Chance of Rain » NOAA

“Abnormally dry”

EmilyGreen — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:39:06 +0000

A mild El Nino winter has meant abnormally dry conditions in the Pacific Northwest, Hawaii and the Rockies feeding the Colorado River, a key water supply source for seven western states, including southern California. Click on the map for NOAA's seasonal drought assessment.

Rain likely

EmilyGreen — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:57:39 +0000

The National Weather Service’s prediction for a chance of rain over the weekend in Los Angeles County elevates to “rain likely” for Martin Luther King Day and into the following week. If you haven’t got your wildflower seeds in the ground, the next few days are your window. Over at AccuWeather.com, Ken Clark’s blog sees enough rain coming that he warns people living near recent burn areas to “be ready to evacuate.”

Meanwhile, as the struggle between town planners and developers continues over implementing a Low Impact Development ordinance that would decrease storm water run-off, a community meeting is scheduled for tomorrow at City Hall. Click here for details.

Shopping at the science store

EmilyGreen — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:36:28 +0000

US Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has joined California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in an attempt to return inconvenient data to the science store, reports the New York Times today. They are not happy, not happy at all, with “biological opinions” of federal scientists to do with the health of California fisheries. They would like to hire expertise more to the liking of powerful Central Valley constituents served by water pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta — and more to the liking of one constituent in particular, Beverly Hills billionaire Stewart Resnick.

9/25/2009 Update: Senator Feinstein responds to her critics in the San Francisco Chronicle. Link after the jump.

The New York Times report follows up on an earlier, news-breaking article in the Contra Costa Times on the senator’s demand to the US departments of Commerce and Interior to submit peer-reviewed biological opinions calling for fish protections for immediate third-party scrutiny by the National Academy of Sciences.

“The National Academy of Sciences ……

Rambling LA: At sea and agog

EmilyGreen — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 05:24:10 +0000

Click on the whales to be taken to the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuaries page on blue whales. Photo: NOAA

By Ilsa Setziol

THE DINOSAURS are gone. So too the mammoths, saber-toothed cats and short-faced bears. Even California’s mascot, the grizzly, no longer roams the state. Megalopolis has replaced megafauna. Yet the largest animal ever still graces the California coast. This summer, I went looking for it.

In Long Beach, I met up with Michelle Sousa, senior mammalogist with the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. We hopped aboard the Christopher, one of the 60-foot yachts used by the cruise operators Harbor Breeze for whale-watching tours.

Sousa and I are giddy at the prospect of seeing a blue whale. “It’s the most magnificent animal in the world,” she says. “They average 80 feet in length, but they’ve been know to get up to 108.” (That’s three times the size of the largest dinosaur.)

As the…