The clatter of rocks falling from the sky woke us up around midnight on Thursday night in Montara. Another reader reported hearing them coming west down the street, "Awesome!"

The National Weather Service is forecasting particularly foul weather for the Coastside for Sunday night and on Monday. The forecast includes rain, gale to storm force winds, very steep seas, a high surf advisory, and a coastal flood watch.

The powerful storm and its swells are coming from the southwest. This will expose ports—such as Princeton Harbor, which is normally sheltered from storms from the northwest—to very steep seas .

The strong winds, steep seas, and particularly high tides may produce some coastal flooding and beach erosion, particularly on south to southwest facing beaches

Click "read more" to see the bulletins from the Weather Service.

Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) has acquired Green Oaks Ranch, a 13-acre former dairy ranch and flower farm near Davenport, 13 miles south of Pescadero on Highway 1. The ranch is a mile north of the main entrance to Año Nuevo State Reserve.

The property dates back to the early 1860s and is a nationally registered historic landmark. POST also acquired a three-year option to buy land offered to neighboring nonprofit Pie Ranch, LLC., a center for youth education that promotes sustainable agriculture, community food security, nutrition and land conservation.  This gives Pie Ranch more time to raise the $2.5 million they need to buy the land for their educational program.

Click "read more" to see POST’s press release.

I found these beautiful shots by Georgia Stigall of snow on Skyline Blvd. on Friday at Robert Dougherty’s La Honda Voice weblog.  Be sure to click these to see the larger versions.

"Emerging from a canyon and the mountain range overlooking Half Moon Bay, Pilarcitos Creek Watershed is a source of our water supply, essential to our local economy, and central to the health of our coastal ecosystem." That’s the headline on the flyer for the Pilarcitos Creek Water Forum on Sunday, February 26.

The creek meanders through the middle of Half Moon Bay—alongside the new park site, under the Main Street Bridge, under Highway 1 just south of Strawflower Village, and past the SAM sewer plant. This month, the creek sends a powerful stream of fresh water into the ocean at Venice Beach.  Other times, the stream bed is dry.

The Pilarcitos Creek Advisory Committee and the Committee for Green Foothills are holding the event at the Ted Adcock Community Center in Half Moon Bay, from 2pm to 5pm.  The organizers plan to highlight the watershed’s natural history, the progress of the Committee’s restoration and monitoring projects, local watershed management, and opportunities for getting involved in preserving Pilarcitos Creek Watershed.

This event will be followed two weeks later by field tours of creek restoration sites on Saturday, March 11, at 10 am & 1:30 pm. The tours will be held the next day if there is rain. Space is limited. Details and registration signups will be available at the Forum.

For more information:  Call (650) 738-5871, or email [email protected]

The National Weather Service says that it could snow on Skyline this week, or even at lower elevations on the Coastside.

Chilly weather is expected to continue into the weekend as a cold low pressure system drops southward out of the Gulf Of Alaska and into northern California. This will bring increasing chances of showers beginning thursday night and continuing through Sunday with with snow levels down to 2000 feet…Possibly lower. Accumulating snowfall could impact higher elevation roadways across the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Area. Roadways such as Highway 29 in northern Napa County…The summit of Highway 17…And Skyline Boulevard in San Mateo County could be impacted...Especially Saturday and Saturday evening. With this unusually cold airmass in place…A few snowflakes will not be out of the question closer to sea level.

The elevation at Skyline is only about 700 feet.

The San Francisco garter snake and the California red-legged frog may be mortal enemies in the wild, but they’re joined by their need for the same enviroment in San Mateo County. The County Times looks at continuing efforts to protect these species by protecting their homes, the results of which are difficult to assess.

Saving the snakes and frogs requires controlled burns on the San Mateo coast and the creation of critical habitat, a formal designation that an endangered species exists in that area. In 2004, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service created two wetlands to help frogs breed at Mori Point in Pacifica. Biologists immediately found red-legged egg masses in one of the new ponds.

It will be interesting to see what the new Caltrans-created wetlands in Montara bring.

Half Moon Bay State Beach will soon be offering training for new Plover Watch volunteers.

Volunteers make a difference.  Along the San Mateo County coast, trained volunteers play a major role in protecting the Western Snowy Plover—a small shorebird that lays its eggs on the sand at a few California beaches every summer.

The snowy plovers, which are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, may be found on several local beaches during the winter months.  In the spring and summer, the plovers congregate on the few beaches that can provide safe nesting sites, including Half Moon Bay State Beach—a busy recreational beach where a protected habitat is set aside for the plovers to nest.

Volunteers in the Half Moon Bay State Beach Plover Watch program monitor the beach to help protect the plovers and point them out to beach visitors. Public education—including presentations for school groups—is an important part of the volunteer program.

When volunteers find a plover nest—well-camouflaged eggs laid in a depression in the sand—they call in help to build a wire “exclosure” around it to prevent predators such as ravens and gulls from taking the eggs.  When the eggs hatch, about four weeks later, the plover chicks are cared for by the male parent for almost a month until they can fly (fledge).  The female parent often leaves for another beach where she will breed with another male.

The chicks are particularly vulnerable during the weeks before they fledge. They feed themselves by foraging for small insects and crustaceans up and down the beach and easily can be lost to predators or through human disturbance.

Volunteers found five nests at Half Moon Bay in the summer of 2005. Although that is a fairly typical number most years, there have been as many as 13 to 21 nests in other years.  Anywhere from one to ten chicks have fledged at Half Moon Bay in recent nesting seasons.

The Plover Watch volunteers help make it possible for people and plovers to share the beach.  Without the work of the volunteers and the cooperation of visitors to the beach, it is doubtful that the snowy plover would still be nesting at Half Moon Bay.

The state park’s Plover Watch volunteer program is seeking more volunteers to monitor and protect the snowy plovers and their habitat.  During the plover nesting season, from March to September, volunteers spend at least four hours per month on the beach.  They receive ongoing natural history training, free passes for local state parks, and the satisfaction that they are helping preserve an important part of California’s natural environment.

A free, one-day training workshop for prospective Plover Watch volunteers will be offered at Half Moon Bay State Beach, 95 Kelly Avenue, in Half Moon Bay, on Saturday, March 11, from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.  To register for the workshop or for more information, call Ranger Nelle Lyons at (650) 726-8804, voice mailbox 7#, or e-mail [email protected]

The Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) has acquired a 260-acre property they’re calling Bluebrush Canyon, a mile east of Highway 1 along Purisima Creek Road, "which curves up a rugged valley through old farmsteads and scrub-covered knolls". Purisima Creek runs along the northeastern portion of the property, while Lobitos Creek defines its southwestern edge, adjacent to POST’s Lobitos Ridge and Lower Purisima Creek properties.

POST say that that acquisition will remove the potential to build two houses on the property, protect the pastoral character of the Purisima Creek Valley, and link to a nearly-completed trail corridor from Skyline Ridge to the Pacific Ocean, along Lobitos Ridge.

Click "read more" to see POST’s Press release.

The Sharp Park Golf Course in Pacifica has been mostly closed for more than a month, reports the Pacifica Tribune.

The reason? Rain has flooded the fairway of the fourteenth hole, raising the level of a naturally occurring swampy pond that has been ruled a California Red-legged Frog breeding habitat. In essence, all the holes between the oceanfront berm and the clubhouse are off-limits to humans while the frogs recreate.

Apparently, the berm keeps the pond from draining, which causes the flooding. The Tribune says it’s ironic that the man-made berm has made the pond, which would normally be too brackish, into habitat. But it’s a double-edged irony because the berm was designed to control nature in that spot.