Tuesday, June 21, 2016

HEAT WAVE, FIRES IN SO CAL



We're having a heat wave...temperature was 107 degrees here in Claremont Monday – 122 record-setting degrees in Palm Springs, California -- an hour auto drive east.   The highest temperatures I recall experiencing were 115-116 a couple days years ago in Phoenix/Scottsdale, Arizona. 

Hot days like even the lower temperatures we're having now generally didn't occur until three or four weeks later in the year if we had them at all.    Do you suppose this might be one more indicator of global warming and/or climate change?  Is there any question!

Fires we don’t usually experience until fall started, also, yesterday – in communities west of where I live – ground growth, shrubs and trees are a tinderbox due to our drought.  The cause is thought to be due to a car crash which led to a second fire with both continuing to spread closer together for a massive out-of-control burn. 

Driving on an afternoon errand I could see the blue sky was being swallowed by the darkening reddish brown smoky clouds moving toward our city which they had reached by the time I arrived home.  We're not threatened by fire but the air pollution is unhealthy so I'll be staying indoors.

Cities west, Asuza and Duarte (home of City of Hope Medical Center but not reported as threatened) are the communities whose foothill residences edge into the mountainsides burning.   Evacuations of people, animals...firefighters on the ground...helicopter water drops...planes spreading fire retardants.  Wild animals, including bears, deer, smaller creatures... leaving the forests...fleeing to neighborhoods.  So far no homes lost.  Concern the wind velocity might increase or direction might change through the night.   

The electric power grid has been down in some other Los Angeles County areas.  One area's residents are reported to be enraged to be without power due to a "planned outage" on this record-setting predicted hottest day.  Some resident's complain they didn't even get an advance notice others report having been given.  I can identify with their protests as the same failure to notify me has happened twice in recent years.  I understand needed preventative work, but doing so on this specific day doesn't make sense?

Other southwestern states are being clobbered by similar drought effects.  This is what we experience plus our earthquakes much as other states are primarily subjected to tornadoes, massive flooding, hurricanes, winter’s freezing snows.  


Ella Fitzgerald is one of my favorite jazz female vocalists who recorded this Irving Berlin song with Enoch Light’s arrangement in 1958.   This song was introduced in the 1933 musical show As Thousands Cheer by Ethel Waters – the song subsequently was featured in several movies and recorded by numerous singers.

10 comments:

  1. Temperatures of 107, 115-116 and 122! I will never complain about 90 again. Fires are so scary. Thankfully, I live in an area where they aren't a common threat. No matter where you live, though, there are scary weather elements to endure. And endure we all must do.

    I haven't heard that Ella song in years.

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    1. I think we get acclimated to weather as I had years living in snow country, but I don't tolerate the extremes, hot or cold, as well as I did when younger.

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  2. This is not good news. One reason I enjoy living in the Pacific Northwest as opposed to Texas is the heat and everything brown and crisp bothers me a great deal. Feels like death. Here things are green making me think of life, living.

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    1. I can appreciate preferring the greenery, but have found the Southwest has a uniquely appealing beauty with its own life.

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  3. And up here in Oregon, the temps in my region (the Coast Range) are lower than usual. We were supposed to get some warmer days this week but it's clouded up; so not sure that's happening.

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    1. Right now I wouldn't mind having some of your weather.

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  4. Ella got it right, and its scary. Yes its Climate Change and the question is "How hot can it get?" Al Gore knew it thirty years ago.

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    1. Guess we'll be finding out how hot. How much heat can we tolerate?

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    2. High temperatures and fires have been common in California, but in October, not in June! The temperatures were so high and the fires would burn so hot in the Santa Barbara area where my mother grew up, that the candles in the candlesticks on the fireplace in her house would fall over and melt.

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  5. Yes, I'm mindful that fires this early does not bode well for the rest of the year. Heat to the degree of melting candles would be pretty hot.

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