, gusting to 43 knots (over 50 statute miles per hour) It was not a fun arrival or subsequent departure today to and from the Bay area. Turbulence today was very heavy moderate, bordering on Severe at times. For those of you who are pilots, take a look at some of the PIREPS for SJC today.

Additionally, the Barometric pressures there a few hours ago were about 29.56, which is pretty darn low and is indicative of a strong, deep, well organized low pressure weather system. It'll probably go even lower.

All of this is headed our way and should get here later this evening and tonight.

This is the real deal.