Two-Heel Drive Fire Coverage Continues
Tom Mangan continues to post interesting stories about the Lick Fire. Today he links to an article about people who have property in the area, and he includes a link to a slide show featuring some very good photographic work by Patrick Tehan.
'Turned the corner' on Lick Fire
Firefighter Blog post an update on the Lick Fire in Coe Park here in the SF Bay area:
Lick Fire Bosses Gain Ground. Lick Fire Incident Commander Bob Whallen, his command team and the 1,900 firefighters assigned to the incident have turned a corner. The weather helped as humidity and winds worked to their favor.
According to the morning report from the incident the fire is at 39,585 acres and is 45% contained. Demobilization of some of the resources begins today…. By Mike. [Firefighter Blog]
Follow the link for the full post, which includes a summary of some interesting facts about the fire: Total area projected to be close to 50,000 acres and total cost of fighting the fire to be about $10 million. Or $4.8 million if you believe SF Gate.
Polar Bears and Climate Change
New York Times:
Warming Is Seen as Wiping Out Most Polar Bears. Shrinking polar ice caps will cause at least two-thirds of the world’s polar bears to disappear by 2050, government scientists reported on Friday. By JOHN M. BRODER and ANDREW C. REVKIN. [NYT > Science]
Not everyone realizes that polar bears live in three environments, almost equally well: land, ice pack, and ocean. Global climate change creates problems for these animals in all three.
From the article:
The scientists concluded that, while the bears were not likely to be driven to extinction, they would be largely relegated to the Arctic archipelago of Canada and spots off the northern Greenland coast, where summer sea ice tends to persist even in warm summers like this one, a shrinking that could be enough to reduce the bear population by two-thirds.
The bears would disappear entirely from Alaska, the study said.
“As the sea ice goes, so goes the polar bear,” said Steven Amstrup, lead biologist for the survey team.
Tom's Latest
Tom Mangan (Two-Heel Drive) reports that he has a new hike article at the Mercury News:
Latest Hikes column: Butano State Park. Actually, it was posted yesterday:
Some hiker friends of mine visit Butano State Park mainly as excuse to stop off for pie at Duarte’s in Pescadero, a few miles down the road. Duarte’s bakes luscious pies with berries picked from nearby fields, and any excuse to stop in for a slice is valid.
But Butano is worth a visit regardless of your pie-craving proclivities. The park has remarkable biological diversity – six distinct habitats – and an excellent mix of trails: flat walks along shady creeks, rocky hillside passages, hill climbs steep enough to require stairs.
Polar ice cap gone by 2030?
This post at Weather Underground caught my attention since I had just seen a National Geographic program on the mechanism and effects of global warming on polar and glacial ice.
You’ll have to scroll down a bit a the links since the portion of the story referring to this year’s astounding decrease in the polar ice cap follows some other information.
Two excerpts:
None of our computer climate models predicted that such a huge loss in Arctic ice would occur so soon. Up until this year, the prevailing view among climate scientists was that an ice-free Arctic ocean would occur in the 2070-2100 time frame. The official word on climate change, the February 2007 report from the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warned that without drastic changes in greenhouse gas emissions, Arctic sea ice will “almost entirely” disappear by the end of the century. This projection is now being radically revised. Earlier this year, I blogged about a new study that predicted abrupt losses of Arctic sea ice were possible as early as 2015, and that we could see an ice-free Arctic Ocean as early as 2040. Well, the Arctic Ocean has suffered one of the abrupt losses this study warned about–eight years earlier than this most radical study suggested. It is highly probable that a complete loss of summer Arctic sea ice will occur far earlier than any scientist or computer model predicted. In an interview published yesterday in The Guardian Dr. Mark Serreze, and Arctic ice expert with the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said: “If you asked me a couple of years ago when the Arctic could lose all of its ice, then I would have said 2100, or 2070 maybe. But now I think that 2030 is a reasonable estimate. It seems that the Arctic is going to be a very different place within our lifetimes, and certainly within our children’s lifetimes.” While natural fluctuations in wind and ocean circulation are partly to blame for this loss of sea ice, human-caused global warming is primarily to blame. In the words of Dr. Serreze: “The rules are starting to change and what’s changing the rules is the input of greenhouse gases. This year puts the exclamation mark on a series of record lows that tell us something is happening.”
And…
One more point–global warming skeptics often criticize using computer model climate predictions as a basis for policy decisions. These models are too uncertain, they say. Well, the uncertainty goes both way–sometimes the models will underestimate climate change. We should have learned this lesson when the ozone hole opened up–another case where the models failed to predict a major climate change. The atmosphere is not the well-behaved, predictable entity the models try to approximate it as. The atmosphere is wild, chaotic, incredibly complex, and prone to sudden unexpected shifts. By pumping large amounts of greenhouse gases into the air, we have destabilized the climate and pushed the atmosphere into a new state it has never been in before. We can expect many more surprises that the models will not predict. Some of these may be pleasant surprises, but I am expecting mostly nasty surprises.
Here is Why it is Smoky in the Bay Area
Satellite photograph of Central California showing smoke plume over the San Francisco Bay Area. September 6, 2007.
You can see the plume over the Bay Area, and you can also see that a good part of it is coming from a fire in the Sierra – not just from our local fire. Weather forecasters say that the “finger of fog” coming up the coast from the south may help clear the air of smoke soon.
California Wildfire Blogs
Tom Mangan has recently pointed out two interesting sources of insight and information about California wildfires that I would like to share here:
- California Fire News – Ugly blog. Great information.
- Firefighter Blog – Better looking blog – lots of interesting images. Also great content.
Thanks to Tom at Two-Heel Drive for sharing the links.
From the "What Are They Thinking?" Department
As anyone who is semi-conscious and living in California should know, big chunks of the state are subject to wildfires, especially near the end of summer in September and early October. This is on my mind for several reasons today:
When I got up this morning and walked to the kitchen, the sunlight was streaming in through our east-facing kitchen window. The red sunlight. Make that blood red. The sky is filled with smoke from the Lick fire in Coe Park to the southeast of us.
Today the word is that this huge fire – well over 10,000 acres and still growing – had its origin in “human causes” – now said to be some kind of careless burning at a hunting camp outside the park, perhaps trash burning.
Several years ago at this time of year and in conditions not too different from those of this year (e.g. – the whole state is primed to burn.) I was passed in a grassy area of a local train by a group of equestrians… smoking cigarettes!
This time of year, and this year in particular, it is very important that people take the fire warnings seriously!
Bear Buffet
Tom Stienstra posts a summary of some interesting Yosemite bear facts for fall:
The summer-to-fall transition has started for black bears in Yosemite National Park and elsewhere in the Sierra Nevada. In a two-month eating frenzy, bears will pack on the pounds to prepare for hibernation. Here’s what’s happening with the bears at Yosemite…
I learned at least one new thing from this article. Apparently the bears – who are trying to eat about 20,000 calories per day right now to prepare for winter – make acorns a big part of their diet during the season. I knew that Yosemite black bears are omnivorous, eating berries, insects, and just about anything else they can get into their mouths, but I had no idea they were interested in acorns.
Another interesting fact from the article: while human/bear conflicts do occur on the part (the occasional car break-in, bears being hit by drivers, etc.) it sounds like the number of incidents this year is quite a bit lower than during some of the record-breaking years in the 1990s.
It has actually been quite awhile since I’ve encountered a bear in Yosemite, though I used to see them with some regularity while backpacking there or while car-camping in Tuolumne Meadows. (I was visited – twice – by a bear earlier this summer while camping at Ediza Lake. No harm done since my food was safely stashed in a canister.)
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Dan's Outside 
Sierra Weather: What Was I Thinking?
I’m just back from a nice little near-the-end-of-the-season pack trip out of Tuolumne Meadows – I spent a couple nights out in the Young Lakes basin. I’ll probably write a bit more about the trip and post some photos later, but for now here’s a little story about me and the weather.
I often follow Sierra weather forecasts even when I’m not going to the mountains, but before a pack trip I often consult several sources before I leave, including the Weather Service forecast discussions. By wading though the somewhat technical verbiage and reading between the lines I can often pick up important hints that may affect my choice of destination and – more often – what gear I take.
This past Saturday and again on Sunday morning before I left, the basic thread was that we were going into a fairly benign weather week, with some cloudiness around the Sierra crest on Sunday and then a clearing trend. So I decided to leave my tent at home and take only my bivy, even leaving my small Siltarp in the car to minimize weight.
The short story is that I got the chance to find out what it is like to camp in a bivy in the rain. The longer story follows, and includes a little lesson on what happens when I focus too much on weather reports… and perhaps not enough on the actual weather.
Nothing too surprising happened on Sunday, the first day of my little trip. I knew that there would be some clouds in the afternoon – as a photographer I actually looked forward to this bit of interesting weather – and a slight possibility of some showers. So I wasn’t at all surprised when the clouds thickened and it started to sprinkle a bit by the time I was a mile or so from my camp at Lower Young Lake. This was very minor weather – the sort where you put the pack cover on “just in case it really starts to rain,” and keep the rest of the rain gear near the top of the pack. The sprinkles pretty much passed by the time I set up camp.
The morning was beautiful on day two with blue sky (though hazy, perhaps from those September California fires) and a stray cloud or two. I decided to wander on up past Middle and Upper Young Lakes, and perhaps continue on up to a further lake along the route to Mt. Conness, or possibly travel to nearby Roosevelt Lake. In light of the generally nice weather and bearing in mind the forecast of fair weather I had read before leaving, I chose to travel light, carrying only camera gear and some water – I carried no rain gear or other clothing beyond what I wore.
As I walked the short distance to the two upper lakes I was a bit disappointed in the flat light under increasingly cloudy conditions. Oddly, having that weather forecast so fixed in my mind, I didn’t really even consider that it might rain – in conditions that would have caused me to think about this in normal circumstances. After photographing at the upper lake I thought I’d wander up to a point on a low ridge where I could either continue to the upper lake or head over toward Roosevelt. It was here that I first heard thunder and then felt a few rain drops. I thought something like, “That’s odd. It shouldn’t rain today,” but I decided that it might be a good idea to reconsider my plans and head back toward the lower lake.
A couple minutes later it was raining enough that I had to stop and put a rain cover on my camera bag. As I dropped through a steeper section of the route between the middle and upper lake I realized that I was starting to get significantly wet. I found a partially fallen tree that provided shelter until the rain slacked off a bit, and then continued on for another 15-20 minutes in the drizzle to reach my campsite.
Fortunately, I had zipped my bivy up tight, so my camp was secure and dry. Now I had the opportunity to figure out how to try to keep it that way while getting out of wet clothes and into the bivy. It went something like this: Take boots off and stuff them into a large plastic bag along with pack and few other odds and ends. Move food canister close to bivy in case rain continues during dinner. Open bivy and push sleeping bag away from the opening. Standing in the opening of the bivy, quickly put on additional poly layers and put the damp pants and shirt on over them. Zip into the bivy while lying on top of the sleeping bag and let body heat do its work of drying the damp clothes. Listen to thunder and rain and hail on the bivy. When rain stops, sit up in bivy and fix dinner… and then zip up again for after-dinner showers.
It finally stopped and, yes, a bivy is a decent though cramped shelter in light rain. (Remember to bring a book…)
A lesson learned: Next time pay a whole lot less attention to what the weather is supposed to be and a lot more attention to what it actually is doing.
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September 12, 2007 Posted by gdanmitchell | Commentary | 2 Comments