Why San Francisco Had an Apocalyptic Orange Sky (venturebeat.com) 80
An anonymous reader shares a report: San Francisco residents awoke on Wednesday to an orange sky, like something out of the apocalypse. People shared images on social media of a sky turned hazy orange by smoke coming in from major wildfires throughout the region. Aclima, which measures air on a "hyperlocal" level with pollution sensors on cars, had an explanation for the phenomenon. The orange sky over the Bay Area didn't appear to match the hourly recommendations about pollution levels on the Bay Area Air Quality Management District's website, which generally showed healthy or moderate air pollution levels, except in the morning over Oakland and San Francisco, where air levels were shown to be unhealthy.
But the mismatch between the smoky haze and the stats from sensors made sense to Aclima chief scientist Melissa Lunden, who spoke with VentureBeat in an interview. She said an inversion layer suspends the polluted, smoky air at least a couple of thousand feet in the air and keeps it from descending to the ground level where we breathe. "It's like a layer cake where the air doesn't mix," Lunden said. "The smoke that is here today has been transported from a long way away, as far as Oregon." Drone footage of San Francisco from yesterday, set to Blade Runner track.
But the mismatch between the smoky haze and the stats from sensors made sense to Aclima chief scientist Melissa Lunden, who spoke with VentureBeat in an interview. She said an inversion layer suspends the polluted, smoky air at least a couple of thousand feet in the air and keeps it from descending to the ground level where we breathe. "It's like a layer cake where the air doesn't mix," Lunden said. "The smoke that is here today has been transported from a long way away, as far as Oregon." Drone footage of San Francisco from yesterday, set to Blade Runner track.
Why San Francisco Had an Apocalyptic Orange Sky (Score:5, Informative)
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The (unlinked) article seems to be about how the fires can affect the appearance of the sky without affecting air quality at ground level, but that's only slightly less of a "duh!"
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Because fire because global warming.
While this is true, it leaves out quite a bit of context. The fires are so bad this year (and recently) because of the dropping water table in the central valley. While the ag industry out there hasn't always been the best stewards of the land, the recent drying has nothing to do with them. What it has to do with is the huge amounts of water used for fracking out there to get the natural gas to backup the wind and solar that Sacramento is always pushing. You might say, well the governors of CA are liber
Re:Why San Francisco Had an Apocalyptic Orange Sky (Score:4, Informative)
That's horseshit. Gavin is not a Getty. Gordon Getty was a family friend and calling Gavin a Getty is just appealing to guilt-by-association.
There is no evidence that fracking lowers water tables. The amount of water used in fracking in California is minimal compared to other uses. The lowering water table is due to irrigation during a drought. The aquifer is not being recharged by Sierra snowmelt as much as needed.
You can turn a drought into a political screed if you want, but at least tell the truth.
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There is no evidence that fracking lowers water tables. The amount of water used in fracking in California is minimal compared to other uses. The lowering water table is due to irrigation during a drought. The aquifer is not being recharged by Sierra snowmelt as much as needed.
You can turn a drought into a political screed if you want, but at least tell the truth.
"Previous industry estimates said that fracking used about 100 million gallons of water in California a year." from here [huffpost.com]
If we use more than the recharge from the Sierra, its too much. Not sure why that is so hard for you to understand...oh yea...tribal politics...natural gas isn't better...it just makes you feel better.
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No, I understand fine. You were interested in "context" before so here is some context for you.
First you are underestimating the amount of water used in California for fracking (I think your source didn't add up all the frackers). A more accurate number is up to 300 million gallons. An acre-foot of water is 325851 gallons. So, the 300 million gallons of water used for fracking in California is approximately 920 acre-feet.
Now, according to the California Department of Water Resources, agriculture in Californ
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Yes, but that's not water that the forest uses. It doesn't tap that far down into the deep aquifers -- certainly the shrubs and other foliage that dry out don't. That makes drinking water and other industrial uses of water in a tough spot.
The frequent fires in the West have multiple causes:
1) Shortening and intensifying of the rainy season. While the overall inches of rain in a season is not that much different, it falls in fewer months, leaving more dry months. That leaves everything more dried off by Oct/
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Arguing whilst your country burns, kinda funny. Do you know they will lie to keep it going just one more quarter, because more profits that quarter and bigger bonuses for them and then the next quarter and the next. No matter how many die or the destruction caused, they will keep lying to keep their personal profits coming in, they do not care, beyond their own greed and ego. Different corporate cartels and lobbyists pulling the government in different directions all of them destructive.
Meanwhile much of t
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You are not in a La Nina situation.
At the moment it is an equilibrium between La Nina and el Nino.
OOPS.
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I actually did, and so should you.
OOPS.
And neither do I own one, nor try to own one.
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There's a million articles confirming what I said. You didn't use google?
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/10... [cnn.com]
https://www.livescience.com/la... [livescience.com]
https://www.tampabay.com/hurri... [tampabay.com]
https://www.stgeorgeutah.com/n... [stgeorgeutah.com]
etc
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I use weather sites, like
https://www.climate.gov/enso [climate.gov]
https://www.americangeoscience... [americangeosciences.org]
And the last link I saw (don't find it at the moment) when this topic was raised: clearly said we are in a neutral phase.
And as the last el ninho just ha ended: it is impossible to be in an el ninja phase now.
But if you find news site more reliable than weather/climate sites :D up to you.
That link is interesting, though:
https://www.stgeorgeutah.com/n... [stgeorgeutah.com]
A it claims:
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announc
Re:Why San Francisco Had an Apocalyptic Orange Sky (Score:4, Informative)
Because fire?
More accurately, because smoke. Scott Manley explains here https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Yes. YESSS!
We need a bat-signal type light installed every 30 miles or so across the state with the Prop 65 warning as the message being shown on the smoke clouds.
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That'd be that well-known toxin, oxygen, and it's derivative, DHMO.
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No, because particles in the air...
See:
https://twistedsifter.com/2020... [twistedsifter.com]
Which includes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Very cool, kinda.
Because Orange Man? (Score:1)
Just curious (Score:1)
How do San Franciscans simultaneously look up at the sky and look down to avoid stepping in a poo-pile?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Trump? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Sorry, but it's the only orange thing that came to my mind.
Re:Trump? (Score:4)
Run in fear (Score:2)
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There’s going to be a huge amount of Orange fans sad when Trump loses, what fun it will be.
You need to stop deluding yourself. Biden's rally yesterday only Trump supporters showed up to heckle him and his communist ideas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Learn who is really lying to you. It's not Trump.
And it'll just be more common (Score:1)
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Re:Mother Nature can't take anymore wackjobs (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Mother Nature can't take anymore wackjobs (Score:2)
Workers donâ(TM)t have rights in California, and cannot afford healthcare.
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The electoral map wasn't complicated.
He won because 40,000 people in the Rust Belt switched sides. This happened after he promised to make sure brown people couldn't take their jobs, and China couldn't undercut their goods.
Of course he failed to make any real change on both accounts, and the polls indicate they won't vote that way again.
These people weren't political- they were merely stupid. Lifetime factory workers who believed a blo
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Because not wanting to compete for jobs with 3rd world starving peasants in an unsustainable race-to-the-bottom that ends in global economic collapse.... That's racist.
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xenophobic means an irrational fear of foreigners. I'm guessing that his supporters didn't find his rhetoric irrational at all. Eye of the beholder, and all that.
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Look at the roots of the word. It's quite simply a fear of foreigners.
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Irrational is something you added to its definition. Look at the roots of the word. It's quite simply a fear of foreigners.
Interesting, but irrelevant. The meaning of words can be informed by their roots, but it actually boils down to the accepted meaning, as defined in dictionaries. According to Merriam Webster, "phobia" is "an exaggerated usually inexplicable and illogical fear of a particular object, class of objects, or situation". Dictionary.com has a secondary definition of "an aversion toward, dislike of, or disrespect for a thing, idea, or group"; of course, none of those are necessarily rooted in fear.
Of course, you mi
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That's a nice juicy little story. But there are over two dozen wildfires in California, and two of them are among the largest 3, ever. Rushing around blaming whoever sparked one off will never solve this.
Obviously if you're going to have an explosive gender reveal party out in the woods you need to just make sure you really rake the surrounding area first. That'll prevent forest fires.
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Sweep. Not rake.
#sweeptheforests
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Ignore this. My mistake. It was rake, not sweep.
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Maybe these nutjobs should keep their gender reveal parties indoors.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/07... [cnn.com]
Also, this time around most of the fires were started by a dry lightening storm a few weeks ago. So there is nobody to blame which must make it useless to you as you can't use it to slander the other side.
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Too premature. Do the gender reveal party when the child turns 18.
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Mother nature?
Wildfires and climate change are messy and inconvenient, and possibly fatal for a whole bunch of species, but Mother Nature has survived much worse if you believe the geological record, and can survive just about anything short of global thermonuclear war or the Sun going nova. And I'm not so sure about global thermonuclear war.
We learned this from Bill Watterson (Score:4, Interesting)
Or maybe I should blame Calvin's dad for this knowledge
https://www.gocomics.com/calvi... [gocomics.com]
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"i looked outside my window and didn't understand what was happening"
*deadpan* it's climate change and drought with the decades of fighting forest fires thereby increasing fuel load, smoke in sky, yellow/red filter.
Well, as someone who has been through years of fires and smoke now, yesterday's event was extremely usual. Unique, even. Today, it's grey and smoky. That's hardly hot. But yesterday, it was orange and very dark, yet the surface-level air was clear, not at all smoky. That's the odd part.
Forest Fires (Score:2)
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But do you rake your needles in Alberta?
Honestly, this popped up again this week on Facebook, someone sharing a post about how we laughed when Trump recommended this but who's laughing now. Clearly a joke, but a big Trump believer reposted it in all seriousness :-)
Just as stupid is the assertion that this happens because of bad California land management. And yet these fires happen in many states, red or blue, and other countries, and other mostly conservative provinces of other countries and so forth. T
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we laughed when Trump recommended this
Considering this failure illegally cut down trees [go.com] at one of his failing golf courses so people could look at a dirty, muddy river, and thus increasing bank erosion, I'm not sure we should listen to anything the con artist has to say about nature.
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Half the time, it happens on federal land (such as the current Plumas fire) which is not under California's jurisdiction.
The obvious answer (Score:2)
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You mean people from Nevada? Makes sense. Probably that Burning Man got bored and took a little hike to the west.
Why orange? Availability. (Score:2)
The vanilla sky [wikipedia.org] was in Manhattan.
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The San Francisco Giants were playing there that day, the team colors are orange and black, I figured this was all an extravagant baseball promotion.
Smoke on the water, ... (Score:5, Funny)
Never Trust Air You Can't See (Score:2)
Because attention span (Score:1)
It's been a good 6 months since part of the planet was on fire enough to make the sky orange, and humans seems to be stuck with rote learning, be it learning the times table, being reminded what a moron the president is, and what colour the sky turns every 6 months when an apocalyptic looking bushfire burns down another chunk of the planet.
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Yup the Australian coworkers were all very unimpressed about our stories of impending doom, claiming that had already lived it and were bored of the whole apocalypse now.
ANTIFA arsonists? (Score:1)
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No doubt about it. They're doing it. Anyone voting for Biden is voting for no police and more destruction of America.
As even some do nothing smug Mayors are finding out - that means them too. Don't think it won't effect you.
It's from CARS! (Score:3)
It's all the cars leaving San Fransico, you know, fleeing the city....
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"I saw a great orange disturbance in the air as if a million drivers suddenly applied their brakes and went silent. Or it could just be traffic."
*POOP!* (Score:2)
Is it the statistical 2 piles of human excrement per block?
Slashdot users lost connection? (Score:1)
Here's a photo (Score:2)