wildfire
-
Fire and Rain
Twenty-fifth in the News Commons series Southern California has two seasons: Fire and Rain. Rain didn’t begin this year until a few days after Fire ended apocalyptically, incinerating much of Altadena and Pacific Palisades. Now Rain is here, with the occasional atmospheric river flowing across the faces of hills and mountains whose beards were just Continue reading
-
And Now the #HughesFire
Twenty-fourth in the News Commons series Eigth on the #LAfires 7:35 am January 23, 2024—It’s morning now. The Hughes Fire is 17% contained but no longer interesting. The Sepulveda Fire broke out last night along the 405 freeway. It stopped at forty acres, and doesn’t matter much now. Here’s the path of one fire helicopter Continue reading
-
The Blame Game
Twenty-third in the News Commons series Seventh on the #LAfires Disaster coverage tends to go through four stages: Live reporting. TV stations stop all advertising and go into round-the-clock coverage. Radio stations drop the feeds from elsewhere and go wall-to-wall with live reports. Newspapers drop their paywalls. Coverage by the best of them ranges from Continue reading
-
How Facts Matter
Twenty-second in the News Commons series Sixth on the #LAfires Facts don’t matter, or they matter much less than people think—Daniel Kahnemann Facts don’t matter. What matters is how much we hate the person talking—Scott Adams But facts do matter when life and death are on the line. Or when one is recovering from a Continue reading
-
What Are Stories?
Twenty-first in the New Commons series Fifth on the #LAfires Several generations ago, my pal Jerry and I were cutting a hole between the ceiling joists of a rented house in Durham, North Carolina. This was our first step toward installing a drop-down stairway to an attic space that had been closed since the house, Continue reading
-
Aviation vs. Fire
3:22pm—Hats off to Miles Archer for the links below, one of which goes here— —showing all the aircraft and their paths at once. You can start here at https://globe.adsbexchange.com/, which is kind of your slate that’s blank except for live aircraft over the Palisades Fire: Meanwhile all the media are reporting one home loss, in Continue reading
-
Palisades Fire on the Ridge
10:15pm—Here is a Google Earth Pro view of the Palisades fire crossing the wilderness north of Pacific Palisades and south of “Dry Mulholland”—the dirt road that serves as a firebreak along the ridge of the mountains south of the San Fernando Valley: The large squares are MODIS satellite fire detections. The smaller ones are VIIRS. Continue reading
-
The Los Angeles Media Dashboard
Twentieth in the News Commons series Fourth on the #LAfires That collection of tabs is my dashboard of major media that inform my writing about the #LAfires. There are tabs for five TV stations, one radio station, and one newspaper: KNBC/4 “4 Los Angeles” KTLA/5 “LA’s Very Own” KABC/7 “7 Eyewitness News” KCAL/9 “KCAL NEWS Continue reading
-
Los Angeles Fires and Aftermath
Nineteenth in the News Commons series Third on the #LAfires 6:50am Friday, January 10, 2025—I will now shift my blogging about the #LAFires from the kind of continuous coverage I’ve done for the last three days to what we might call coverage of coverage. Or something beyond that: shifting to a new kind of news Continue reading
-
On Los Angeles Wildfires
Eighteenth in the News Commons series Second on the #LAfires 8:02pm It appears that water dropped on the Sunset Fire has mostly contained it within a perimeter absent of houses. Good that the winds were not too high to allow that work. I also no longer see the Chinook operating on FlightRadar24, which may mean Continue reading
-
On the Palisades and Eaton Fires
Seventeenth in the News Commons series First on the #LAfires We’re watching KABC/7 from Los Angeles, live on our Roku TV (which has it among hundreds of “Live TV” channels), and in a browser on this laptop. One screen grab: KABC/7 live coverage of the Palisades fire, and the new one a Eaton Canyon in Continue reading
-
Saving Mount Wilson
This was last night: And this was just before sunset tonight: From the Mt. Wilson Observatory website: Mount Wilson Observatory Status Angeles National Forest is CLOSED due to the extreme fire hazard conditions. To see how the Observatory is faring during the ongoing Bobcat fire, check our Facebook link, Twitter link, or go to the HPWREN Tower Cam and click on Continue reading
-
Geology questions for Montecito and Santa Barbara
This post continues the inquiry I started with Making sense of what happened to Montecito. That post got a record number of reads for this blog, and 57 comments as well. I expect to learn more at the community meeting this evening with UCSB geologist Ed Keller in the Faulkner Room in the main library Continue reading
-
An evacuated view on the #ThomasFire
Here’s the latest satellite fire detection data, restricted to just the last twelve hours of the Thomas Fire, mapped on Google Earth Pro:That’s labeled 1830 Mountain Standard Time (MST), or 5:30pm Pacific, about half an hour ago as I write this. And here are the evacuation areas: Our home is in the orange Voluntary Evacuation Continue reading
Broadcasting, data, Family, Geography, Life, Photography, problems, ThomasFire, Travel, tv, weather, wildfire