Category: Berkeley

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The News Arrives with a Bang

The remains of our neighbor’s 80-foot redwood after a lightning strike, March 31, 2014.

We had that rarest of Berkeley weather days yesterday. OK — not as rare as snow. But we did have this:

Early in the afternoon, thunder started to roll as a storm headed our way across San Francisco Bay. We had a series of strikes over about five to 10 minutes, each closer than the last. One was marked by a brilliant flash and maybe a three-second pause before a big, house-shaking peal of thunder. I went to look out one of the front windows — to see if I could see the next bolt. In a couple of minutes, it came: a brilliant streak just to the northwest of the house accompanied by a simultaneous ear-splitting crash. The lights went out for a few seconds, then came right back on. I didn’t see exactly where the bolt hit or if it had hit, and was preoccupied with checking out a circuit-breaker that had tripped when the power failed. I figured the lightning had struck a school building that’s about 200 yards from us. I was expecting to hear sirens.

Maybe five minutes, maybe 10 minutes later, a fire truck rolled slowly up the street in the rain. I went out to take a look, and the first thing I noticed was that a big redwood up at the next corner, a full, beautifully symmetrical tree that was 80 feet or more tall, wasn’t there. My one thought going up the street was a hope that the tree hadn’t come down on the adjacent home and that the guy who lives there was OK. He was, emerging from the front door as I got up there. He said he was supposed to have an arborist come out next week to talk about thinning the tree, which had lost a couple of boughs during big windstorms over the winter. “I guess I don’t have to worry about that now,” he said.

The tree had detonated when the lightning hit it, and shreds and spears and chunks of wood and big sections of the trunk were scattered in the street and throughout nearby yards, It turned out houses a couple blocks away had been struck by debris. About a dozen homes, most in a 50-yard radius, had windows broken or wood come through the roof. Several houses, on the lots immediately north and west of where the tree stood, had more significant damage — one section of the trunk, 20 or 25 feet and weighing hundreds of pounds, had flown through the air, striking the front roof of a two-story house and fallen into the front yard. The house on the corner lot, where the tree’s owner lived, had parts of the roof smashed in and was red-tagged as uninhabitable for the time being.

And the tree itself? All that remains is a 25-foot-high snag that comes to a jagged point reaching up over the adjacent homes and foliage. Neighbors, gawkers and curiosity seekers have all been out picking up bits of the blown-up tree (the smithereens to which the redwood was blown); I saw a woman pull up, tour the site, and walk away with what looked like a 50-pound remnant. The red-tagged home and the remains of the tree have served as a set since for every Bay Area TV news show — until 11 p.m. last night and then again this morning before dawn. In fact, when I went out this morning to check out the scene, the Channel 2 reporter asked me if I’d go on camera. No, I said — I haven’t shaved since last Friday. I was wearing what amounted to pajamas. Et cetera. I’m all for projecting a rugged, laid-back image to my public, but I thought that might be going too far.

Today: The rumor is that a crane is coming to lift a massive piece of the tree off the corner house so that the place can be cleaned up and inspected prior to having the roof rebuilt.

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OK — What Is This Bird Saying?

Kate recorded this the other morning while walking The Dog in the neighborhood. The audio contains two distinct calls from one bird. When she got home, she said, “Listen to this — what do you think it sounds like it’s saying?”

I listened to Part 1, a two-syllable call, and I said, “[deleted to maintain suspense.]” Kate said, “Yes!”

I listened to Part 2, one syllable, and I said, “[DTMS].” Kate said that’s what she heard, too.

So you tell me, what is this bird saying?

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Jade Plant

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The under-appreciated Crassula ovata, jade plant, reportedly native to South Africa and ridiculously easy to grow in our mild dry climate. It tolerates lots of inattention. The highlight every year: in the late winter and early spring, it flowers. I usually think of the bloom as a modest thing–the flowers burst out of tiny buds about the size of a match-head and I don’t think the individual flowers are even half an inch in diameter. But there’s so much to all these little organisms when you stop and look up close.

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Urban Mockingbird

There were three mockingbirds flying from tree to tree and from post to post in the neighborhood on the Spring-Ahead morning. I got out my audio recorder but they flew on before I got much. Then we went out for a walk with The Dog, and on the way back encountered another mockingbird setting up a determined racket along the old Santa Fe right-of-way. I say “racket,” but there are few bird sounds (I hesitate to say “songs”) I enjoy more, especially when you’re watching one of these birds jumping straight up and down atop a telephone pole or TV antenna (yes, there are still some of those around). The northern mockingbird is Mimus polyglottos; that is perfect — a polyglot mimic.

A few years ago, Kate discovered a poem, “Thus Spake the Mockingbird,” by Barbara Hamby (worth checking out that link). It captures the energy and life-force in the mockingbird’s song. It ends:

… Open your windows, slip on your castanets. I am the flamenco
in the heel of desire. I am the dancer. I am the choir. Hear my wild
    throat crowd the exploding sky. O I can make a noise.
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Dog on the Couch

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Yeah, we’re one of those outfits — we let The Dog get on the furniture. And here he is today, Day Four of the Return of Winter to the Bay Area. It seems that every time we’ve been out since Wednesday evening it’s been wet. He actually seems to enjoy the weather and the process of us toweling him off before we come inside again. But he does a great impression of a sad dog in the too-long intervals between walks. For extra points, he somehow splays his front paws in opposite directions.

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Rain, 2014 Style

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There it is: what you might refer to idiomatically as the sum total of Berkeley rainfall — or at least the rainfall we have seen here in the North Berkeley flatlands — for the entire month of January so far. When the drizzle started coming down last Saturday, I grabbed the camera and ran out to take a picture. It was just enough to moisten the pavement or the bottom of a rain gauge or, as above, to bead up on windshields.

And from what the weather forecasters, the paragons of prognosticatory pessimism, are saying, this is the only rain we can expect to see through the end of the month. Which means we’re starting 2014 with the driest January on record. Here’s a brief synopsis of where the rain season stands from the National Weather Service’s Bay Area forecast discussion:

SAN FRANCISCO`S CURRENT WATER YEAR TOTAL IS 2.11" WHICH IS NOW THE
THE DRIEST WATER YEAR TOTAL TO DATE ON RECORD. THE OLD RECORD WAS
2.26" THROUGH JANUARY 15TH SET BACK IN 1917. SAN FRANCISCO IS
RUNNING AROUND 9" BEHIND AN AVERAGE YEAR. IF NO ADDITIONAL RAINFALL
IS RECORDED BY THE END OF THE MONTH, SAN FRANCISCO WILL BE 11.50"
BEHIND NORMAL.
SAN FRANCISCO AVERAGES AROUND 8 DAYS IN JANUARY WHERE MORE THAN A
TENTH OF AN INCH OF RAINFALL IS REPORTED. THIS YEAR WE HAVE HAD
ZERO DAYS SO FAR. IF THAT HOLDS, IT WILL MARK THE FIRST TIME IN SAN
FRANCISCO`S HISTORY THAT AT LEAST ONE DAY IN JANUARY DID NOT PICK
UP MORE THAN A TENTH OF AN INCH.

And that, friends, kinds of puts things in perspective. What we’re seeing now hasn’t been seen since 1849, the beginning of San Francisco’s rain record.

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An American Coot in Oakland (with Very Large Greenish Feet)

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An American coot (Fulica americana) on the rocks next to the Oakland ferry terminal last week. I took the picture (through a window) for one reason: While these coots are omnipresent, cruising the local waterways, I have never seen one out of the water and had no idea what huge, strange feet they have: big, greenish things with prominent claws on the end of each toe. (click on the image for a bigger version and a better view of the coot feet in their full bipedal grandeur).

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Another Roadside Attraction

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Walking The Dog this morning, Kate announced she had something she wanted to show me. It was on Cedar Street, on a block adjacent to the one we live on, but on the side of the street I never use. “Never” meaning I may have walked that block half a dozen times in the 25 years we’ve lived here.

Anyway, what was the mystery object Kate wanted to show me? I thought it would be an exotic plant or impromptu art installation. Well, in a sense, the latter guess was kind of close. We walked down the sidewalk, passed one of the Chinese pistache trees growing along the block, then Kate told me to turn around and look down. Down at the base of one of the trees was a beautifully crafted little “Wind in the Willows” or “House at Pooh Corner” door. Inside were what look like a couple battery-powered candles and some shiny pebbles.

Who made it? I have no idea. A pretty neat gift to passers-by who happen to look down, though.

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Through Streets Broad and Narrow: Curbside Wreck

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This got my attention: A badly damaged car parked at the curb of Warring Street south of the Cal campus, with debris from the apparently recent collision still scattered in the street. Being as impulsively voyeuristic as the next person, I decided to stop and investigate when I saw there was a note on the windshield. I’ll refrain from the particulars in the note except to say that it was the driver who hit the parked car took responsibility, apologized, and left a personal phone number and apparently full insurance information, including a claim number.

Taking a closer look at the car that was hit, I think the owner is in for more than a little body work here. This Honda probably dates back to the mid-90s. And the driver who hit it really hit it — the parked car was pushed maybe 10 feet forward and two or three feet to the right and up over the curb. The back left of the car — destroyed. The rear wheel seems to been pushed askew. All told — 15- to 20-year-old car, severe body damage and chassis and/or axle damage — we’re looking at a total loss. Then again, I’m no insurance adjuster.

(You also kind of wonder how it happened. There’s a stop sign about 300 feet or so from the crash site, so you’d guess the driver either didn’t stop or floored it out of the stop sign to build up enough speed to move the other car as far as they did.)

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First of 2014

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I suppose if I really wanted to bookend the “Last of 2013” with a “first of the year” image, I should have been up at sunrise this morning. But it was not to be. Instead, we got out for a Rose Bowl-time hike up through the upper reaches of Claremont Canyon in the Berkeley Hills, then down across the top of the Caldecott Tunnel on the trail to Sibley Regional Park. After we got back to the car, we drove up to Grizzly Peak Boulevard, just south of Claremont, where dozens of people were parked to take in the first sunset of 2014. Here’s the view across the bay to San Francisco, with the Bay Bridge at center stage.