On Tuesday 7/23/2024, we drove to the Green Creek trailhead by early evening. Areas east of Sonora Pass along SR108 were increasingly wet. Along Green Creek dirt road were large numbers of scared in head lamps hopping California toads, anaxyrus boreas halophilus, that were obviously on the move at night for mating given the monsoon storms.
This shows NA weather on 4am PDT 7/23/2024. Note low pressure over northwest that would be pushing southeastward moving high pressure monsoon flows east.
http://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/dailywxmap ... 40723.html
On Wednesday 7/24/2024 two of us backpacked to the northeast end of East Lake where we set up in dense tall forest midday to avoid imminent storms. Blue skies in morning but increasingly windy with cumulus build-ups. As forecast, afternoon monsoon thunderstorms developed with much lightning raged continuously without breaks for about 4 hours but cleared after 6pm. Very windy all night with winds changing from south-southeast to west.
http://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/dailywxmap ... 40724.html
By Thursday 7/25/2024 NWS spot location forecasts had been for clearing skies with much less wind but instead was partly cloudy and windier with strong downdrafts. We continued to our planned base camp south of East Lake, setting up in well wind protected site. Very windy all day then all night, so I knew forecast was wrong with the northwest low much stronger than expected moving further south.
http://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/dailywxmap ... 40725.html
Friday 7/26/2024 was continued windy gusty, slightly less than Thursday, with mostly blue skies. Was able to work most planned photo locations waiting for wind lulls.
http://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/dailywxmap ... 40726.html
Saturday 7/27/2024 had super clear atmosphere with saturated blue skies but continued quite gusty wind with down drafts. We aborted plans for that day and packed up at sunrise then backpacked down to heavily wind protected pleasant forest creek area well below Green Lake. Lake had had dozens of people camping at its heavily used southeast shores that had gusty wind flowing down Glines Canyon then across lake.
http://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/dailywxmap ... 40727.html
Winds finally subsided by midnight with minor breeze at dawn. Note how northwest low continued to move east-northeast. Sunday 7/28/2024, took some early photos at Green Lake and then we hiked out the 2 miles in a bit less than 2 hours. Will provide a trip report later after working 24gb of 800+ image files.