Please allow me to interject my feelings about Mother Nature

Thursday in DFW sounds like it's just gonna snow too hard for it to melt, but Friday will be 50 and sunny all day so I'm not concerned about Jerry getting his parking concession cut.

 

How crap, this Palisades fire in LA is crazy.

 

If I ever get rich enough to live in Cali, the house I build will not have one splinter of wood inside or out.

 

Weather jockeys all over the place in Texas, and I can't say I blame them because a degree or two makes all the difference. The models change by the hour and we are right on the boundary.

It's going to snow to some extent where I live, but the forecasted temps seem to indicate it won't stick. In DFW proper it'll either be a cold rain or a 12-inch hammering. Thankfully they aren't saying ice.

 

I have lots of friends in Pacific Palisades. One report said that Palisades High is gone. It was used in several movies I've seen. The school produced, among others, Steve Kerr, Kiki Vandeweghe (plus his volleyball brother Bruk and Olympian swimming sister Tauna) and Jay Schroeder, plus half the 1984 Olympic men's volleyball team. I covered a lot of games there. Lots of actors played sports there or had kids who played sports there -- Don DeLuise's son, Lurch's son, Forrest Whitaker ... so many. Prominent female baseball writer Lisa Nehus Saxon is a teacher there now that she is out of the newspaper game. The evacuation notice extended to northern Santa Monica, which borders on Riviera Country Club. I have a ton of friends who grew up on La Mesa Drive, which is the northernmost street in Santa Monica that has houses overlooking Riviera. None of the coverage I saw mentioned Riviera.
It's been a tough night seeing familiar places burn down.

 

There are now four fires in the LA area, including one in Altadena threatening Pasadena to the 210 Freeway (just north of the Rose Parade route, to orient you), and two other smaller ones, at least as of their first report. But the Pacific Palisades fire was first reported as 220 acres and is about 3,000 acres now, going all the way across Pacific Coast Highway and taking out some homes on the beach. The 50-80 mph Santa Ana winds are not to be trifled with.

Here's the order of battle:

• Palisades: Mass destruction. Now evacuations in Santa Monica
• Eaton: Destroying homes in Pasadena
• Sylmar/Hurst: Evacuation orders issued. “Rapid rate of spread”
• Tamarack: Near I-5 in Sun Valley neighborhood

Few in Los Angeles are sleeping tonight. LA TV stations and KNX Radio have been wall-to-wall since it started.

 

Watched some coverage of this on NBC Nightly News last night and the people abandoning their cars, trying to escape from Pacific Palisades, it looked like a scene straight out of The Last of Us.

 

My God that’s horrible. I am so sorry. SoCal SJ please stay safe.