Unprecedented Drought, Heat, and Fire Repeat in the West, 2021
It has become an unfortunate and disturbing annual Golden State dance during the last several years. Severe drought plagues the majority of the state, followed by extended record heat...
Environment
Natural History of a Grain of Sand
While strolling along a California beach, stream, or riverbed, or plodding over a sand dune, you may not realize that there is a captivating world of natural history at...
Badlands In a New York Minute?
When it comes to erosional landforms, badlands are the speed demons of geomorphology.
Adventures of a Water Drop, California Style
Forward: An Autobiographical Synopsis Let me introduce myself. I am a California water drop. I condensed from billions of water vapor molecules in the air above the North Pacific...
All The Hills Are Brown and The Sky Is Blue …
While it is nice having warm, clear weather in January, the California sunshine that fuels this weather is a doubled-edged sword for the Golden State. As they say, all sunshine makes a desert.
Desert Quakes and Ancient Lakes: Geopostcards from Searles Valley
In early July 2019, a series of powerful earthquakes fractured the desert, generating violent seismic waves that eventually rippled across the state and dissipated into California’s distant cities. A...
COVID-free Spaces in Pandemic Places: Coping with COVID-19 across California
As the COVID-19 pandemic peaks again in the fall and drags on into winter, 2020, it is our duty to provide this update, our latest attempt to make a...
NASA Uses Science and Technology to Display Awesome Weather Images
By late September, 2020, NASA had built some remarkable images (using the latest remote sensing technologies) displaying how our biomass in California was burning into the atmosphere. They show...
California Burning, 2020
A few months ago, in the spring of 2020, we shared stories about our oddly inverted 2019-2020 rainy season and the longer-term climate changes impacting California. As we slid...
But it’s a dry heat …
According to the National Weather Service, on 08/16/2020, the weather station at Furnace Creek in Death Valley recorded a temperature of 130°F (54.4 °C). That is probably the hottest...
