Notebook: Summer break for Menlo council Notebook: Summer break for Menlo council (July 13, 2005)

Summer means some free Tuesday nights for members of the Menlo Park City Council; the council meeting on July 12 has been canceled, along with those on August 2 and 9.

In between, the council is scheduled to meet on July 19 and 26 in the chambers at 701 Laurel St. The agendas are not yet final, but the council is tentatively set on July 26 to discuss city plans for analyzing the potential traffic impacts of several development projects in the Linfield Oaks neighborhood.

For more agenda information, go to menlopark.org or call City Clerk Silvia Vonderlinden at 330-6620.

A rich year for rainfall, local man finds

The "rainfall year" ended June 30 and for Menlo Park, it was a very good year, according to one Menlo Park resident.

The year's total of 24.35 inches is nearly 10 inches more than in the previous 12 months, said Bill Russ, who has made a habit of measuring rainfall in a calibrated cylinder at his Cotton Street home and entering his findings in a journal.

The winter in California was wetter than usual -- and dryer than usual in the Pacific Northwest -- because the rain-producing, westerly winds of the jet stream dived south for unknown reasons and hovered over California during the winter, said Mike Halpert, head of forecasting at the Climate Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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