If you live in California and you’re a registered voter: vote!
If you like the initiatives on the ballot, vote them in.
If you don’t like them, vote them out.
If you’re disgusted with the way the initiative process has been subverted by the very political machines and special interest groups it was supposed to circumvent, protest it by voting them down, not by abstaining.
About a month ago I posted about noticing the Belt of Venus—the red band that circles the entire horizon just after sunset—and the Earth’s shadow on the sky. I snapped this picture on the drive home this evening. This is looking east, away from the setting sun.
If you look at the right edge of the picture, behind the silhouette of the tree, you can just see the red band fading into the dark gray of the Earth’s shadow.
(And to think, I almost brought the good camera with me this morning… Update: It turns out that I did bring it, and just didn’t realize it was there. Oh, well.)
Today was a reminder that just having cloud cover doesn’t necessarily keep things cool. We’ve had occasional wispy clouds at evening, and at one point some serious cloud cover closer to the coast, but today was hazy and overcast all day—and it was just plain muggy.
Eh, it’s only early August. It’ll get hotter (and occasionally muggier).
Well, June Gloom seems to be over, and we’re now into the time of year when we get hot, sunny days with lots of clouds. Big, towering cumulus clouds, often with anvil heads, promising shade and rain to cool things down. The teases.
Yeah, we see those clouds most afternoons—on the horizon, just on the other side of the coastal mountains!
While it’s great for summer activities—beach trips, swimming, hiking, etc.—it can also be frustrating when you have to choose between running your electricity-guzzling air conditioner all day or leaving your window open all night. The clouds are right there, taunting you with relief from the heat—relief that will not come.
When I was in high school, my family took a vacation across the Great American SouthwestTM. We went to Bryce Canyon, Zion Canyon, and the Grand Canyon. We drove out to Mesa Verde, which wasn’t a canyon, but there were still a lot of cliffs. We came back through Arizona, where we stopped by Meteor Crater and Sunset Crater. We joked that it was a tour of all the big holes in the ground. (A few years later, I posted some photos from this trip online.)
The weird thing about it was that we went during August, and we got rained on at least briefly almost every afternoon—but only outside of California. Utah? Rain. Arizona? Rain. Colorado? Rain. I don’t think we got rained on during our three hours in Nevada (we stopped at Valley of Fire on the way out), but as I recall, the rain stopped about the time we crossed from Arizona back into California.
We don’t get summer storms much here in SoCal.
5.3 4.9 near Yucaipa just minutes ago.
7.2 off the coast of Crescent City early yesterday morning.
5.2 near Anza Sunday morning.
Quakes measuring 5+ are fairly common. CA gets several each year.
Three in a week, aside from aftershocks, is unusual.
Of course, the craziest was probably the two unrelated 7+ 7.3 and 6.5 quakes in Landers and Big Bear that hit within hours of each other back in 1992.
