Bad planning and hyperbole
Posted on | January 21, 2010 | 6 Comments
Photo: Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times. Click on the image to be taken to the paper's storm photo gallery.
Contrary to forecasts, including the one repeated here, there were neither particularly heavy rains nor gales in Los Angeles yesterday. “I’m sympathetic with a blown forecast,” says Bill Patzert, an oceanographer with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
Having carried it, this writer is too, but only to a degree. It gives rain a bad name.
But when wrong news is good news, why gyp? Moreover, there is more good news in a place with such bad zoning that even the best-behaved showers throw the city into chaos.
As reported in The week that was, and repeated here for good measure, last week, the Los Angeles Board of Public Works passed a Low Impact Development Ordinance that will require new construction to retain more rain water on site to reduce flooding caused by over-development. Click here to read about it from Mark Gold.
But the glow at the blog of the President of Heal the Bay was short-lived after normal rainfall yesterday once again triggered flooding, mudslides and mayhem in coastal and foothill communities. To read why, click here.
Elsewhere on the subject of wetness, to the mind of Patzert, nothing about the recent rains enforces predictions that Los Angeles will enjoy a bumper El Nino rainfall year. At just over three inches in January for downtown Los Angeles this morning, we are still below average for the month, he says, though the steady showers falling today seem capable of putting us into normal range. As for the year, we will need to hope for much the same kind of weather / self-imposed disasters in February to reach our average of 14 inches.
For a TreePeople guide to how to capture rainwater on your property, click here.
Update: In the best for last department, here near downtown Los Angeles, at 6:57 pm, we are finally getting some of the bluster predicted for yesterday. See Comments for the remark of someone who argues that the storm packed plenty of wallop yesterday.
This post has been repeatedly updated.
Western datebook: Robert Turner
Posted on | January 20, 2010 | 4 Comments
The photography of Robert Turner will be on exhibit Thursday January 21-Sunday January 24th at the Susan Spiritus Gallery space at the Los Angeles Art Show.
Left, photographed in the Eastern Sierra, Turner’s “Twilight at Mono Lake,” (2000).
Rain, “strongest winds in over a decade”
Posted on | January 19, 2010 | 1 Comment
A NATIONAL Weather Service statement predicts along with heavy rain for Los Angeles on Wednesday January 20, 2010 “the strongest winds in over a decade.”
From the report: “The heaviest rainfall will spread into the area between 10 am and 8 pm on Wednesday. Rainfall rates will range from three-quarters of an inch to one inch per hour with local rates up to 1.50 inches per hour across south-facing slopes. Total rainfall accumulations will range from one inch to two inches over coasts and valleys with two to four inches in the mountains. Local amounts up to five inches are possible along south-facing slopes.
With the amount of instability with this system there is a high potential for strong thunderstorms to develop on Wednesday and Wednesday night. Some of the thunderstorms may produce hail, wind gusts in excess of 60 mph and torrential downpours.
Atmospheric conditions will also be favorable for isolated weak tornadoes, which could form over land or move ashore after forming as waterspouts. Very strong and potentially damaging winds are also possible over the area on Wednesday through night. By Wednesday night it could be highly possible of many storm reports of downed tree limbs and branches area-wide. Some coastal and valley areas may be unusually affected by strong and potentially damaging winds. This powerful storm has the potential to bring some the strongest winds we have seen in over a decade to much of southwest California. Click here to keep reading the National Weather Service advisory. Images from the National Weather Service. Type: graphical precipitation forecasts for January 20, 2010 (top) and a five-day total (bottom). Click on either image to enlarge it.
This post has been updated.
Tags: chance of rain > Hazardous Weather Advisory for Los Angeles > National Weather Service
Lawn’s carbon footprint
Posted on | January 19, 2010 | 5 Comments
Amy Townsend-Small, UC Irvine, co-author of a new study comparing the carbon storage-versus-emission profile of Southern Californian lawns. Photo: Steve Zylius, UC Irvine
Smoking kills and lawn grooming contributes to global warming, reports the American Geophysical Union.
Actually, the AGU press release doesn’t talk about cigarettes, just grass: “Dispelling the notion that urban ‘green’ spaces [read lawn] help counteract greenhouse gas emissions, new research has found — in Southern California at least — that mowing and other lawn maintenance emit much larger amounts of greenhouse gases than the well-tended grass sequesters.
“Turfgrass lawns remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and store it as organic carbon in soil, making them important “carbon sinks.” However, greenhouse gas emissions from fertilizer production, mowing, leaf blowing and other lawn management practices are four times greater than the amount of carbon stored by ornamental grass in parks,” a new study to be published by the AGU shows. To keep reading, click here. Via Inkstain.
“Virtually impossible” for monitoring safeguards to work
Posted on | January 18, 2010 | No Comments
WILL the monitoring of the groundwater pumping proposed by Las Vegas in the Great Basin safeguard the targeted valleys? “It is virtually impossible,” writes 32-year veteran of the US Geological Survey John D. Bredehoeft in the Salt Lake Tribune. To read the op-ed piece by the country’s presiding authority on groundwater, click here.
Or for a longer version of the article supplied by Dr Bredehoeft, click here.
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