Good Job, California. You Made a Haunted Road
It’s pretty wild how such a “small” error makes the result so horribly wrong.
Edit: here’s one in Hungary that’s done correctly.
Quaker
This is super interesting.
I was one year old when this happened, so I obviously don’t remember it, and I don’t think I’ve ever read or heard too much of the details, either. I think the most fascinating part of this is how calm everyone seemed to be in the stadium. Maybe Californians have a different response to earthquakes than most people because of where they’re located, but it seems like if this had happened anywhere else, it would have been chaos.
TWSB: Santa Ana is Coming to Town
I don’t know how closely any of you dudes follow the news, especially weather-related news, but as of right now the Southwest US is being battered by what are known as the Santa Ana winds.
The Santa Ana winds, which arise in Southwest California in late fall or early winter, are the strongest they’ve been in nearly a decade according to CNN. Gusting at 60 MPH in some places, they’ve already knocked out the power to a large portion of people living in Southern California.
According to the Wiki article, the Santa Ana winds arise when the surface air in the Great Basin and Mojave Desert becomes cool and begins to fall to lower elevations. Sinking into the valleys and canyons of the lower desert, the air is often pushed through the land’s channels at near hurricane forces. In addition, its sinking in elevation causes it to heats up again (a process called adiabatic heating; as the air sinks the pressure around it increases, thus causing the air to heat as it is compressed). This, when combined with the fact that the air has already been dried by orographic lift before reaching the Great Basin, makes for extremely dry winds, often with relative humidity levels below 10%, gusting at extremely high forces. These winds push across Southern California and, as evident by the recent news, cause havoc.
Edit: video!
Woohoo, crazy weather!
TRAVEL
WOO, off to California for the first stretch of my journey up and down the west coast of the United States! My dad and I got bumped to 1st class, which was awesome. I’ve never flown first class before, and there was enough leg room or me to stretch my legs out all the way and barely reach the seat in front of me. Seriously (though I admit I’m pretty freaking short).
Also, my grandma (who is 84 now) hasn’t changed in appearance in like the past 30 years. If I age like my father’s side at all, I’m going to look exactly the same throughout the latter half of my life.
OKAY PLAN CHANGES
OKAY PEOPLE, it looks like my plans for the second half of July have drastically changed. As you may know if you keep up with my blogging, my dad’s father (my grandpa down in California) died in January. Due to the suddenness and unexpected nature of his death, we were unable to procure me a ticket to go down and be present for the funeral. Because of this, my dad and I promised my grandma that we would find a time this summer to go down and be with her for a few days. Therefore, my dad informed me today that from the 19th to the 22nd, we will be heading down to Brea to spend some time with Grandma Mahler.
THEN he informs me that he was able to snatch up two last-minute tickets on the Sapphire Princess for a week-long cruise to Alaska. He wants to get his Princess black card (you get super perks if you’ve cruised for a certain number of days) and I freaking love cruising, so that was a nice and unexpected surprise. We’ll be flying to Seattle straight from Brea on the 22nd, spend the night in the Emerald City, and then board the Sapphire Princess and be cruisin’ from the 23rd to the 31st.
Awesome? Hell yes. Though I am a bit upset that such a large chunk of my time in Moscow is being cut, who the hell can complain about getting to travel? I also want to see my grandma; it’s been a long time.
Eigenblogger 