The week that was, 1/24-30/2016

Posted on | January 31, 2016 | 10 Comments

World Surf League Tweet

“It looked like a sea monster rising out of the ocean when it came my way. But I was going. No matter what. So I flipped around and started paddling to get into it.” — Tom Dosland, after falling 40 feet off a wave in Maui, Legend of the Fall, Surfer Magazine, 1/29/16

For the most part, support for the [twin water tunnels] project is geographical, with proponents in the Central Valley and Southern California, and opponents in the Bay Area, Delta and other parts of Northern California. Silicon Valley, though, is a key swing vote. Three of Gov. Brown’s key staff visited Santa Clara on Tuesday in an effort to gain support. It seems to have backfired. — Water Deeply Executive Summary, 1/29/16 

Total shipments of almonds fell by 12 percent last year, while exports fell by 15 percent, according to the most recent numbers released by the Almond Board of California. — The Crazy Sequence of Events that’s Making Almonds Cheap Again, The Washington Post, 1/29/16

“You don’t mess around with lead. You don’t mess around with water.” — Flint pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha, Doctor Who Helped Expose Flint’s Water Crisis Looks For Solutions, Here and Now, WBUR, 1/26/16

What we see in Flint is an all too typically American situation of (literally) poisonous interaction between ideology and race, in which small-government extremists are empowered by the sense of too many voters that good government is simply a giveaway to Those People — Paul Krugman, Michigan’s Great Stink, New York Times, 1/25/16

“Our water is not dangerous. The problem is happening in the lines in homes.” — Sebring Mayor J. Michael Pinkerton, Ohio Town has Water Problems Like those in Flint, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 1/31/16

Regulators usually require the source of a leak to clean it up. — Maryland Moves Toward Suing Oil Industry Over Groundwater Contamination, Bay Journal, 1/28/16 

Seventy five per cent of us don’t know that the famous line “Water water everywhere” comes from Coleridge’s The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner. — Book Notes, Belfast Telegraph, 1/30/16

Claude Monet, 1840 - 1926 The Water-Lily Pond 1899 Oil on canvas, 88.3 x 93.1 cm Bought, 1927 NG4240 http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG4240

The Water-Lily Pond by Claude Monet. Courtesy of the National Gallery, London. Click on the image to see the gallery’s full exhibit of the Water Garden at Giverny. Or go to the Daily Telegraph item for a link to a new show “Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse” at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.”

… there are two ways of looking at water. You can either stare through it, or you can allow your eyes to adjust to the reflections on the surface.” — Inspiration for Impressionists: Nick Trend travels to Normandy to learn why Claude Monet’s garden at Giverny so captivated his fellow artists, The Daily Telegraph, 1/30/16 pegged on the opening of  Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse at the Royal Academy of Arts.

In 1989, El Chapo dug the first subterranean passage beneath the border from Tijuana to San Diego, and pioneered the use of tunnels to transport his products and to evade capture. I will discover that his already accomplished engineers had been flown to Germany last year for three months of extensive additional training necessary to deal with the lowlying water table beneath the prison. —  El  Chapo Speaks, Rolling Stone, 1/9/16

Crapper is one small part of the largely untold history of the device that transformed the world. — January 27 is Thomas Crapper Day, Worldwide Weird Holidays, 1/27/16

While we were blathering on mindlessly in a comment thread about the water exported form California via alfalfa exports, Peter Gleick helpfully jumped in with some actual data …” — A further note on California alfalfa exports: California is a net importer of virtual water, JFleck at Inkstain, 1/28/16

“… these fish are so rare in the wild that just six adults were found during a sample survey of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta last spring.” — A Backup Plan for the Delta Smelt, Bay Nature, 1/25/16

[The Baltimore harbor is] “healthier than everybody thinks, but it’s got a long way to go.” — John Racanelli, CEO, National Aquarium, Recreational, Scenic Wetlands Planned for Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, Baltimore Sun, 1/28/16

Click on the drawing by architects Ayers Saint Gross to learn more about the plans by the National Aquarium to extend its conservation ethos beyond the museum walls into Baltimore harbor itself.

Warming temperatures reduced the April-to-June rainfall in East Africa in 2014 by 11 percent. — Drought ravages a parched Kenyan town, The Washington Post, 1/30/16

[New York State Parks spokesman Randy] Simons called the dry falls “a once-in-a-lifetime” event … — Plan to Dry U.S. Falls at Niagara, The Toronto Globe and Mail, 1/29/16

“People are a little panicked, but they shouldn’t be. We still have a very strong El Niño set up in the Pacific … and it’s still encouraging we’ll see quite a few storms come through between now and the end of March and even April.” — Meteorologist Curt Kaplan, High-pressure Mass is Keeping the Brunt of  Rain, Snow up NorthLos Angeles Times, 1/30/16

From LAPL's Security Pacific National Bank Collection, Date unknown. Background is 3 shots by HC.

Click on the image to see artist Harry B. Chandler’s celebration of LA water manager William Mulholland featured by KCET’s Artbound.

The final image [of Harry B. Chandler’s book “Dreamers”]  is a composite of water engineer William Mulholland (originally taken in 1924), with Chandler manipulating photos he shot of the Alabama Hills looking toward Mt. Whitney and then adding a ripple effect to capture Mulholland’s reflection in a pool of water, resulting in a provocative portrait. — The Art and Philosophy of Harry B. Chandler, Artbound, KCET, 1/22/16

Heavy rain and warm temperatures have helped the mosquitoes carrying Zika thrive. There have been heavy rains in southern Brazil and Uruguay this winter (and really for much of the year). Those rains can translate to standing water on the ground, which is crucial mosquito breeding habitat. El Niño has a strong influence on that region and it’s likely playing a role in increased risk of the Zika virus there. — What You Need to Know about Zika and Climate Change, Climate Central, 1/28/16

“Reef scientists are advising that the current El Niño should wane soon, with the benefit that the risks associated with heat stress are likely to subside. We’re not out of the woods yet but I am crossing my fingers that we will not see any broad-scale bleaching events like those that endangered the Reef in 1998 and 2002, and an intense event in the southern part of the Reef in 2006.” — Environment Minister Steven Miles, Great Barrier Reef Still Showing its True Colors, Queensland Government, 1/28/16

A hard rain is drenching South Florida this January. An historic piece of climate chaos because, if you pay attention, winter should be dry season. — Historic January Rains: State of Florida / Big Sugar Opens the Gates of HellEye on Miami, 1/29/16c

“Some fields have received 12 inches of rain in January. We are in uncharted territory.” — Barbara Miedema, Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida, County Sugar Cane Crop Hurt by Rains, Palm Beach Post, 1/28/16

Click on the snowbound Baltimore fire hydrant for this NOAA update on extreme snow, climate change and El Nino.

Click on the snowbound Baltimore fire hydrant for this NOAA update on extreme snow, climate change and El Nino.

“Everyone has to understand that measuring snow in a blizzard is a tough thing to do.” — Mark Richards, senior weather observer at Reagan National Airport, Lower-than-Expected DC Snowfall Raises Question about its Measurement, Washington Post, 1/24/16

“The physics [of climate change] is relatively simple: as we warm the atmosphere, the weather systems that move in from the Atlantic contain more moisture, so they dump more rain.” — Myles Allen, Professor of Geosystem Science in the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford  — December 2015 Was the Wettest Month Ever Recorded in UK, Guardian, 1/5/2016

The UK is braced for more flooding rains that could pour more misery on communities still reeling from being inundated after Christmas. — Rain Arrives in Britain from Storm that Caused US Blizzard, Guardian, 1/26/16

“It was a fizzer, the eye went over us – it went right over the top of us – when the eye goes over you, you think you’re going to get more rain but we’ve only had 18mm so far.” — Annabelle Coppin, owner of Yarrie Station, talking about Tropical Cyclone Stan in Western Australia’s Pilbara, AAP General News Wire, Sydney, 1/31/16

Editor’s Note: This water news round-up resumes a weekly column that began in 2009 at the squeaky height of the “last drought” in Southern California. It takes a liberty beyond simply reappearing after a five year hiatus in that it notes items that appeared either slightly before or after after its official 7-day time bracket. Unlike the previous column, which was posted from Los Angeles, California, The Week That Was is now assembled in Baltimore, Maryland. This time, as before, it shamelessly borrows the title from the British satire That Was The Week That Was.

Comments

10 Responses to “The week that was, 1/24-30/2016”

  1. David Zetland
    January 31st, 2016 @ 3:15 pm

    Glad you’re back!

  2. EmilyGreen
    January 31st, 2016 @ 3:19 pm

    thank you!

  3. Mark Bailey
    January 31st, 2016 @ 5:42 pm

    Good to see you again. There is nothing like water.

  4. Cynthia Barnett
    January 31st, 2016 @ 6:13 pm

    Ah, the most satisfying read of my weekend. Most satisfying of all is that you’re back.

  5. Saxon Holt
    January 31st, 2016 @ 9:22 pm

    Hooray ! We missed you….

  6. Leigh Adams
    January 31st, 2016 @ 11:20 pm

    Absolutely delighted!

  7. Ilsa Setziol
    February 1st, 2016 @ 10:37 am

    Thank you. Go Green!

  8. OtPR
    February 1st, 2016 @ 12:19 pm

    So wonderful to see you again!

  9. rhett beavaers
    February 1st, 2016 @ 4:50 pm

    Thank you Emily, great to have you back with the water news.

  10. BMGM
    February 1st, 2016 @ 9:34 pm

    I am so happy you are back. You inspired me to think more deeply about water and now I blog ad nauseum about it.
    http://badmomgoodmom.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-cheapest-aquaduct.html
    http://badmomgoodmom.blogspot.com/2012/07/embedded-water-cotton.html

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