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Sunday, February 14, 2016
Thursday, February 11, 2016
MALIBU - THE SANTA MONICA MOUNTAINS - A HEAT WAVE HITS SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA - IT'S 88 DEGREES TODAY!
Sadly, the last few days have been unseasonably hot - very much so. While parts of the United States of America have more freezing weather, in the last couple months we've had only two significant rainfalls, which brought a "normal" amount of rain, but have no effect on the drought here in California.
There's a construction site down the street, dug down low for a parking garage, and it's clear that we are living on a deep bend of sand, which once must have been under the ocean. After the last rain you could see wetness saturated the sand about three feet. It only stopped construction a couple days and then it dried up and they went ahead and poured cement. However cement and tarmac roadways, driveways, and construction prevent rain from soaking in. Instead it makes its way into the Santa Monica Bay, which is very polluted.
Hiking in the Santa Monica Mountain chain, which barely qualifies as a Mountain chain by the way because much of is simply not high enough, you can see more evidence of dramatic earth changes in the past, millions of years ago they say. Along one trail there are on the top of the mountain the equivalent of undersea scoop outs that are still full of sand. When it rains sometimes beach quartz and petrified shells that have been in place for ages and were once part of the COASTAL BEACHES are exposed. Something - a massive earth quake, comet hit, or perhaps volcanoes out at sea or maybe even "polar shift" are responsible for throwing beaches thousands of feet and making these mountains.
There are only two mountain chains in the world that go east to west rather than north to south. These Santa Monica Mountains and the other chain are the Carpathians of Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary.
My concern is not just about water for drinking, cooking, washing, and personal bathing, which is in short supply for the farmers in less citified areas of this massive state of California, resulting in ever higher prices for fruits and vegetables but that the food chain is also effected.
Case in point, the thermostat went up to 88 and insects started coming into the house looking for water. This means I have to start exterminating, something that I never had to do before the heat wave. As the earth dries up and the bugs start dying, well so it follows that birds will starve, and so it goes.
Because of the construction site, which is on what had been a long vacant lot, every morning we smell skunk. In the middle of the night a possum and a cat seem to be getting into a fight for turf in the back yard. There was a raccoon in our garbage cans. I figure they have been displaced from the long vacant lot.
The raccoon was in our cans in the morning light and was bigger than my dog! My dog was barking, I looked out and saw no human beings, so I opened the door and there was the raccoon.
So do I hope for more rain?
Yes!
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE - SANTA MONICA MOUNTAINS
There's a construction site down the street, dug down low for a parking garage, and it's clear that we are living on a deep bend of sand, which once must have been under the ocean. After the last rain you could see wetness saturated the sand about three feet. It only stopped construction a couple days and then it dried up and they went ahead and poured cement. However cement and tarmac roadways, driveways, and construction prevent rain from soaking in. Instead it makes its way into the Santa Monica Bay, which is very polluted.
Hiking in the Santa Monica Mountain chain, which barely qualifies as a Mountain chain by the way because much of is simply not high enough, you can see more evidence of dramatic earth changes in the past, millions of years ago they say. Along one trail there are on the top of the mountain the equivalent of undersea scoop outs that are still full of sand. When it rains sometimes beach quartz and petrified shells that have been in place for ages and were once part of the COASTAL BEACHES are exposed. Something - a massive earth quake, comet hit, or perhaps volcanoes out at sea or maybe even "polar shift" are responsible for throwing beaches thousands of feet and making these mountains.
There are only two mountain chains in the world that go east to west rather than north to south. These Santa Monica Mountains and the other chain are the Carpathians of Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary.
My concern is not just about water for drinking, cooking, washing, and personal bathing, which is in short supply for the farmers in less citified areas of this massive state of California, resulting in ever higher prices for fruits and vegetables but that the food chain is also effected.
Case in point, the thermostat went up to 88 and insects started coming into the house looking for water. This means I have to start exterminating, something that I never had to do before the heat wave. As the earth dries up and the bugs start dying, well so it follows that birds will starve, and so it goes.
Because of the construction site, which is on what had been a long vacant lot, every morning we smell skunk. In the middle of the night a possum and a cat seem to be getting into a fight for turf in the back yard. There was a raccoon in our garbage cans. I figure they have been displaced from the long vacant lot.
The raccoon was in our cans in the morning light and was bigger than my dog! My dog was barking, I looked out and saw no human beings, so I opened the door and there was the raccoon.
So do I hope for more rain?
Yes!
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE - SANTA MONICA MOUNTAINS
