Well, the pictures are from last Friday. We didn’t see the moon or any clear sky here for the last couple of days.
After a long day of putting up lights, while I was starting to put ladders and boxes and extension cords and tools away because it was getting dark, I spotted the crescent moon and bright Venus off in the west.
I like my Christmas lights, but it’s tough to compete with the light show in the sky some times.
Filed under Astronomy, Christmas Lights, Photography
As I’ve mentioned, we live pretty much right under the extended centerline for Burbank runway 8, which leads us to have 737’s and the like overhead at about 4,000′ all day long. Since I’m an airplane nut, this is not a problem.
It also means that I’m pretty used to which direction planes are coming from 99.99% of the time. So when I’m busy on the computer but I hear one coming from an odd direction, it makes my ears prick up.
When a second one follows, I pull out FlightAware to see what their flight paths are.
(Image from FlightAware)
That first plane (a United flight) came in from the northwest (not so unusual), then did a big 360° turn over Hidden Hills (pretty unusual) before he got lined up and had just exited stage right toward final approach. (For reference and scale, from our house at the blue dot, the 405 Freeway and Van Nuys airport there are about half way to Burbank.)
The second guy (a Southwest flight), currently over Tampa Avenue, came in a bit more normally from the north over Simi Valley, looped a little wide, but was now on final.
Then the third plane (Alaska Airlines Flight 1150) followed the second plane and made an even bigger 360° out over the Santa Monica Mountains and Malibu!
What’s up with Air Traffic Control (ATC) tonight?
Let’s step outside and look toward the southwest and Malibu, shall we?
Yep, there he is!
And, yep! There he goes!
A weather-related issue? Possibly. You can see a storm cell over Topanga State Park to our south. There’s a front moving in and some of the showers were supposed to get severe, but that wasn’t supposed to happen until tomorrow morning.
Spacing? ATC maintains minimum separation between aircraft and if there are a few coming in all at the same time, someone might get told to take the scenic route and linger for a few in order to not crowd anyone else.
Whatever. I got my own personal mini air show! The day got better!
Filed under Castle Willett, Christmas Lights, Flying, Photography
Found in the back yard this weekend.
Forget about Kilroy.
Kotter was here.
Filed under Castle Willett, Photography
The old blue bomber of a mom-mobile van (my 2001 Chrysler Grand Caravan) is finally almost at another big landmark:
I usually only drive it out to the CAF hangar and back on Saturdays these days, and that’s just to keep the fluids circulating and everything getting a little workout. It’s my “spare” vehicle, which is handy when kids come into town (like for the wedding last month!) or when I need to haul a bunch of crap (like when we moved last year!).
It’s about 65 miles out to the hangar and back, so next week should do it. Let’s home it doesn’t do a “Blues Brothers mobile” ten seconds later!
Filed under Castle Willett, Photography
I understand that snow isn’t that big of a deal to most folks – it happens at least every now and then. Even here in La La Land it’s right there in the mountains for several months of every year and you can see the snowy mountains from time to time, and there are ski resorts within a two or three hour drive of downtown LA.
But the snow level doesn’t always get as low as 3,000 feet. When it does, for a couple of days every few years, the lower mountains that surround all of our valleys and coastal areas can get several inches and look picture postcard like for a day or two
Looking north from Camarillo Airport, you can see the mountains north of Ojai, Santa Paula, and Fillmore.
Hines Peak and other smaller mountains in the area go up to about 6,300 feet, more than high enough to pick up some decent snow accumulations.
Beyond them, Mt. Pinos goes up to 8,848′ and can often have snow until late spring.
This morning at the hangar it all looked very scenic. Then an afternoon and evening of soaking rain came and I’m sure the snow will all be gone below about 7,000′ by morning. But for the Sierra and ski resorts up above 10,000′ it will be an excellent start to the ski season!
Filed under CAF, Photography, Weather
The day after Thanksgiving is traditionally the first day of the Christmas lights going up. This year is the latest that Thanksgiving can ever be, November 28th, so there’s no time to delay.
After years of putting up massive numbers of lights at our old house, we moved about eighteen months ago into a much smaller place. So last year was a bit of a learning experience. This year, having one Christmas worth of experience, it went a bit better on day one.
While the lights often look like fine spider webs of colored or sparkling luminescence, there’s a blob over the garage door that defies that.
It’s more like a black widow spider web in form rather than one of those gorgeous, symmetric, orb weaver webs. Just a weird blob of lights in a glob or a clot.
Blob. Glob. Clot.
Might have to do something about that.
Filed under Castle Willett, Christmas Lights, Photography
I was curious so I went to see what I wrote her last Thanksgiving. I see that I was probably tired and a bit overwhelmed by the events of the holiday. We had just been through a large brush fire a few weeks earlier. There were a lot of stressors in our lives.
I wrote, “Let’s all hope that next Thanksgiving we can all be thankful that those crises are less threatening than they are this Thanksgiving.”
It’s next Thanksgiving. On a personal basis, a number of issues are better, some much better. On a national, historical, planetary basis, those crises are worse, not better at all.
NEXT Thanksgiving – people, we’ve got to do better!
On a much more granular level, it was a lovely Thanksgiving feast. I hope that you and yours had a wonderful holiday as well.
Tomorrow we start the Christmas lights, weather permitting.
Damn, Thanksgiving is late this year!
The predicted storm has arrived and we’ve gotten about an inch of rain down here in the city, twice that or more up in the mountains, and above about 5,000′ there’s snow, which has made a mess of travel between LA and Northern California and LA and Las Vegas. Outside now it’s about 43° and raining steadily.
Over the sound of the rain and the furnace I can hear a couple of our owls. They’re close, but when I went out into the cold on the front porch I couldn’t see them.
They sound pretty much as they always do. Shouldn’t they sound different? Shouldn’t they sound pissed off and cold and wet and hungry? Or are owls endowed with a stoic reserve in our anthropomorphic pantheon, oblivious to the weather good or bad, just accepting what is as what is?
Unless it’s a drastic difference, I doubt I would be able to detect the difference between a bored owl, a horny owl, or a cold and wet and pissed off owl.
Instead all I hear is the same old hooting, haunting, echoing across the street and down the hill to the responses from the other owls. Who sound just as stoic.
The holidays?
Well, yes, alright. There’s that. I can use the time off. But in about six hours, we’re going to get hit with this:
(Image from NOAA Hi-Def Radar app)
That should make the morning commute just…beyond description.
At least we’re not trying to drive a long way or get on a plane this weekend. Given the multiple large storms hitting the West Coast, Denver, the upper Midwest, New England, it’s going to be a good weekend to shelter in place.
Be safe out there, folks!
Filed under Weather
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