John Lindsey

Giant kelp can grow at the unbelievable rate of 1 to 2 feet per day under the right conditions along the Central Coast, ultimately reaching well over 150 feet in length. From a boat on a sunny day, you could almost watch it grow.

The booming chorus of thousands of high-pitched “kreek-eecks” from a gathering of small but tenacious Pacific tree frogs has filled the entire Avila Valley over the last few nights.

For more than 120 days, the USS Estocin, the frigate I was stationed on in the early 1980s, was haze gray and underway, sailing back and forth between the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea without a port of call.

It’s been dry, really dry. San Luis Obispo has only recorded 0.18 inches of rain since Nov. 21. According to rain records from Cal Poly, the official home of climatology for San Luis Obispo, December through January is approaching the driest ever. The records go back to the 1860s.

The earliest writings from ancient civilizations have told stories of huge waves damaging or sinking ships. Not even modern technology is immune from Neptune’s wrath.

East of the Rocky Mountains, 2011 was an awful weather year. Severe weather events started New Year’s Eve as tornadoes ripped through Arkansas and Missouri and continued through a fall marked by a series of wild weather episodes.

You may have heard the sound of rustling bells and hoofbeats on your roof last night as Kris Kringle made his rounds from his home in the far north in a land of perpetual ice and snow.

The spread of personal wireless weather stations that are connected to the Internet has revolutionized weather observations. These home weather stations are affordable, reliable, accurate and can be placed almost anywhere.

The clear and still nights over the past week produced near perfect stargazing conditions. After the bright glare of last week’s moon descended below the horizon, the Milky Way resembled a backbone stretching across the night sky.

I knew it was bad when I saw the photographs of overturned semitrailers near Cajon Pass in San Bernardino County. I was stunned to see concrete light poles cracked in half by the wind’s force in Los Angeles County.