Sun getting bubbly: Coronal Mass Ejection may hit Earth
28 04 2007We had "yellow" level geomagnetic activity on the sun last night, and more may
come tonight and tomorrow night. Its coming from Sunspot 953, which is about 3 times the size of the Earth.
Sunspot 953 is crackling with mild
B-class solar flares. Credit: SOHO/MDI
Image of sunspot 953 taken today by Sebastien Kersten of Le Cocq, Belgium:
Here is the dispatch:
From: solarxactivity@bbso.njit.edu
Date: April 28, 2007 9:24:59 AM CDT
To: xxxx@rice.edu
Subject: BBSO Solar Activity Warning 28-APR-2007 14:19:18 UT
Region NOAA 10953 is currently beta-gamma magnetic class, and may increase in complexity.
The region is bright in H-alpha as well. This region has a chance of producing M-class
events.
NOAA 10953, S10 E41. Beta-gamma region. Position as of April 28, 2007 at 13:30 UT.
And this is in the middle of our solar minimum, indicating our sun still has a few belches to pass out before completely settling down.
One of the best tools we have is the ACE Spacecraft, which monitors the sun 24/7 and provides us with a plethora of real-time data, of the magnetic
field, the solar wind, and inter-galactic cosmic ray counts.
For the latest "dial" info (including our "space weather stoplight") go to
http://space.rice.edu/ISTP/dials.html
For the latest 10-minute averages of the Boyle Index from realtime ACE
spacecraft data, go to http://space.rice.edu/ISTP/wind.html
Some guides to interpret the gauges
If the hourly-average of the Boyle index exceeds 110, then Kp 4-6 storms
will likely occur within the next three hours
If the hourly average of the Boyle index exceeds 200, then major magnetic
storms will occur within the next three hours
If the hourly average of the Boyle index exceeds 250, major low-latitude
auroras will occur within the next three hours.
A magnetic storm generally occurs about an hour or two after the CME arrives at Earth, which is roughly 26-48 hours *after* a major solar flare. The Boyle Index is derived from real-time ACE spacecraft data, which gives about 45 minutes of warning before it hits the Earth.
Comments : 3 Comments »
Categories : Science, climate_change
NEWSFLASH: Cause for Global Warming Found
27 04 2007An astute letter to the editor writer in Arkansas has found the reason for global warming:
This actually happened, as attested to on the rumor/urban legend verifcation website Snopes.com
Comments : 6 Comments »
Categories : climate_change, fun_stuff
Follow up to “Cell Phones Kill Bees” story
27 04 2007About two weeks ago I published this story about the loony idea that was proposed by some researcher in Europe about “cell phone radiation may be killing bees”. I pointed out that it was garbage then, as it is now. Here’s a portion of the original post I made:
There’s an article on UK’s The Independent website about a most unusual scientific theory: “Cell Phones kill bees.”
Well today in the LA Times, it seems that UC San Francisco researchers have uncovered what they believe to be the real cause, and its not loony ideas like cell phones. Its fungus.
From the article:
A fungus that caused widespread loss of bee colonies in Europe and Asia may be playing a crucial role in the mysterious phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder that is wiping out bees across the United States, UC San Francisco researchers said Wednesday.
Researchers have been struggling for months to explain the disorder, and the new findings provide the first solid evidence pointing to a potential cause.
Other researchers said Wednesday that they too had found the fungus, a single-celled parasite called Nosema ceranae, in affected hives from around the country — as well as in some hives where bees had survived. Those researchers have also found two other fungi and half a dozen viruses in the dead bees.
The researchers caution that the results are preliminary, and data sampling represents just a fraction of hives, but they are encouraged by the findings. Hopefully they’ll be able to come up with a solution.
Yet it appears that the “Cell Phones kill bees” lunacy has caught on, since there’s a comment today in the ER’s “Tell it to the ER” that furthers that nutball idea. What a public disservice that column is.
Thanks to Lon Glazner for the tip.
Comments : 5 Comments »
Categories : Science, Technology, ridiculae
Internet Radio may get a reprieve
26 04 2007
In Today’s Chico News and Review, the cover story is about Internet Radio and all
the trouble the Copyright Royalty Board recently caused with a draconian ruling
on the cost to Internet Radio Stations. Regular over the air
broadcasters don’t have such limits because they are seen to "promote the music
industry" Its an alliance as old as payola.
But good news comes today. A bill introduced in Congress today could nullify
the new rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) which advocates say would
put Internet Radio webcasters out of business, such as our own local
Radio Paradise.
Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Rep. Don Manzullo (R-IL) have presented the "Internet
Radio Equality Act" which aims to negate the controversial March 2nd
decision which puts royalty of a .08 cent per song per listener, retroactively
from 2006 to 2010 on internet radio.
Advocates of Internet Radio have dreaded the CRB ruling, which they say could
raise rates between 300 to 1200 per cent for webcasters. Earlier this month, the
CRB threw out an appeal by commercial webcasters, National Public Radio and
others to review the new rates and postpone a May 15 deadline for the
introduction of the royalty schedule.
If passed, today’s proposed bill would set new rates at 7.5 per cent of the
webcaster’s revenue — the same rate paid by satellite radio. Alternatively,
webcasters could decide to pay 33 cents per hour of sound recordings transmitted
to a single user.
This bill is a critical step to preserve this new growing medium, and would
present a level playing field where webcasters can compete on the same royalty
terms with satellite radio. It would also reset royalty rules for non-profit
radio such as NPR. Public radio would be required present a report to Congress
on how it should determine rates for their internet streaming media.
I hope this passes, not so much because local radio needs more competition,
but because this insane CRB ruling makes it nearly impossible for local broadcasters to
compete on the Internet at all. This would give everybody a fair chance and at
the same time bring in millions, perhaps billions in royalties for artists.
Comments : 1 Comment »
Categories : Technology, local_issues, politics
The Carbonica Card – don’t heat home without it
26 04 2007
A recent investigation by the Financial Times says that the new Carbon Credit Industry may already be rife with fraud. Hmmm…now where have we heard that before?
Among the findings:
■ Widespread instances of people and organisations buying worthless credits that do not yield any reductions in carbon emissions.
■ Industrial companies profiting from doing very little – or from gaining carbon credits on the basis of efficiency gains from which they have already benefited substantially.
■ Brokers providing services of questionable or no value.
■ A shortage of verification, making it difficult for buyers to assess the true value of carbon credits.
■ Companies and individuals being charged over the odds for the private purchase of European Union carbon permits that have plummeted in value because they do not result in emissions cuts.
From the article:
Some companies are benefiting by asking “green” consumers to pay them for cleaning up their own pollution. For instance, DuPont, the chemicals company, invites consumers to pay $4 to eliminate a ton of carbon dioxide from its plant in Kentucky that produces a potent greenhouse gas called HFC-23. But the equipment required to reduce such gases is relatively cheap. DuPont refused to comment and declined to specify its earnings from the project, saying it was at too early a stage to discuss.
The burgeoning regulated market for carbon credits is expected to more than double in size to about $68.2bn by 2010, with the unregulated voluntary sector rising to $4bn in the same period.
Seems like the “green” here is not about Gaia…but all about Benjamins.
There’s no mention of how much these companies pay gamers to have virtual trees planted in video games.
Comments : 1 Comment »
Categories : climate_change, fun_stuff, ridiculae
When the earth was purple
25 04 2007
Have you ever wondered why the vast majority of plants and trees have green
leaves and not some other color?
It’s always been a bit of a mystery why plants absorb red and blue light, but
reflect green, allow us to see the leaves as green. It seems inefficient of
nature when the sun emits the peak energy of its visible spectrum in the
yellow-green areas. A new theory offers one possible answer: that the first
chlorophyll-utilizing microbes evolved to
exploit the red-and-blue light that older green-absorbing microbes didn’t use,
eventually out-competing them through
greater efficiency and the rise of oxygen.
If that were the case, plant life long ago may have had purple leaves to
catch both the red and blue portions of the spectrum. For those whom don’t know
this, RED + BLUE =
MAGENTA (purple)
Comments : 3 Comments »
Categories : Uncategorized
On Trees, ordinances, obstructionism, and compromise
23 04 2007This post is an outgrowth of comments I made on Commission Impossible on the new proposed strengthened tree ordinance.
I like trees, and I recently planted four, but at the same time I’ve had to remove a couple of trees from my home and business property. In the latter case, the City did the work because they agreed with me that the tree was unsafe and posed a public hazard.
This tree ordinance thing is taking on overtones of the abortion battle, except that the roles seem to be reversed, with the “right to life” being on the left. Lately, it seems that meadowfoam, garter snake habitat (see Sundays letters to the editor) and beetle habitat Elderberry bushes are more important than the rights and lives of people.
Case in point – how many people have died at the Highways 70/149/99 interchanges in the 10+ years that environmentalists have placed roadblocks in front of that project? I remember one little boy, about two years ago, who died when the car he and his mom were riding in was broadsided by a car on 70 as she turned onto 149. If the road had been improved on schedule, that never would have happened.
Was that worth 10 years of delay to protect some Meadowfoam and beavers? I think not. Meadowfoam is being grown in quantities at reserves near Vina and commercially in Oregon, and the Limnanthes Flococcus Californica aka Butte County Meadowfoam can just as easily be grown with it. Beavers relocate with ease too. Anybody who tells you otherwise is just pushing an agenda.
Now we have the City saying there’s a delay in authorizing a bid to fix drainage problems for a man made stormwater retention basin near south Chico street Paseo Campaneros that becomes a West Nile hotspot. Two people have died on that street from West Nile in the past year…yet the “garter snake habitat” aka man-made retention basin gets hands-off priority according to what the city said recently.
It’s lunacy and its morally wrong. Public health, be it an accident prone intersection or a festering man-made mosquito pool should always trump protecting bugs, plants, snakes, and the occasional beaver. If you think these things are more important than the health of the community, then you have your social priorities reversed.
Environmentalists digging in their heels on this only hurts their cause, because it makes them look unreasonable, and maybe they are. But most people I know, on either side of the political spectrum actually want to protect the environment, me included, but they want to protect their children and grandparents more.
Making them choose through obstruction is a no-win polarizating situation. We CAN have it both ways.
In the case of trees, the folks pushing this strengthened law act as if the tree, once cut down, could never be replaced. We’re not talking giant Redwoods here…more like Dogwoods and Pines, available at Home Depot.
Compromise folks…compromise.
Comments : 4 Comments »
Categories : Uncategorized
Ultimate lunacy: Dell says plant “virtual trees” for Earth Day
22 04 2007
From the "you’ve GOT to be freaking kidding me" department:
Dell’s Virtual Plant a Tree for Me program into the computer game Second Life has many tech savvy people wondering if this represents a new low in Earth Day marketing tie-ins. It looks like in the rush to pander to green-ness, some Dell executives maybe didn’t think beyond the boardroom door.
You may wonder, too, after reading Dell’s invitation to its Earth Day Party at Dell Island in the Second Life game where they say proudly “get your own tree sapling to plant in Second Life!”.
Yes that’s’ right, you can plant a virtual tree in a video game for Earth Day. And, Dell is only too happy to take a couple bucks from you in the process as well for their real tree planting program designed to assuage your guilt at using a computer that uses electricity.
You have to wonder just how hypocritically lazy some people might be to take this offer seriously, though with 5.7 million "residents" in the Second Life game, I suppose its hard to deny that this offer would have an impact.
Just how much electricity is used by PC’s in pursuing this pointless exploit in "green-ness"? And with Dell soliciting and online Earth Day Party, that will tie up PC’s, routers, and Servers nationwide, using even more electricity. There’s no mention in Dell’s press release of the expected carbon footprint on this bogus promotion. Maybe Gore will fly in on his private jet to make a “virtual appearance” to preach to the faithful.
But since some people nowadays seem incapable of disconnecting themselves from the virtual world of gaming, it stands to reason that a virtual eco-delusional activity might very well appear valid to them.
Maybe next the researchers at Berkeley can tap into the seti@home background processing idea and instead of searching for intelligent life in radio-telescope signals, we could program our wasted CPU cycles to grow virtual trees on a screen-saver. It could boast onscreen counts of virtual carbon sequestered, and virtual O2 produced. I can smell the virtual fresh air already!
We’re doomed.
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Categories : climate_change, politics, ridiculae
My New Weather Invention – Now 100% pig free!
21 04 2007
For those of us that hate having Winnie the pig presented to us as part of our local weather report, I’d like to offer this solution that cuts all of us annoying weather middlemen and weather forecasting pigs right out of the picture and give you total control over your weather report.
Its called the ViziFrame – now you can program your own local weather channel at home, or at the office, or at the marina, or the golf course, your school, a truck stop, gas station, or wherever there may be an interest in weather to make a go/no go decision. You can view it on your own terms, and unlike the Weather Channel, you don’t have to wait a half hour to get the info you need.
And the graphics, look at good as anything on TV. For those of you with a profit in mind, it can have advertising and other information too. Its way cool, inexpensive, and trouble free. It works with any TV, big screen, or computer monitor. It updates its information via WiFi or a regular Internet cabled connection to a home DSL/cable router or T1 router.
The Chico Chamber of Commerce is going to put a bunch of them (the premium model that also does video and audio clips with touch screen interactivity) around town at hotels, restaurants, city hall and other public places that cater to visitors. Local artist Gregg Payne worked out a cool design for the front fascia that looks like the Hooker Oak tree…a concept view is below along with the current weather page and forecast…which are live content links soon to be on the Chamber of Commerce web page. Kris Koenig and Anita Berkow of Interstellar Studios are doing the interactive kiosk presentation for it. Look for these around town soon!
Note the current conditions page – it has solar irradiance on it – I figured if we were going to become a solar powered city, getting a real-time indicator that people can use to calculate solar panel efficiency would be a good first step, so I invested in the equipment to do that. I’ll have an entire blog entry on this service later.
The graphics are made in my rendering system as weather data arrives at my office here in Chico, there’s actually about a hundred plus graphics that are available.
But you can get a weather channel for your home or business too. See www.viziframe.com I’ve sold several of these already and people at home just connect them up to a spare video port on their big screen TV, and when they want weather, just switch to it. No waiting, no pigs, no hassle.
Comments : 2 Comments »
Categories : Technology, fun_stuff
Human blood may contain a cure For AIDS – it just needs to be amplified
21 04 2007
Here’s some encouraging news:
German scientists at the University of Ulm have identified a natural ingredient of human blood that prevents the HIV-1 virus from from infecting immune cells and multiplying. The molecule, which they call virus-inhibitory peptide (VIRIP), promises new types of effective treatment for HIV in the future. ‘Tweaks to its amino acid components boosted its anti-HIV potency by two orders of magnitude.
Tests also showed that some derivatives of the molecule are highly stable in human blood plasma, and non-toxic even at very high concentrations. A synthetic version of VIRIP also proved effective at blocking HIV, excluding the possibility that some other factor was responsible. VIRIP targets a sugar molecule which HIV uses to infect a host cell.
This may have other anti-viral applications beyong HIV-1
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Categories : Uncategorized
Delta Airlines says: A sucker born every minute
19 04 2007Recently I received this email from Delta Airlines with the offer that now I could pay extra money for my airline ticket so that Delta could contribute to global warming “offsets” by planting trees. This allows frequent or not so frequent flyers to assuage their guilt over flying in an airplane propelled by earth killing petroleum based fuel.
Only one problem: Delta apparently never read the recent press release from Lawrence Livermore Labs on the link between too many trees at certain latitudes and increased global warming. Such a conundrum.
Support Delta’s Force for Global Good Take part in the first-ever U.S. airline program to plant trees to help offset carbon emissions.
Hello Mr. Watts,
In a partnership with The Conservation Fund, we are the first U.S. airline to implement a voluntary carbon offset program — and we’d love to have you "onboard."
It’s simple. Beginning June 1, 2007, you will be able to add a small donation to fund the planting of trees in sustainable managed forests around the globe when you book your ticket at delta.com. These trees will help off-set carbon emissions by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and converting it to oxygen as part of their natural processes.
We’ll disburse 100 percent of your donation to
The Conservation Fund program to plant trees and to support the organization’s education and outreach efforts. Additionally, we’ll make a donation to The Conservation Fund for every customer flying on a Delta mainline jet worldwide on Earth Day (April 22).
It’s just part of our Force for Global Good initiative that strives to benefit the world we fly everyday. So go ahead and take a flight, and join us in uniting our customers and employees in support of environmental stewardship.
Comments : 7 Comments »
Categories : climate_change, ridiculae
Asteroid flyby tonight
17 04 2007
Newly discovered asteroid 2007 HA is flying past Earth today about 2.5 million kilometers away.
It’s big (300 meters wide), bright (13th magnitude), and an easy target for large
backyard telescopes. Last night, Greg Selleck of Madison, Wisconsin, made this 75-minute movie (1.8 MB mpeg) of the space rock racing 47,000 mph through the constellation Virgo. Tonight the asteroid streaks across the Big Dipper.
If skies clear enough we might be able to see it. But there are lots more this month.
Today there were 858 known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids
Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU. None of the known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet, although astronomers are finding new ones all the time.
Comments : 2 Comments »
Categories : Uncategorized
Daylight Saving Time snafu lands kid in jail
16 04 2007
From the “spring forward fall back” department:
A fifteen-year old boy in Pennsylvania was incarcerated for twelve days, wrongly accused of making a hoax bomb threat – because his school had forgotten about the change to Daylight Saving Time.
Cody Webb was arrested last month, after Hempfield Area High School received a bomb threat on their student hotline – which provides a range of information to students about the school – at 3.17am on March 11th. They believed they’d found the culprit when they traced the call they thought was responsible to Webb.
They simply lined up the time of the bomb threat being called in to the phone numbers on the caller ID.
Unfortunately, the school staff forgot that the clocks had switched to Daylight Saving Time that morning. The time stamps left on the hotline caller ID were adjusted by an hour after Day Light Savings causing Webb’s call to logged as the same time the bomb threat was placed. Webb, who’s never even had a detention in his life, had actually made his call an hour before the bomb threat was placed.
Despite the fact that the recording of the call featured a voice that sounded nothing like Webb’s, the police arrested Webb and he spent 12 days in a juvenile detention facility before the school eventually realized their mistake.
Webb gave an insight into the school’s impressive investigative techniques, saying that he was hauled in to see the principal, Kathy Charlton. She asked him what his phone number was, and , according to Webb, when he replied ’she started waving her hands in the air and saying “we got him, we got him.”’
‘They just started flipping out, saying I made a bomb threat to the school,’ he told local television station KDKA. After he protested his innocence, Webb says that the principal said: ‘Well, why should we believe you? You’re a criminal. Criminals lie all the time.’
All charges against Webb have now been dropped. Now starts the payback process.
Comments : 2 Comments »
Categories : Uncategorized
Panic of the Day: Cell Phones Kill Bees
15 04 2007
There’s an article on UK’s The Independent website about a most unusual scientific theory.
“Cell Phones kill bees.”
From the article: Some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world’s harvests fail. They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world — the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. They say the cell phone emissions cause the bees internal navigation systems to go haywire and they can’t find their way back to the hive.
Ok, just two problems; Bees navigate by the sun. You can watch a video of how this works here. And, we’ve had cell phones since the late 80’s, microwave radiation of all kinds since the 40’s, and worldwide radio emissions of all sorts and frequencies since about 1920. So why is this “problem” showing up just now?
More likely this has to do with the fact that domesticated honeybees, the kind we have in California are quite inbred compared to wild bees. Domesticated bees are being raised to survive a shorter off-season, to be ready to pollinate once the almond bloom begins in February. That has most likely lowered their immunity to disease and parasites. This can happen in any kind of biological population that is artificially isolated from natural selection, which allows the strong to survive and propagate. In the case of domesticated bees, they are packed together in boxed clusters, which makes disease and parasites spread very quickly. In nature, hives are well separated.
In fact, there are two types of parasitic mites, introduced into the USA in the 1980’s which are believed to be responsible for this epidemic. Here’s a letter to Congress from May R. Berenbaum, Head of the Department of Entomology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign that describes the problem in-depth and concludes: “That honey bees are experiencing losses on an unprecedented scale, however, was essentially predicted by the report—over-reliance on one managed non-native species is inherently unstable.”
In insects, which have short generation lifespans measured in days or weeks, dilution of strong traits to disease and parasite resistance can happen fairly quickly. What’s needed is some new breeding programs and better isolation methods, not cell phone panic.
The offspring of the bees that survive this epidemic will do far better.
This seems reminiscent of the artificial worry about a cell phone tower at the Hooker Oak park. Some people just have to paint technology they don’t understand as the boogieman. I can visualize some panic driven loony legislation about cell phones and bees to hit our state legislature soon.
But to point out just how silly this is, I work at radio station KPAY-AM 1290 which has its offices on Cramer Lane. Right next door, no more that 500 feet from the powerful 5000 watts radio transmitter is a man who keeps bees. Bee hives are scattered all over his property. I’d think that if there was a radio energy to bee death link, this fellow would have been pounding on our doors long ago.
The “research” that cell phones kill bees is just junk science. Next I expect we’ll hear about cell phones and talk radio stations being linked to global warming for “heating up the atmosphere”.
Thanks to my lovely wife Stacey, for helping me out with this article.
Comments : 8 Comments »
Categories : Science, Technology, ridiculae
What’s that Smell?
14 04 2007
Today the ER editorial Board poked some fun in Hits and Misses at the proposed forensic body farm, and Bidwell Ranch by suggesting I add a “stink-o-meter” to my www.bidwellranchcam.com website if the body farm were to be put on the land.
Not wanting to be labeled a NIMBY, I’m only too happy to oblige. Here’s the concept view above.
Actually this could work, as scientists have created a smell microchip that I could build into the webcam system.
Comments : 2 Comments »
Categories : fun_stuff, local_issues
What if Global Warming Melted All Ice Worldwide?
13 04 2007
Picture: Get ready to Panic! Oroville, Willows, Marysville, and Sacramento will be underwater – the Sutter Buttes will be the only landmass in the very center of the valley.
“What If All the Ice Melts?” Myths and Realities is an article which features 3D computer generated images of what the globe would look like if all of the ice (both land and sea) on the planet melted, leading to a sealevel rise of around 66 meters.
The change shown in global dry land goes from about 132 million sq. kilometers to 128 million, and the analysis seems sound, making this article a sober and very useful counter to some of the more hysterical claims which has been circulated in relation to global warming.
Even if both the poles melted along with all the ice in Greenland, which is not likely to happen unless our orbit or sun changes dramatically, it would still take hundreds if not thousands of years for it to occur. That’s plenty of time to adapt. Sure we’d lose Florida, parts of Californiua’s Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys, Seattle, Portland, and Washington along with New York and Boston, but many new areas would now be habitable due to the change.
Here’s what the Sacramento Valley would look like city-wise based on elevations:
| Some Valley Cities | and their elevations | compared to 66 meter sea level rise |
| Chico | 75 meters | waterfront property on the southwest side |
| Orland | 78 meters | waterfront property just south of town |
| Oroville | 58 meters | 8 meters underwater |
| Willows | 41 meters | 25 meters underwater |
| Red Bluff | 106 meters | 40 meters to go |
| Marysville | 34 meters | 32 meters underwater |
| Sacramento | 7 meters | 59 meters underwater |
Comments : 5 Comments »
Categories : Science, climate_change, local_issues
Discovery: Photosynthesis may be Quantum Effect Driven
13 04 2007
PhysOrg has a summary of new research suggesting that the near instantaneous energy transfer achieved by photosynthesis may rely on quantum effects. From the article:
“Through photosynthesis, green plants and cyanobacteria are able to transfer sunlight energy to molecular reaction centers for conversion into chemical energy with nearly 100-percent efficiency. Speed is the key — the transfer of the solar energy takes place almost instantaneously so little energy is wasted as heat. How photosynthesis achieves this near instantaneous energy transfer is a long-standing mystery that may have finally been solved.”
If this holds, it may mean that we’ll be able to create artificial photosynthesis ourselves, and could be a huge gain for the solar power industry.
Comments : 2 Comments »
Categories : Uncategorized
The “D” Word (Drought) may be premature
12 04 2007
With the “D” word a headline in just about every Bay Area newspaper this morning it bears some examination of "drought" definitions. The word drought does not have a universal definition and it’s much more complicated more than just a deficit of rain or snow in a particular place. The condition is also largely dependent on the number and type of water-users, and whether only local water is used or if it is imported from other regions.
Consequently, extended moisture deficiency can be thought of in terms of meteorological, hydrological, agricultural or socioeconomic drought. Choose your favorite.
Below are some links to resources on Drought.
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Categories : Uncategorized
The Day of Rainbows
11 04 2007
Rainbow over Bidwell Ranch – my weather station in the foreground
Today was one of those unique weather days where orographic lifting (moist air blowing upslope till it cools and condenses to rain) caused rain and thunderstorms on the slopes of the foothills while further west in the valley, the sun was shining. This setup the perfect scenario for rainbows today in and around Chico.
I saw more rainbows today than I’ve seen in years. I saw several that were full arcs and even a rare double arc rainbow. The colors today were intense enough to even see the violet part of the spectrum, which is usually only seen in intensely sunlit rainbows.
My own Bidwell Ranch Webcam and weather station had one within its view tonight about 6:45PM, as shown above.
What a great day.
Comments : 1 Comment »
Categories : Uncategorized
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