How to stop a wind-driven wildfire

You can't. Well, with current technology and conventional firefighting equipment, under certain conditions, you just can't stop a wind-driven wildfire.

Looking north toward Antelope Valley over the burned landscape south of Walker, spring 2006.

Even without wind, some fires are hard to stop. Several years ago I was on a structure protection strike team on the Cannon Fire in Walker (Mono County). I rode in the fire truck's open-air seat in the chilly early morning air during the drive up Hwy 395 from Lee Vining to Walker. The fire was coming into town from the west--downslope--and we went up the canyon where most of the houses are--along Western Drive. We looked at the houses, deciding which ones looked possible to save. Where could we place ourselves in a position of relative safety? Then we waited.

The Labor Day Heat Wave of 2017

Last weekend, the high temperatures around coastal California set many new records. Here in San Geronimo Valley, the same was true, but equally remarkable were the nighttime lows above the inversion layer--there were three nights near 80 degrees! On the valley floor, below the inversion, the minimum temperatures were close to 60 on the days when it was near 80 on the ridges, and warmed each day until a peak of 70 on Tuesday September 5th. This nighttime heat wave on the valley floor peaked two days after the daytime heat wave ended--and insects such as wasps seemed busier than ever that 70-degree morning. 70 was the highest minimum temperature I recorded in the last five years, beating 65 in 2014. Also remarkable--on Monday September 4th, the high temperature of 82 in Woodacre occurred before 8 am!

High and low temperatures each day for two ridge locations and one valley floor location.

The high of 107 on Friday was the highest temperature I've recorded in my five years of recordkeeping, and three other days this summer also beat the previous record of 99 in August 2015. The number of days in the 90s is steadily climbing, with 9 days in 2012 and 2013, 12 in 2014, 14 in 2015, 21 in 2016, and 23 in 2017. Since I miss 30-60 days per year, this is just a sampling, but it is clear that there has been a steady warming trend since 2012 for the warmest daytime highs.

Eclipse of the Millennium: Travelogue

Day 1: Monday, 6 am, Southern California

I left on my solo adventure from L.A., and it was raining on the 405 Freeway, hard at times. After crossing the border I took the toll road for $6 to Ensenada, where I got gas around 10 am. It was cloudy on the coast, but the desert between Santo Tomas and Colonet was hot. It was cloudy again in San Quintin, but inland again between El Rosario and Catavina was warm desert with lots of cacti. A couple of guys with a truck waved me down and said they were out of gas--they siphoned some gas from my tank, and they helped themselves to a bit more than I had wanted them to have. At 4pm for $4 I ate dinner at Santa Inez. I spoke to some people from San Diego who suggested spending the night at Guerro Negro.

At 6:30 pm near Rosarito there was a big accident blocking the road on a curve. It involved a jackknifed truck and four other vehicles, one on its side. No one was hurt. There was an old dirt road that cut across the curve, and I went with three other vehicles across the shortcut, with no one passing anyone else the rest of the way to Guerro Negro.

Dam building comic

The California Water Commission is about to give away billions of taxpayer dollars to dam builders. At least, that is what could happen if it doesn't prioritize more benign storage projects that most Californians voting yes on Proposition 1 envisioned, such as groundwater storage projects. California has millions of acre-feet of groundwater storage already available, and public funds could help build the groundwater recharge facilities we will need in the future once our dams are sedimented in and crumbling. Unfortunately, the dam-building lobby is well-connected and clever at public indoctrination, so things might not go well for the public interest. We may end up with more expensive, dangerous, and environmentally-destructive dams siphoning water from our precious rivers and estuaries and drowning our beautiful river canyons and grasslands.

So here is a comic strip I made to clarify the politics of the issue.

The slick Environmental Impact Reports about to land on the CWC's desk will be more marketing materials selling new dams, and less informative unbiased documents useful to the public and decisionmakers. I hope they see through the propaganda and keep in mind Aldo Leopold's words:

"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."

Large Woody Debris in San Geronimo Creek, 2016-2017

This is the story of wood in San Geronimo Creek pools immediately upstream of the Meadow Way bridge during the 2016-2017 winter season. When it arrived, and when it, sadly, departed.

Looking north along the bridge railing during the biggest flood
in a decade (December 2012) on the left and September 2016 (right).

2: calm coastal waters

This is the second question in the new quiz category on my blog and on Twitter: #WithoutTheRoar, where I give information about a place and you guess where in California it is. See the first question (and answer) here.

You arrive. The first thing you hear might be the honking of Canada Geese on the lawn near the lagoon. An angler walks by with his catch of starry flounder and striped bass.You cross the railroad tracks--apparently abandoned--and scramble down the rip-rap boulders to the shore of a large, calm, salty body of water. You head uphill, hoping to get a better view from above the fog. You cross a street and head up a trail, taking care not to touch the poison oak as you ascend under the coast live oaks. You recognize coyotebush and toyon, and California poppies as you ascend into open rocky grassland. The fog does not clear, so you head back down to the water's edge, noticing that automobiles must go through a tunnel to get here. The fog clears just enough for this view:

Where in California are you?

Without the Roar

Wow, I've never had a tweet go viral before.

This photo I tweeted got over 18,000 views, hundreds of likes,
and over a hundred retweets. In two days!

I'm not sure what to say... except thank you. And follow me live next weekend on Twitter as I climb Mt. Shasta--just kidding. My favorite comment: "this looks like my lawn during baseball season."

Carrizo Plain Photos

Soda Lake, April 14, 2017

Looking southeast toward snowcapped Mt. Pinos
from Soda Lake Overlook, April 14, 2017

Meadowlark, Goldfields, and Tidy Tips, March 30, 2006.

California Poppies, March 31, 2006

March 31, 2006

Long-billed Curlews, March 31, 2006

Return to previous post

Central Valley Grassland and the Carrizo Plain

In April 2017 we were on our way to Carrizo Plain National Monument, and we stayed a night in Taft at a relatively new Best Western with toilets that were too full and lights that were excessively bright. Views of the starry sky would have to wait for a camping trip at another time. The view of Buena Vista Lake full of water was very gratifying, however.

It is so nice to see terminal lakes filling up. Our watersheds are so heavily developed that the only water that makes it past our dams usually is that which is required by law. But in a year like 2017 there is too much to take, and terminal lakes on both sides of the Sierra start filling up: the Walker River flows to Walker Lake, the Owens River flows to Owens Lake, the Kern River flows to Buena Vista Lake, the Kings River flows to Tulare Lake. Just to name a few. What was once typical is now extraordinary.

I first saw the Carrizo Plain in March 1993 from the top of Caliente Ridge. A dayhike from Cuyama Valley to the highest mountain in San Luis Obispo County was exhausting (30 miles) but revealing--I looked down to the north on a valley filled with colors. Vast blooms of yellow, orange, and purple flowers filled the San Andreas Rift Zone in that wet year following record drought.

I wrote the following essay and published it on my former Website between 2001 and 2005. I reprint it here in my "Best of" category.

There's something about a grassland. The sound of the wind in the grass, the wide open horizons, the spring wildflowers, and one of the most beautiful songs in the world: Western Meadowlarks. The Carrizo Plain is my other favorite place in the world, for these reasons primarily. It sits in a high valley between the Temblor Range and where the Transverse Ranges transition to the Coast Ranges, out of the way of modern "progress," more accurately modern destruction (although it used to have more farms, since abandoned). Since it hasn't been destroyed, but most of the Great Central Valley has, it is the best example of what the Central Valley uplands probably used to be like. Also, not a coincidence, it harbors one of the greatest concentrations of endangered species in California. I think I saw a California Condor there once, and I definitely saw San Joaquin Kit Foxes.

Daily animation of wet year March-April Eastern Sierra snowpack at 6800'

The animated gif below was a series of mostly daily photos taken February 28 through May 5, 2005. It is a view of the snowpack changes in front of and on the hill behind the Lee Vining Elementary School. It is about 25 MB, so if it loads slowly the first time you can watch it faster when it repeats.

Reservoirs

When thinking about where rain goes in a watershed, it helps to think of a watershed as a series of reservoirs. In my last blog post, I mentioned this concept--anywhere water fills up and spills can be considered a reservoir. A bucket in your backyard, a rain barrel, and a swale would be obvious ones. Less obvious would be the soil profile itself, and the surfaces of leaves on plants and trees--it takes a certain amount of rain to get these surfaces wet before they start dripping--over an entire watershed, that adds up to a lot of water. Especially a watershed with giant redwoods.