Hilary Hits California

Hurricane Hilary, downgraded first to Tropical Storm Hilary and now just Post-Tropical Cyclone Hilary (that really rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?), has traveled across Southern California and into Nevada. Tropical storms hitting California are rare. The last was Nora in 1997.

Hilary's main effect in Southern California has been to bring huge amounts of rain. ...Huge by local standards and the fact that it rarely rains in the summer, at all. Some stats I saw in the news:

• Los Angeles had its rainiest summer day on record on Sunday with 2.82 inches of rain downtown


• San Diego had its rainiest summer day on record on Sunday with 1.82 inches of rain which is 10 times the city’s average summertime rainfall


• Death Valley had its second-wettest day in history on Sunday with 1.68 inches of rain. The wettest day in history occurred on August 5, 2022, when 1.70 inches of rain fell.

Added to clarify: These rainfall numbers may not seem like a lot but they are huge for the dry-summer and desert areas of Southern California. Los Angeles, for example, averages 12" of rain a year, and only 0.1" in August. Getting almost 3" in one day in August is crazy. Death Valley averages 2.24" annually. On Sunday they had 75% of a year's rainfall in one day.

These rains have caused spot flooding and debris flows across roads, particularly in desert-y areas. Loss of life seems minimal, and property damage is not overwhelming. Basically the storm's bad enough to muck up roads but not bad enough to destroy home or kill people as long as they hunker down and wait it out before trying to drive anywhere.

Up here in Silicon Valley, which is part of what's misnamed "Northern" California, the effects from the storm have been at most indirect. On Sunday, while Hilary was 350-400 miles away, battering Southern California and the deserts with record rains, up here it was warm and sunny. Temps hit 94° in Sunnyvale. Hawk and I swam in the pool! Overnight strong winds started blowing... "strong" being another relative term. There are gusts up to maybe 50mph? Not enough to be knocking over trees.

Currently Hilary is over central Nevada, about 80 miles east of Yosemite National Park in California. That puts it 250-300 miles due east of us. Given the counter-clockwise spin of weather from cyclones we're not going to see rain, though I expect gusty winds will continue into the afternoon.

Update, 12pm: Okay, so the sky got darker and we've just had some sprinkles here in Silicon Valley. That's an example of how hurricanes and tropical storms can shift weather hundreds of miles away.

Beer Tasting: Second Opinions on Anchor Steam, Four Sixes

I've fallen a bit behind on blogging about my Beer Tasting project. Yes, I'm still trying new beers to continue exploring the range of styles and variety within them. It's just that it's (a) not fast; I only drink beer a few times a week and a lot of the time it's one of my known go-tos. And (b) I've fallen a few weeks behind in writing about news beers I've tried.

This blog isn't about strictly new beers but rather a second opinion on two I've already tried. Well, one of them is mostly new. I'm still on my first six-pack of Four Sixes. Recently I put it head-to-head with Anchor Steam in a comparison that proved surprisingly on-point.



Anchor Steam is a beer I tasted early in this beer tasting project after not having had it for probably umpteen years. It occupies an odd spot in beer varieties as being neither fish nor fowl, as it combines lager yeast with ale-style brewing. When I tried it over a year ago I dismissed it as fair but not good, let alone great. I tried it again recently because with news that Anchor Brewing is going out of business and being liquidated by its owner, I snapped up a few six-packs when I saw them at a local store. I figured it was time for a second opinion.

This head-to-head was also an opportunity for a second opinion on Four Sixes, a newcomer (to this area) I saw for the first time at a store a few weeks ago. I tried a can on its own and praised it as an amber lager, especially for reminding me of Killian's Irish Red, a college favorite I can't find in San Francisco or Los Angeles.

So I put these two together for second opinion, and something surprising happened. The Anchor Steam I'd previously damned with faint praise? It beat the Four Sixes I'd previously praised so effusively!

What happened in this second opinion? Well, Four Sixes still had all the rich taste I noted in my first opinion, but compared to Anchor Steam it tasted like it was just trying too hard. It's like the Four Sixes pumped it full of taste additives and went too far, making it taste artificially rich. Anchor Steam, meanwhile, was like, "Yo, here I am. I'm straight-up beer, same for over 100 years. No pretenses, no apologies."

Now I wish I'd snapped up more of Anchor Steam when I saw the last brewery run hit the store!

Living and the Dead

This weekend was a weird one when I look back on it. It was split between joy of living and sorrow for the dead. Yet as disjoint as those two activities may seem there's a common thread between them.

The dead is my friend Del, whom I've written about many times here. He passed on Tuesday. His memorial service was Sunday. "We should spend all day Saturday and Sunday with his family," Hawk suggested. "No," I responded flatly. "I will spend at most one day this weekend mourning the dead, and since the service is on Sunday it should be Sunday."

Was I being cold by drawing a firm line around mourning? No. My life is too short to pour out days and weeks in mourning. I will mourn the dead and I will support the grieving, but it's not a blank check. There are limits.

Plus, I'll add, it was unclear that they want us there anyway." Del's husband, D., has three housemates. And a friend who regularly visits several days a week. And his parents are in town. And his sister and her husband are in town. And his cousin and her husband are in town. I was sure the house would be full. More well-wishers would be a nuisance, not a help.

So Saturday we stayed around home. Hawk had a friend, Talia, visiting from Maryland, anyway, to pick up her son, Lake, from a summer program at Stanford. We had lunch with Talia then met both of them for dinner Saturday night after Lake finished his last final exam.

In between lunch and dinner, Hawk and I spent a while at the pool. We invited Talia but she was too tired from her early morning flight. She took a nap to be fresher for dinner. Speaking of dinner, it was awesome. The food was great, the company was great, it was great to see Lake as a late teen now after seeing him occasionally over the years since infancy.

Sunday the issue of how much time to spend at the house of morning cropped up again. I repeated my objection about excessive sacrifice and my concern that we'd be more of a burden than a help. We texted our friends to get their opinion, and they agreed. We'd go to their house just before the memorial service to drive them over to it. Alleviating them from having to drive would be a help. Crowding their house all day would not.

We kind of ate lunch at home on Sunday. I say "kind of" because Hawk ate at home while I grabbed a couple slices of pizza and a soda at Costco when I went shopping there. The food was less than $5. At today's prices $5 is closer to the cost of eating at home than dining out, so I'll count that. 😅

After lunch we went out to the pool again. Twice in one weekend, yay!



While the heat of the day had broken by 3pm on Saturday when we managed to get out to the pool, on Sunday we got there before 2pm and it was still hot. In fact I think it was getting hotter mid-afternoon. The day topped out at 94°, I saw later.

The photo above is similar to many I've posted in recent weeks. It also shows that I don't always go beer in hand to the pool. Sometimes I bring Gatorade... or water!

After the pool we cleaned up, dressed in somber clothes, and headed up north to support our friends in mourning. They were surprised to have us at the house an hour early, but fortunately there was not a crowd that point. D's family had all gone back to their hotels to change for the memorial service, so we were able to hang out in a low-key fashion with D and his housemates.

The memorial service was nice. It was hosted at a small restaurant owned by a family friend. It's the same place where Del and D and got married just over 3 years ago. The service was conducted in a low-key Jewish style, as D and his family are Jewish though Del was not. Low-key in this case means there was no rabbi though there were traditional prayers in Hebrew. And brisket was served afterward. 😂

Prior to the service I had an interesting chat with a friend of D's from graduate school. We had an upbeat conversation about how getting older has made us more concerned about spending our time well as we have less and less of it left. I noted that Del's death underscored my thinking on the matter as he was just 6 months older than me. And that brings me back to what I wrote at the top of this blog entry. Sorrow needs a limit. Grieve as you must, but let's plan to pick up the pieces and move on. Life goes on. Let's spend what little time we have finding joy and not squander it crying over the past.