Over the years we have experienced lots of weather. While we don’t get the snow those up on Mt. Hamilton do, we do get a lot of wind and rain in the winter. The rest of the year, things are usually sublime–warm but not too warm. A bit of a breeze and sunny–lots of sun.
But winter can be rough. A while back, the Ambient weather station we installed right after moving in became rather unreliable. We had replaced the solar panel, but birds liked to sit in the rain gauge funnel so it wasn’t always gathering accurate data. We replaced it with a Tempest unit, which has performed quite well. The app is quite nice, and I set up an old iPad on the kitchen counter next to where we charge our phones to run it. That iPad also has a bunch of apps for the house, providing easy access to thing management: Apple Home and FindMy apps, and apps to open/close the garage doors and manage the heating/cooling, water heaters, and so much more. In the winter I use that iPad to monitor the winds. They can get a bit extreme (below).
The wind here can cause all sorts of havoc. There was the time the wind blew a tree branch down but not completely down, or when the sickly parchment tree by the front gate was demolished and we moved it with Bambi, then another parchment tree was taken out, along with a chunk of house yard fence. My personal favorite, though, was when we redid the landscaping out front, and the contractor’s Porta-Potti(TM) got blown across the driveway not once, but twice; we felt so bad about the guy who had to service it.
Then there is the odd chunk of tree that is brought down, which actually is a pretty rare thing since our regular tree service comes in every year before the worst of the storms and they do great work. The wind is pretty strong though, and sometimes we have to go outside and unbend things. (Although some things take their bending in stride, as it adds to their character.)
I’ve also posted some interesting vids over on my IG, like this one, or this one.
I have to remind myself that this house was built in 1966-67 and has survived this weather ever since. That helps–a little.