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Weather & Climate

A collection of 289 posts

July Vineyard Photo Album

After a couple of weeks of seasonably warm weather (days in the 90s or low 100s and nights in the 50s) we had a break in the heat from a cut-off low and a resulting deep marine layer. Sunday and Monday we had fog in the morning, breezy, cool days

An excellent beginning to the growing season, strange smoky weather notwithstanding

With two big fires burning to the north of us in Monterey County over the last few weeks, including the Indians Fire that has burned nearly 60,000 acres in three weeks and the Gallery Fire (just south of Big Sur) that has burned over 13,000 acres since Saturday,

A bullet dodged: only minor vineyard damage from a serious California-wide frost event

California was badly zapped last week by a deep trough of cold air that spread south from Canada and brought freezing nights from Mendocino to Santa Barbara. The perils presented by this frost were made more severe by the fact that it followed a week of unusually warm weather, where

Frost Damage

As I'd feared when I posted about the early budbreak a week or so ago, we got a frost Sunday night. And not a little one, either. It got down to 27 degrees at the weather station in the center of the vineyard, which means that the coldest

Budbreak is terrifying (but hopeful)

With the recent warm weather, we're starting to see budbreak in our earlier-sprouting varietals, particularly Viognier and Grenache. A Grenache vine pushes, below: As usual, we're seeing earlier budbread at the tops of the hills, which are less often frosted because the cold air slumps down

Cut-off low: My new favorite phrase

This winter, we've already had two occurrences of storms caused by cut-off low pressure systems, where an area of low pressure becomes detached from the Jet Stream and meanders around, often for several days, spinning and (when moisture is available) sending multiple bands of clouds and precipitation onto

Pacific Storm Recap & Photos: Saturday, January 5th

Happily, we've emerged largely without damage, but with a welcome replenishing of groundwater. The one-day rainfall totals at Tablas Creek were a whopping 6.02 inches, the most we've ever measured in one day since we installed the weather station seven years ago. The damaging winds

Pacific Storm Update: Friday evening

As of 5:00pm, we'd already received 4.94 inches of rain out at the weather station in the middle of the vineyard. The forecast suggests it's supposed to continue raining hard through tonight, so the estimates we'd had of nearly 10 inches now

Pacific storm update: Friday mid-day

We're in the early stages of one of the strongest storms to hit Paso Robles in decades. We're expecting between 6-12 inches of rain at Tablas Creek, with winds upwards of 60 miles per hour. We're closing the offices and tasting room at 1PM

Rainfall microclimates in Paso Robles

Appellations are by nature generalizations. You do your best in defining one to understand macro-level differences in soils, climate and rainfall (the three components which together give a place its signature). And, practically speaking, you won't ever be able to delineate an area that is absolutely uniform. Even