In a neighborhood in the hills just northeast of campus, Virginia Street climbs and twists to a dead end just above a short avenue called La Vereda Road. At the very top of Virginia, you find yourself in what appear to be a couple of private driveways. It looks like you’ve reached the top. But there’s a path with jury-rigged railings and steps, some nicely carpentered, some hand-cut into a very steep slope. Going up to the top, your way is blocked by the fence and gate above. One sign seems to invite you to go farther; another sign warning of serious federal consequences — the land on the other side belongs to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory — and a heavy lock on the gate stop you in your tracks. Except for the fact someone’s going out of their way to maintain access across private property up to the gate, I’d think the gate is always locked. I’ve been up there maybe half a dozen times, have never found anyone on the street who knows what the deal is and have struck out looking online for any info. Maybe calling the lab is my next step, or maybe someone who reads this will have a key for that lock. (Below: the view from the gate, shot through my sunglass lens.)
Summertime
From the National Weather Service Area Forecast Discussion earlier this evening
As of 8:54 p.m. PDT Thursday … another summer day comes to a close along the Central California coast. Keeping with the trend … afternoon highs were slightly below normal once again. Stratus continues to be banked up along the coast and starting to push into the bays and inland valleys. Profiler network and 00z Oakland sounding from this evening indicate the marine inversion varying from north to south 1500-2000 ft. Local onshore flow (SFO-SAC) maxing out once again above +4.0 mb with strong winds blowing through San Francisco Bay and the West Delta. Tomorrow should to be very similar to today … with widespread stratus coverage during the morning then burning back to the coast by midday. Localized areas of drizzle can be expected as well.
What’s all that mean? It’s gray, foggy and cool here. This week, we could sell that to folks in Portland, Seattle, and just about everywhere else north, east, and south of here. (The picture: Looking across Berkeley Marina to Mount Tamalpais from the I-80 pedestrian bridge, just after sunset tonight.)
Summertime
From the National Weather Service Area Forecast Discussion earlier this evening
As of 8:54 p.m. PDT Thursday … another summer day comes to a close along the Central California coast. Keeping with the trend … afternoon highs were slightly below normal once again. Stratus continues to be banked up along the coast and starting to push into the bays and inland valleys. Profiler network and 00z Oakland sounding from this evening indicate the marine inversion varying from north to south 1500-2000 ft. Local onshore flow (SFO-SAC) maxing out once again above +4.0 mb with strong winds blowing through San Francisco Bay and the West Delta. Tomorrow should to be very similar to today … with widespread stratus coverage during the morning then burning back to the coast by midday. Localized areas of drizzle can be expected as well.
What’s all that mean? It’s gray, foggy and cool here. This week, we could sell that to folks in Portland, Seattle, and just about everywhere else north, east, and south of here. (The picture: Looking across Berkeley Marina to Mount Tamalpais from the I-80 pedestrian bridge, just after sunset tonight.)
Summer Rainbow
I’ve long been a fan of photographic panoramas. Once a long time ago, we went to the farm near Dyersville, Iowa, where “Field of Dreams” was filmed, and I took a series of shots of the baseball field from the farmhouse porch. When I got the pictures back, I spent a while creating a mosaic of the shots, then had them mounted and framed as a present for my dad. I think he’s still got it hanging on his wall. One of the unexpected artifacts in the pictures was a guy who was walking along the right-field and first-base line; he appears in several shots in the “panorama.”
Nowadays, I’m sure there’s some sort of really good software that helps you stitch together digital pictures. Me, I have an application for the Mac called DoubleTake that does an OK job. One of the first things you realize when using it, though, is that it can’t really give you a seamless rendering of more than two shots. Not that I mind–I’m not a pro and I’m taking pictures with a pocket-sized camera.
But every once in a while, I wish I had the equipment, the knowledge, and the other wherewithal that would knit together with my enthusiasm for wide-angle scenes. Case in point: This evening just before sunset, we got an exceedingly rare July rainfall. The sun was below the edge of the clouds, and as soon as the rain started falling–very lightly–I knew we’d see a rainbow. And in a few minutes, there it was: a full arch and a full “double” image. The colors on the descending legs were so bright they appeared fluorescent. I ran in the house and got the beat-up Casio and shot away. I shot away knowing that I wouldn’t capture the real brilliance of the light and that I’d need three shots, minimum, to get the full expanse of the rainbow.
So that’s where that image up there comes from (click for a larger image–the full size is 2400×900-some pixels). To make the rainbow look continuous, I compromised on the bottom edge of the pictures, where you can see some strange things happening with trees and houses.
On to the next experiment. (And if you want to check out a panoramic picture system, take a look at this.)
June Rain
Just after 10 o’clock tonight, the dog and I walked out the front door for a walk. He stopped on the porch and stared out at the street as if asking, “What’s that?” It was rain, an out-of-season occurrence. My tendency, confronted with weather that’s not supposed to happen at whatever time of year it’s happening, is to say, “This never happens.” Then I try to look it up.
So here’s a brief rundown on June rain in Berkeley, thanks to the Climate Summary and Monthly Total Precipitation tables at the Western Regional Climate Center.
–Years of record: 102 (1893 through 2008, with 16 missing).
–Berkeley mean June rainfall: 0.19 inches (annual mean: 23.45 inches).
–June maximum: 1.24 inches (1907). Other Junes with 1 inch or more: 1894, 1929, 1967, 1995, 2005.
–June minimum: 0.00 inches (38 times).
Five highest June rainfall totals:
June 15, 1929: 1.04 inches.
June 2, 1967: 0.88 inches.
June 8, 1964: 0.69 inches.
June 17, 1894: 0.63 inches.
June 11, 1907, and June 24, 1912: 0.61 inches.
June Rain
Just after 10 o’clock tonight, the dog and I walked out the front door for a walk. He stopped on the porch and stared out at the street as if asking, “What’s that?” It was rain, an out-of-season occurrence. My tendency, confronted with weather that’s not supposed to happen at whatever time of year it’s happening, is to say, “This never happens.” Then I try to look it up.
So here’s a brief rundown on June rain in Berkeley, thanks to the Climate Summary and Monthly Total Precipitation tables at the Western Regional Climate Center.
–Years of record: 102 (1893 through 2008, with 16 missing).
–Berkeley mean June rainfall: 0.19 inches (annual mean: 23.45 inches).
–June maximum: 1.24 inches (1907). Other Junes with 1 inch or more: 1894, 1929, 1967, 1995, 2005.
–June minimum: 0.00 inches (38 times).
Five highest June rainfall totals:
June 15, 1929: 1.04 inches.
June 2, 1967: 0.88 inches.
June 8, 1964: 0.69 inches.
June 17, 1894: 0.63 inches.
June 11, 1907, and June 24, 1912: 0.61 inches.
Strange Season
Nearly midnight here in Berkeley, and it’s still pushing 70 degrees. It’s windless, too–dead calm. I’m not preaching climate change this evening. The weather annals show that the week of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, which occurred April 18, was hot, too: highs in the 90s in San Jose and Santa Cruz, for instance–records that still stand. (No, I’m not suggesting this is “earthquake weather,” either).
But warm night-time weather is a relative rarity here. And with the stillness, the heat rising from the sidewalks, the little pockets of cool in the low spots where creeks used to run, the clear moonless sky and the smell of jasmine and other flowers filling the dark–it feels like a strange season.
North Berkeley Rainbow
Berkeley Rain
It started raining about midnight last night and kept up nearly straight through until 10 this evening. I’ve found lots and lots of weather sites online with scads of data to waste my time on, but I’ve never found the “official” Berkeley weather statistics online on a day to day basis; what I see from looking at local home weather stations and several other measurements around town is that we had about 2 inches of rain in the storm. Around the state, I’ve seen numbers over 5 inches along the northern coast and in some parts of the Coast Ranges. Three weeks ago, the universal description of this season was “California’s third dry winter in a row.” It could still turn out that way, but February has been a rainy month nearly everywhere in the state.
We had to get out for a walk this afternoon and decided to go down to the dog park near the Berkeley Marina. The rain chased almost everyone else away, and we got to slosh around by ourselves for half an hour or 45 minutes. The dog highlight of the day came when Scout spotted a jackrabbit on a knoll about 50 yards away. I saw him go after a rabbit once before, and it was a startling transformation from pet to hare-seeking missile. The same thing happened today: he turned into 55 pounds of flat-out speed and actually closed a good bit of the distance on the rabbit before it vanished into some brush and over a hilltop. Scout disappeared, too. He’s usually very controlled but from my earlier experience I knew he’d keep running as long as he had any sign that the rabbit was nearby. We ran after him and spotted him a couple hundred yards away in a meadow, looking around for us.
(Picture above: Standing water in the dog park; below: dog standing over ground squirrel burrow, with clouds moving along the top of the Berkeley Hills; you can see UC Berkeley’s Campanile in the distance.)
January
What the drought looks like: clear sky, a touch of green on the hills, and bone-dry trails. This was at the top of the Seaview Trail in Tilden Park, in the hills above Berkeley, this afternoon. That’s Mount Diablo in the slightly dirty distance. Met dozens of people out walking — more than I ever recall seeing on the trail at once (one reason: it climbs a good 600 or 800 feet from the nearest parking areas, which are more than a mile from the top). We’ve had less than half an inch of rain this month, the month that’s usually the heart of the wet season.
Winter’s happening somewhere. Here and here and here. But not here where I am.