The Bay Area and Sierra Nevada up north got hit hard, lots of flooding and power outages, while down here in SoCal we had some mudslides, a couple houses destroyed, some street flooding, and an F-Zero tornado (apparently). So while we act like it’s “STORMWATCH 2014!!!”, the fact is that we’re doing fine and we really, REALLY need the water.
It went through quickly here, and then looked like this just before sunset:
Filed under Los Angeles, Photography, Weather
‘Cause I’m an old phart who needs his beauty sleep. Badly!
I find that getting up early, spending a FANTASTIC day at JPL, then writing about it until 22:30, Tweeting until after midnight, then getting up at 01:30 to watch a 04:05 launch that actually didn’t happen and didn’t get scrubbed until 06:34, and then looking forward to doing it all again tonight leaves me a bit muzzy, twitchy, foggy, and not capable of handling heavy machinery, by which I mean an iPhone or a television remote control. (It apparently also makes me completely unable to avoid incredibly long, run-on sentences.) I also haven’t had a drop of caffeine in about a month, which may or may not be actually a good thing for me, but it doesn’t help the whole “staying awake while walking” thing.
So, if you’re up to it (Sleep is for the weak and the sickly!), you can get up at 6:00 am ET (3:00 am PT) for another try at a 7:05 am ET (4:05 am PT) launch tonight/tomorrow morning. If you don’t have NASA-TV on your cable or satellite service, you can watch online at either NASA-TV or Ustream. You can even watch on your phone or tablet or phablet with free apps for either iOS or Android. And if you don’t have a computer of smart phone, how are you reading this? Huh? Gotcha, smart guy!
See? Punchy. Not even good, funny punchy. 5th grade humor style punchy. Maybe 4th grade.
Anyhow, once they get Orion off the ground, assuming the test goes well, they’ll be splashing down in the Pacific off of Baja about 4:24 later, give or take a couple.
Meanwhile, a pretty thing:
While walking Jessie & checking out our (partial) Christmas light display, I saw that the 12 1/2 day old moon (98% full) was rising over all of the clouds from the big storm we’ve have for three days. The clouds have all moved off toward Arizona and above us it was clear as a bell.
Let’s get Orion (and SpaceX and Boeing and Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic) working so that I can go stand on the moon and take the reverse picture some time!
Filed under Photography, Space, Weather
It doesn’t rain that often in Southern California, but on the other hand, it’s not so rare that every shower is accompanied by the arrival of the Fremen riding sandworms.
The average annual rainfall over the last 100+ years is 14.98″. But we’re in the throes of a massive, three-year drought. The last three years we’ve gotten 8.69″, 5.85″, and 6.08″ of rain respectively. This has left reservoirs dangerously low and over 99% of the state in an extreme drought condition.
We’ve already started to experience water usage restrictions. For example, in LA we can only water our lawns for ten minutes a day, three days a week. If we get into a fourth year of drought, those restrictions will only get more draconian.
But it’s not just lawns and car washing that will suffer. Agriculture is a huge part of the state’s economy, and that’s a hit that we really can’t afford, seeing as how we’re still recovering from the last recession. Furthermore, if California’s farms suffer, so do food prices and availability across the country and beyond.
But the entertainment value in SoCal rain is in the way the media and the fine citizens react to even the smallest amount of rain. I wrote about it in November 2013, which may have been the last time we had any significant precipitation. And yes, that level of hype and overreaction really does happen here.
This storm is expected to last off and on through Thursday, bringing as much as 5″ of rain in some areas, 3″ or so just about everywhere. That won’t break the drought – it would take at least two exceptionally wet years in a row to refill the reservoirs.
But bet on folks all over the state immediately resetting their lawn sprinklers to run twenty minutes a day, seven days a week. And to run them even while it’s raining. While watching 24/7 coverage of “Storm Watch 2014!”
Because it’s Los Angeles.
Filed under Los Angeles, Photography, Weather
I find there’s a lot to like about the American midwest. In particular, I like a lot of things around central Ohio. I like the fall colors. Combine all of that…
This panoramic picture was taken in October, 2009. (Click to enlarge.) My kids had been wonderful enough to send me to a favorite convention (Ohio Valley Filk Fest) in Columbus for my Christmas present. My son was able to meet me there for a great weekend. While there we also went to see the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, at Wright-Patterson AFB. It was a couple of weeks after the peak fall foliage — that time when it’s not quite all brown yet, but not quite still ablaze in fall colors. The last gasp of fall, with winter on the horizon. (Literally, from the looks of it.)
This panorama comes from seventeen images of 3888 x 2592 pixels (10 megapixels each) taken with a Canon Rebel XTi DSLR, combined into an image of 37,158 x 2576 pixels (95.7 megapixels).
It was a grey and gloomy day, and shows well just how flat it can be in this part of the country. Get up on a bluff that’s a hundred feet high and you can just about see into the next state. I might end up liking some place like Ohio, Indiana, or Illinois, but I might miss the mountains at the same time.
Filed under Family, Panorama, Photography, Travel, Weather
You may recall that our current tradition on Halloween, other than handing out candy and trying not to eat more than we hand out, is to bring our telescopes out into the front yard. It’s great to let the little kids look at the moon, Saturn, or Jupiter through a telescope, usually for the first time. And the adults are often more excited than the kids. As for the teenagers — contrary to stereotypes and expectations, some of the folks most excited and wanting to talk about what they saw were high school kids. This is a good thing.
The good news was that yesterday evening, the 30th, thanks to an incoming weather front, we had a spectacular sunset here in Los Angeles.
The bad news is that an approaching front yesterday meant that today, the skies looked like this at sunset:
The two telescopes, the big binoculars, the little binoculars, and the cameras were all ready to go, but after weeks and weeks of “clear and a million” about nineteen days out of every twenty, tonight’s the night that we couldn’t even see the moon except for an occasional fuzzy glowing spot peeking through a thin spot in the overcast.
It was gratifying to note the number of people, a dozen at least, who said, “Where are the telescopes?” or “Isn’t this where you always have the telescopes?” (Yeah, one person said, “Isn’t this the place that has tons of Christmas lights?” Yep, we’re that place too.) For those who are local, the best we could do was to let them know that Halloween isn’t the only night we have the telescopes out and they’re more than welcome to stop by if they see us out there with them.
Finally, the silver lining to all of this is falling right now in the form of liquid, our first measurable rain in at least nine or ten months here. They say we’re only going to get 0.10″ to 0.33″ but the way it’s pouring now, we’ll get more if it keeps up for any length of time. It’s just a tiny dent in the humongous rainfall deficit California has over the past three years, but you’ve got to start somewhere. As they say, it’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Weather
It’s been a long, long day to end a long, long week, leaving me wondering about one of the great questions of the universe:
Do margaritas go well with cookies & cream ice cream?
Inquiring minds want to know. For those of you without margaritas or cookies & cream ice cream, here are some calming, soothing photos of clouds.
Namaste.
Filed under Photography, Travel, Weather
We don’t always get clouds in LA and that whole “drought”-thing isn’t helping. But occasionally, if we get a “storm” moving in (we’re expecting torrential drizzle tomorrow morning) we can get a nice sunset. Tonight was one of those nights.
I was inside and had no idea it was going on, until I happened to look outside and see it looking like we were inside of a pink neon tube. Sure enough!
Now if we could just get something more than an inundating mist tomorrow – we could really use the water!
Filed under Photography, Weather
This evening our planet with its rotational axis offset from the plane of its orbit around the primary star passed through the point where the number of hours of sunlight is the same as the number of hours of darkness. In the northern hemisphere, the days have been getting shorter and the nights getting longer since the summer solstice. Now they’re even. From here, we’ll keep having shorter days and longer nights until we get to the winter solstice, at which point the cycle will reverse. On and on, ad infinitum.
Around these parts, if you’re really lucky (or rich), one of the better spots to watch the sunrise is Malibu. While one normally thinks of the sun setting over the ocean in the west on this coast, the alignment of the coast is such that in the fall and winter months, when the sun is rising in the southeast instead of due east, you can see the sun coming up from over the LA Basin or even the ocean if you’re far enough up toward Point Conception.
These photos were not taken today, I am rarely a morning person who’s up early enough to see the sunrise, I am not rich, and I do not live in Malibu — but I got my MBA from Pepperdine University which is in Malibu, and for whatever reason one morning when we were on campus I saw this. The coastal low clouds and fog lies just a mile or so offshore, the sun rises through them, and it all looks wonderful.
One final note — while today was the equinox and no doubt a holiday for all of the pagans and druids out there, much more importantly, today was National Ice Cream Cone day, celebrating the 211th birthday of the ice cream cone. Now that’s something to celebrate!
We celebrated with Dryer’s Cookies & Cream and Keebler chocolate coated cones — your personal rituals were no doubt different but no less sacred. If you missed today’s celebration, you might have to celebrate twice tomorrow to atone for your lapse in faith. If you celebrated today, you get to celebrate twice tomorrow as a reward for your faith.
As religions go, it’s got a lot of good things going for it.
Filed under Astronomy, Los Angeles, Photography, Weather
Crepuscular is a $5 word that describes rays of sunshine that appear when the sun shines through gaps in the clouds and the rays stand out against a background of darker clouds. They’re also known as “sun rays” or “Jacob’s Ladder.” I prefer the big word, although I probably can’t pronounce it without exposing myself as a poser.
Regardless, with moisture being sucked up into California, Arizona, and New Mexico from the remnants of Hurricane Odile, last night was a good night for seeing them, even if you can’t pronounce it.
Despite that big, threatening cloud directly overhead, no, we never got a drop of rain, no matter how desperately we need it. Just a pretty sunset, clouds, shadows, and crepuscular rays.
Filed under Photography, Weather
I had the pleasure this evening of seeing John Scalzi talk at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena. Mr. Scalzi is on his four-week long national tour for his new novel, “Lock In.”
It was a great turnout, standing room only, and (as always) the readings, questions, and snappy banter was very well received.
Mr. Scalzi gives good book tour. I’ve seen him before on tour (and at conventions) and I’ve always enjoyed his in-person presentations just as much as I enjoy his writing. And it’s not just his novels that I admire (and I’m a pretty huge fan of those) but also his “Whatever” website. Would that someday I can write a fraction as well as he does.
This is how physicists talk also, i.e., with their hands. (My apologies for the blurry pictures, but in a setting like this I never want to be “that guy”, the one who’s rudely getting in everyone’s way and then firing off a flash that’s annoying to everyone in the room. Sometimes ambient light means that you just have to live with some blur. As with astrophotos, shoot a lot of frames, one or two should come out.)
The short version is simple — if you have a chance to catch Mr. Scalzi on this tour, at a convention, or on some other future tour, I highly recommend that you make time to go see him speak. It’s well worth it. (I’m looking at you, people of San Diego, Iowa City, Gurnee, Lexington, Troy, Brookline, Concord, Saratoga Springs, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Chicago.)
On the way home from Pasadena, there were some great clouds to be seen as thunderheads built up over the mountains and high deserts. Hurricane Norbert is a Category Three storm off of Baja California, and it’s pumping moisture into the area, which is highly unusual for this time of year.
The great part about moisture and clouds are the great sunsets they create. We don’t get that many of them here in Southern California.
Way too often it’s “clear and a million,” which is great for the Chamber of Commerce postcards, but not good for colorful sunsets. That’s why the great sunset pictures come from tropical islands and beaches at jungle locales.
So let’s go find a tropical island with a beach next to a jungle! For the sunsets, and science, and art, of course.
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 