Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
The Forde Files No 138
Tina Fisher Cunningham
Two snowstorms blanketed the Tehachapi area like holiday bookends a week apart at the tail-end of 2016 -- one starting just before Christmas Eve morning and one on New Year's night, ushering in both festive days on a palette of dazzling white. Rather than being light and dry and forming a winter-long base, the Tehachapi area snow typically is wet and, in the absence of sustained freezing temperatures, melts quickly. According to the weather web site Mountainbase.com, located at Oak Knolls in Golden Hills, the lowest temperature for the month of December, 2016, was 26.8 degrees Farhenheit at 3:30 a.m. on Christmas morning. New Years day checked in at 30.2 degrees at 3:00 a.m. Warmer bright sunny days followed both snowstorms. When lower temperatures and high winds accompany the snow, the weather can be harsh-- but it's been a few years since the CHP closed Hwy. 58 due to such icy conditions that their own vehicles were blown across across the road. Conditions at the higher elevations -- up to 7,000 feet at Bear Valley -- are more severe than at the 4,000-foot valley floors. Snow and rain ultimately replenish the groundwater basins that provide much of the water for the Tehachapi valleys. Other water arrives in Tehachapi via pipeline from the State Water Project canal in the Central Valley that carries water from the melting snowpack in the high Sierras of northern California. Above, the wind farms on the rolling hills of the eastern Tehachapi Mountains, elevation approximately 4,500 -4,700 feet, on Jan. 1, 2017. In the new year, snow has given way to welcome rain, and there is more to come.
Hi Frosty – Above, Scott Petersen and his daughter Cobi, 7, built a snowman with personality in their front yard, Jan. 1, 2017, to welcome the new year.
A high-tech world – At the Greater Tehachapi Economic Development Council Jan 4 meeting at the Tehachapi Police Department Community Room, Kern Economic Development Corporation President and CEO Richard Chapman said his organization is working with a group called STEMJOBS to promote employment in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. He said the group will hand out awards called “Stemies.” He said “Steamies” (adding an “a” for art in the current usage), would not be appropriate.
Real estate – Real estate agent Teri Juergens reported that as of Jan. 4, there were 160 homes on the market in the Tehachapi Multiple Listing area. There were 506 lots on the market, the high volume a reflection, she said, of the state of California’s tightened and more costly building regulations. There were five income properties on the market, 77 homes in escrow and 194 homes sold this year, compared with 157 last year. “It’s busy,” she said. “Families are moving from Bakersfield and Lancaster. We’ve got growth.”
Water board appointment – The Tehachapi-Cummings County Water District board of directors appointed Rick Zanutto to fill the seat vacated by David Hadley. Zanutto is a retired printer who farmed in Walker Basin for 22 years and served eight years on the Golden Hills Community Services District board of directors. The board is still negotiating with Operations Manager Tom Neisler on a general manager contract, hence Neisler’s designation as acting manager.
