Today, Katie and I checked the Teddy’s Bridge Geocache and changed out the full camera for a new one. I realized that I hadn’t yet posted the pics from the last cache-cam, so they are up at the SLOweather gallery HERE.
I forgot to put the SD card in my SLR, so these pics were taken with my cell phone.
This calochortus was in bloom along the trail.
There was lots of serpentine columbine in bloom upstream of the bridge.
And Jessie was the picture of joy and exuberance along the trail.
Tonight’s full moon rose over the airport through a smoky hazy. This was at about 8:50 PM.
This month’s full moon becomes full at 1:00 AM PDT Friday morning. It rose Thursday evening at 8:13 PM PDT, and will set Friday morning near sunrise.
The July full moon is called the Buck Moon, the Full Thunder Moon, Full Hay Moon, Full Mead Moon, Full Blood Moon, Full Summer Moon, Full Ripe Corn Moon, Full Crane Moon, or Full Rose Moon. If you are Celtic, it’s the Moon Of Claiming.
For the first time since the fires began (Indians on 8 June, the rest of the lighting complex fires on 21 June), we’ve had a lot of smoke but no real ash fallout until a couple of days ago. Starting Thursday, ash fragments began appearing on local horizontal surfaces like decks, automobile roofs, hoods, and trunks, and similar locations.
Ash is abrasive, and, if it gets wet with dew, it’s very alkaline. (Pioneers made lye by trickling water through a barrel packed with wood ash. Then they used the lye to saponify fats like tallow to make soap.)
So, if your car is outside a lot, check the finish. If you see a lot of ash particles and care about the paint, gently wash it to remove any ash residue. I suppose the best thing would be to first flood it with water to float off as much ash as possible, and then to gently wash it with a commercial car wash product and a soft towel or mitt.
Ash particles on the lid of our recycling bin. Largest is about 1/4″ long.
Monsoonal moisture is flowing into Southern California, and the NWS has issued 20% chances of thunderstorms for most of the region for most of the weekend. With firefighting resources already stretched beyond their limits and the National Guard called up to assist, it could be an interesting weekend.
“In fact it was a London physician who coined the word smog — combining smoke and fog.”
All these years later, I doubt most people know that “smog” is a combination of “smoke” and “fog” and, in fact, most of what California knows as “smog” has no fog component. This morning, though we experienced true smog. The marine layer was in, and the visibility was down to 0.5 miles. Yet there was a distinct tang in the air, an aroma of smoke from the many wildfires burning around the state. That’s SMOG!
Well, the air quality seems to have improved with the on shore winds. So far the scanner has been pretty quiet as well, with mostly medical calls.
I had a little “aha” moment about the smoke a couple of days ago. Mostly, fire smoke doesn’t bother me. We have 2 fireplaces in the house, and an outside fire ring down in our woods that we cook over a lot, and the smoke doesn’t usually bother me.
However, even at low concentrations, this wildfire smoke has been very irritating. Then, I remembered a post I read on a California Native Plants list about how prevalent poison oak is along the coast from Santa Barbara north to Santa Cruz. Smoke from burning poison oak is especially dangerous, as the vaporized urushiol can be inhaled and cause all sorts of respiratory problems. It’s my feeling that there is small amounts of urushiol in the wildfire smoke, concentrations too low to cause clinical symptoms, but enough to cause irritation and coughing.
At about 8:55 PM Wednesday night, SLOweather lost power due to a reported bird into a high voltage line near the Toyota dealership on LOVR. We could see the arcing and smoke from here. While we ran on our generator during the blackout, and power was restored at about 10 PM, our Internet service was not back until about 6:15 AM Thursday.
From our vantage point, power was out from 101 down the LOVR corridor to Foothill, Foothill to inside the City limits, and on Madonna from LOVR to at least Higuera.