Santa Ana Winds and Wildfires in California

You've probably read or heard about the wildfires in California (if not, read this). The fires are being fanned by the hot, dry, "Santa Ana Winds" that come down off of the mountains east of the coast. As the already dry air descends, it is compressed and its temperature rises. Read about the Santa Ana Winds here and here is a great site that tells a little about the winds and has some great animations of how the winds grow and strengthen. A little complicated, maybe, but really interesting. Here are some links to maps that show the pressure system responsible:
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sfc_con_pres.html

http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/wx/cwp/prods/current/sfcslp/sfcslp_N.gif

http://www.weatherimages.org/data/imag125.html (this one surprised me....look at the gradients in Montana and northern Mexico. It's got a map of the wind field, too, but it's a little hard to read.)

http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/gifs/US_W.GIF

http://coolwx.com/usstats/presstats.php

Earth Science Picture of the Day?

The amazing clouds that filled the Hudson Valley on Tuesday, 10/9/2007 are a potential "Earth Science Picture of the Day" submission, and this MetAR helps explain what was going on. If any of you are interested in authoring a description/explanation of the phenomenon, see me and I'll help you polish and submit it. Email me now, or see me Monday if you want to go for it. -Kloog

A Few Pics from the Catskill Geology Trip

We had quite a wet trip this past week, but everyone survived and actually learned a little geology too. See some more pics from the trip here.

Lake Boils as Volcano Awakes

From the article:
"Hundreds of Indonesians have begun evacuating the slopes of a rumbling volcano in East Java following increased levels of toxic fumes and tremors, a local rescue official said on Thursday."

Kelut Volcano information and location in Google Earth

video of lake bubbling with CO2

California Landslide!

From this news article:

"The city began noticing cracks on Soledad Mountain Road in July and water and gas main breaks in August. A water line in the neighborhood was replaced with an above-ground pipeline in September to avert damage from the moving earth"

Read the rest of the article by clicking the link above, see some video here, and get it in Google Earth here