This evening, I snagged one last dry walk for the next day or so. Rain is expected to start overnight as the outer edge of Hilary—the hurricane become tropical storm—blasts through Southern California. As I write, the weather is remarkably pleasant: Cozy muggy and 23 degrees Celsius (74 Fahrenheit).
The Featured Image, of apartment complex BLVD North Park, marks the moment. Vitals: f/1.7, ISO 640, 1/40 sec, 23mm (film equivalent). I used Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra‘s 50-megapixel mode for this one.
Emergency alerts are annoyingly blaring from my phone, periodically. Text message from “SDG&E is calling to urge you to prepare for prolonged outages due to Hurricane Hilary’s impacts”. Yeah, we’re ready. Devices are charged. Non-refrigerated food is plentiful. We have spare drinking water on hand. But these are preps mostly in place, normally.
My wife and I aren’t exactly freaking out over the storm, but people around us are crazy—stocking up on things like toilet paper and water. Eh, it’s a tropical storm. Thirsty? Put out a couple of buckets and collect rainfall! Nature purified has to be better than the pricey bottled stuff sold at the grocery store.
Not trusting the utility to keep the lights on, I ordered from Amazon the Jackery Portable Power Station Explorer 300, which is scheduled to arrive—with the first precipitation—before 8 a.m. PDT tomorrow. The thing will compliment our BLUETTI AC50S 500Wh/300W Portable Power Station, which I purchased more than three years ago (and highly recommend). I would have ordered BLUETTI any model but none could arrive until next week.