December 31st, 2014
Santa Ana Mountains/Ortega Highway, CA

We had a hell of a storm blow into SoCal on December 30th.  I was awakened by hellacious winds about 3 a.m. on the 31st and couldn’t get back to sleep due to the noise.  At 6 a.m. the I-15 freeway was closed south of me due to 4″ of snow – this area never sees snow at that altitude.  At 7:30 a.m., RMRU was called out to rescue 22 motorists stranded on Highway 74.

I got to fly around all morning with fellow PA Frank Snider, TFO Ryan Burk, and Pilot Mike Calhoun.  You can see the full story art www.rmru.org.

View of the Santa Ana Mountains out the front of Star 94.

Frank marks an abandoned car after we cleared it.

Obligatory helo-selfie.

Nobody needed rescuing in the end, but it was an incredible day to fly around in the mountains.