Remnants of Kay Drift Away
This is an abbreviated final obituary to follow up on Rob O’Keefe’s earlier essay (see adjacent story) about tropical system Kay’s historic impact on California. As forecast by the...
Climate
Are Yet More Weather Records About to Fall?
Just this past week, a monstrous heat wave broke temperature records in many parts of the state — especially in the Bay Area and several Central Valley cities. And...
Storm Chasing in the California Desert
When temperatures rise during early summer, residents of the desert and mountain Southwest U.S. begin anticipating the arrival of their annual monsoon season. (1) Welcome to our first in...
Feeling Winter in July, California Style
While inland California baked and burned, why was the weather relatively cold and foggy along the immediate coast during early-to-mid summer, 2021? San Francisco and most other locations on...
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...
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...
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...
