I was out in the car yesterday when it started raining so hard I had the windshield wipers to the fastest speed and I still had trouble seeing through the wet on the windshield.
Sun did make cameo appearances throughout the day.
Today it was sunny when I got up - though there were lots of exciting clouds, ranging from white to almost black.
This iris opened since yesterday and the sun seemed like a good opportunity to get on my bike for a ride along the beach.
This is the last block on Rose Ave as you get to the beach in Venice. The border between Los Angeles (Venice is a neighborhood in LA) and Santa Monica is about a block to the north (to the right in the picture).
Parts - not many - of the bike trail had a couple of inches of water and some sand.
Headed north, Santa Monica pier is up ahead.
There are a few wooden walkways from the bike trail to near the water. I wanted some pictures from near the water. Above I'm looking north.
Below I'm looking west.
And below I'm looking south back toward the pier. This is NOT a black and white photo.
It was at this point, as I was picking my bike up out of the sand, that a life guard in a truck came over to me and said that NOAA reported there was a thunderstorm due in the next half hour and to clear the beach. (There weren't that many people out anyway, only a few down by the water.)
At this point I felt the first rain drops. The temperature was in the low to mid 60s F and felt warmer when the sun was on me.
As I rode back, the palm trees along the palisade in downtown Santa Monica were nicely silhouetted.
And below I'm approaching the Santa Monica pier from the north. I hadn't seen the ferris wheel turning when I passed by the first time and it certainly wasn't moving now. Nor did I see any action on the roller coaster.
It never rained too hard, despite the ominous clouds. Some blue and some hint of sun if not actual sun were always visible.
On the way home I stopped at the 99 Cents store. But most of the shelves were empty. The cashier said January 5 would be their last day. They did have produce. Two avocados, an artichoke, and some broccoli cost me $2.
When I got near home, it wasn't raining, but there was water gushing down the hill to the flat area. It had rained very hard while I was gone, but not where I was. Later my granddaughter took this picture when it rained heavily again and you can see some of the rain coming down, though the picture doesn't capture how hard it was raining.
The rain seems to have fallen here and there over short periods of time as clouds moved through. The following list shows rainfall in inches as of 7am Thursday for the five days prior. There's a lot of variation and this doesn't count what fell yesterday and today.
Oxnard 6.13
Porter Ranch 4.82
Culver City 3.43
Westlake Village 3.31
Downtown LA 1.98
Bel Air 3.27
Long Beach 1.24
Van Nuys 4.30
Santa Monica 1.80
Northridge 4.54
Whittier 1.51
Pasadena 1.61
Castaic 2.53
I found different numbers when I googled Los Angeles annual rainfall. (Some variation is surely due to location.) But the range was between 12 and 14 inches!
This is all a reminder that the earth itself is doing fine. The changes brought on by climate change, the loss of species, are irrelevant to Nature. The landforms and oceans will survive and evolve without us.
The coming climate catastrophes are only catastrophes in the eyes of humans. I'm not sure what the animal and plant species that are being threatened know or feel. The earth has experienced many changes over its billions of years. Our hominid ancestors only appeared around seven million years ago. And individual human lives are like flashes of lightening (which I never did see today) in comparison.
So go out into nature and learn.
Jakob here, Northern Ireland. A sentence above caught me: "This is all a reminder that the earth itself is doing fine. The changes brought on by climate change, the loss of species, are irrelevant to Nature. The landforms and oceans will survive and evolve without us."
ReplyDeleteSteve, I have a friend I met on line -- he's a retired economics geologist who worked the Canadian North exploring for 'recoverable' critical metals all his life -- the kind of scientist who made a living despoiling the natural world, but really is a nice guy.
He would agree your view above; very much so, in fact. It's his final word on the 'Why worry?' ethic he holds to. Geological record is the apex science, connected as it is to basic cosmology & physics (and he's trained to doctoral level and more).
We have wonderful chats, discussions on climate change and his view is our presence is all rather immaterial in the course of earth-time. And yes, he did discover some heavy metals but also oil & gas, here-and-there.
I think of so many people I knew who worked for Big Oil -- the people who were decent, shy of 'oil feeds my family' bumper-stickers -- and think: Do we ask them to do some sort of penance for bad-science push-backs? We shifted our world's climate patterns being told we weren't 'part of the problem'.
Alaskans wrote a constitution for 'proper' utilisation of natural resources. And then, we were all inducted in our literature, religion and culture of 'Man vs. Nature'. Maybe it just doesn't matter in cosmic epochs.
Maybe. Where's the whiskey?
Jakob, I tacked that on at the end in the belief every topic should get more context, but then almost deleted it, thinking people should just enjoy the clouds. Good thing I didn't. Thanks for letting me know.
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