Category Archives: Los Angeles

September 11, 2016 · 22:24

Brush Fire Aftermath

After yesterday’s Habitat For Humanity SF/SCV Key Ceremony, we actually had a second event for the evening.

You will remember that we’ve had some huge brush fires in the area. One such fire was the Sand Fire, which burned in the area around the intersection of the 5 and 14 Freeways, in Santa Clarita and environs. Yes, that would be the exact same Santa Clarita where we’re building those new homes.

While our houses were fine, the Sand Fire ended up covering 41,432 acres. While there were relatively few structures destroyed and lives lost (some of these fires can burn down thousands of homes and kill a lot of people), four of the people who lost their homes were firefighters who were away fighting the fire to protect other areas. Our benefit yesterday evening was to raise funds to help those four families.

In order to get to the site of the event, we had to drive through some of the areas that got burnt. You don’t normally see this unless you go looking for it since the majority of the acreage lost in these fires is in the mountains and canyons. But it’s stark and stunning to see up close after the fact. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to be fleeing this on a narrow canyon road with twenty to forty foot flames shooting up all around you.

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These burn areas are sometimes described as “moonscapes.” It’s easy to see why.

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography

August 28, 2016 · 23:19

An Empty Nest?

No, not us. We already know that we’re empty nesters.

No, I’m talking about Rocky and Raquel, the raccoons that live in our neighborhood, often on our roof under the eaves from the garage.

You’ll recall that Raquel has been cruising about (pictures here, here, and here) for the last couple of months with at least three kits. But ever since we got back from our New York City vacation about two weeks ago, I haven’t heard any of them gallivanting around on the roof.

Tonight when I went to take the trash out, I spooked something large on the roof right outside the door. It was well after dark so I could only see an outline for a second when it was silhouetted against the sky, but there wasn’t much doubt that it was a large raccoon. Later, I’ve heard some movement on the roof, both over by their garage hidey-hole and by where they drink the water that condensates and runs off from the air conditioner.

But I’ve only heard one animal, not three or four.

I’m speculating wildly, but I think it’s probably Raquel and that the kits are grown enough to all be off on their own.

The question is where “off on their own” is. Given that we’ve had this cycle going on for years here, you would think that almost every house would have their own raccoon tenant. But while we do see a lot more than I ever expected to see in the LA suburbs, it’s not exactly a crowd of trash bandits.

I suspect the other half of the circle of life is at work here. We have some big hawks that could easily pick off a cat or a small, young raccoon. We have dogs in almost every back yard and while most of them are just, well, dogs, one of them has got to get lucky and catch a critter every now and then. We have our share of coyotes who roam the area from time to time and they could take down a full-sized raccoon, although it might be a pretty equal battle.

But I think that the biggest “predator” is probably the automobile. One will occasionally spot a raccoon carcass out there among the other suburban road kill. I don’t know what the average life span of a suburban raccoon is, but I’ll bet it would be a lot longer if they learned to stay out of the streets.

Time to put the TrailCam back out there.

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Filed under Critters, Los Angeles

August 24, 2016 · 22:20

Like Sauron’s All-Seeing Eye

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First use a five-year drought to turn everything to tinder. Next toss in any random spark in order to fill the sky to the west of us with megatons of smoke.

Repeat as necessary so there are so many fires burning across the state that they can’t possibly fight them all as aggressively as they would like. This leaves fires like this one that are out in the middle of nowhere in the mountains to just be allowed to burn for the most part while the bulk of the firefighters and planes are trying to save tens of thousands of homes elsewhere.

Sort of a brute force way to get spectacular sunsets, but it seems to be working well!

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography, Weather

July 28, 2016 · 22:45

Late Night Walk

FYI, at this time of night there are a LOT of folks in these parts who don’t even pretend to slow down for stop signs.

Fortunately, these pictures are the result of me playing around with the iPhone camera while I was walking, not because I was running for my life or rolling down the pavement after being bowled over by a BMW doing 80 right through the crosswalk.

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography

July 27, 2016 · 23:12

Walking The Crazy Off

The sky was wonderfully clear tonight after the smoky haze of the last few days (the big Sand Canyon fire is still less than half contained, but they’re getting the upper hand and it’s burning away from civilization and up into the mountain forests) and it was lovely going out for a 22:30 stroll around the block.

Up high in the southwest you can see Mars and Saturn in the head of Scorpius. Jupiter had set earlier (I’ll have to walk off the crazy earlier in the evening tomorrow to see it) but I could clearly see stars down to about magnitude 4, which is pretty good for Los Angeles. No sign of the Milky Way to the naked eye, but I know it’s there.

The skunks and raccoons left me alone and my fellow residents of the neighborhood actually stopped at the stop signs and didn’t run me over. A cat got freaked out because I walked by her wall and a couple of dogs expressed their displeasure with my existence, but that’s acceptable as long as they’re not lose and trying to gnaw on my leg.

The things that had me so frustrated and pissed off were still here when I got back, but I was able to separate them into the things I couldn’t do anything about tonight (they’ll still be here tomorrow) and those I could. I then did the ones I could.

Some days, that’s all you can hope for.

I’ll count it as a win.

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Filed under Astronomy, Los Angeles

July 25, 2016 · 22:56

Sky Dandruff & Super Sunset

I usually leave the sunroof on Hissy open a half-inch or so just to keep the heat from building up when it’s parked for a long period. This morning, even though that opening wasn’t much, I found the black seat to have some white ash on it.

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This evening this translated to some amazing shadows on the white water vapor clouds, being cast by the much darker clouds of drifting smoke.

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Fires like this can be terrifying and enormously destructive, but their side effects are not without a certain beauty despite that.

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography, Weather

July 23, 2016 · 23:04

Brown & Orange Sky

img_9635Smoke from the Sand Canyon fire is rising at the far left, about 20 miles to our northeast. The smoke plume has today blown more to the south than to the east and it covers much of the Los Angeles Basin and beach areas. Once it hits the onshore breeze, it’s scattering back along the coast to the north and west.

Here you can see the brown & orange cloud stretching all the way around to our west. So far the fire has covered over 20,000 acres and is only 20% contained.

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Filed under Los Angeles, Panorama, Photography, Weather

July 22, 2016 · 19:49

Living In A Tinderbox

At lunch I posted this on FaceBook & Twitter:

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I particularly liked the way the “wind chill factor” brought the 108° in the shade down to where it only felt like 102°. And while I might have stretched the facts just a bit with the comment about “2% humidity,” I wasn’t exaggerating much. and the wind was blowing pretty good.

What happens under those conditions?

img_9587Yep, another large brush fire. I had been hearing sirens every five to ten minutes for quite a while. We’re a half mile from a very large hospital (“Hi, Long-Suffering Wife! I can see you!”) and in Los Angeles, so sirens aren’t uncommon, but having that many for that long was.

Someone mentioned they had heard there was a fire up in the Sand Canyon area, and someone else said they had seen it but it was small and should have been put out quickly. Then we looked out the window toward the northeast where Sand Canyon would be.

Well, there’s your problem!

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Sand Canyon is a part of Santa Clarita, which is where we’re building our 78 homes for low-income veterans. As in, where we currently have 28 homes in various stages of framing, roofing, plastering, and generally being very exposed to flying embers and debris.

The good news is that our site is about five miles just to the left of where the smoke’s rising, and the wind is obviously pushing it away from us and the city of Santa Clarita, off into the canyons and mountains. That makes it harder to fight and put out, but it keeps lots of houses (not just the ones we’re building) safe tonight.

As I left the office, just after sunset, there were two vastly different views available. To the west, it was a sunset that was a couple of notches above average.

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To the northeast, the pyrocumulus clouds of smoke were still rising, lit by the last fading rays of the setting sun.

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Is it me, or does that smoke cloud look like one of the dwarves from “The Hobbit”?

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Filed under Habitat For Humanity, Los Angeles, Photography

July 19, 2016 · 23:08

East vs West

Simple. It’s been a long couple of days with a growing plumbing disaster, which might actually be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Which will be great if it’s not actually an oncoming train.

To make up work & try to hit deadlines (or at least not miss them by that much) I was at the office late. When I came out, to my right, due east, was:

A honkin’ big full moon tonight, rising over the hills that protect Woodland Hills from Winnetka. (A little humor there, Winnetka – ha, ha! Repeat after me – ha – ha! Very good, Winnetka!

But if I spun around 180°, changing my orientation and my perspective, I saw this:

Clear and a million, accompanied by an almost perfect gradient effect from zenith to horizon and back again..

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Filed under Astronomy, Los Angeles, Space, Weather

June 22, 2016 · 23:59

23:55 Already?

Boy, did THAT day get away from me!

Wanna see how hot it was here on Monday?

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Yep, it’s all that anyone was talking about. At least we weren’t Phoenix.

Wanna know what happens in SoCal when it’s 111°?

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This was about fifty miles away. It was at about 2,000 acres at the time, got up to near 5,000 the last I had heard, and was still only about 15% contained as of this morning.

But it was only a balmy 92° or so today, so that should help knock down the fire.

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Filed under Los Angeles, Weather