When I'm in Santa Barbara, I often go on daily errands or on short day trips, exploring the area and viewingi places I remember from my childhood.  I was there this time from the Monday of Christmas week until the Monday after New Years Day.  This allowed time for several such trips, and more time to explore.  Just up the coast from Santa Barbara is the University of California, Santa Barbara campus.  The campus is bordered on two sides by sloughs, one the Goleta Slough, which empties into the sea at Goleta Beach, and the other the Devereux Slough

Beginning in 1943, the Devereux Schools had a campus in Goleta, a small town north of Santa Barbara.  Devereux is a school for special needs students (developmental/intellectual disabilities, neurological impairments, autism, dual diagnosis, mental health, and emotional and behavioral disorders.), with a main campus in Philadelphia and multiple campuses across the country.  Although services continue in Santa Barbara, the campus was sold to the University of California in 2007, and is currently used by UCSB as a conference center.  The area is still known by the name of the founder.  Along one side of the Devereux campus at UCSB is a slough, maintained as an animal preserve, and for recreational purposes.  It was to this area that we went exploring on the day after Christmas, after a foray to nearby Costco!

Because of the drought which is now in its 4th year, the slough has very little water -- just enough for a few birds to rest.

The upper end of the slough is under the bridge in the background of this shot -- a small stream flows into the slough under that bridge.

With the first El Nino rains this week, and the high tides that have accompanied the storms, I imagine that the slough is now more like an inlet from the sea.  I will look forward to seeing it again the next time I visit Santa Barbara.

Each year my Christmas gift to family members is a calendar of my favorite photos from the previous year.  As a happy new year wish, I thought I'd post the photos that I used in this year's calendar.

January

Lake Cachuma, Spring 2015

February

Great Blue Heron, Dana Point

March

Santa Ynez Valley Wine Country

April

Santa Ynez River, Alisal Golf Course

May

Gorilla Family, San Diego Zoo Safari Park

June

July

Nola, endangered Northern White Rhino

August

White Bird of Paradise, San Diego Zoo Safari Park

September

California Sea Gull

October

Great White Egret -- Dana Point Harbor

November (and cover photo)

Gaviota Coast

December

Lake Cachuma, Fall 2015

I wish you all a very happy 2016!

I've been in Santa Barbara for the past two weeks, and will post photos as I get a bit more organized.  The strongest words I heard this morning as I left my friend's house were "El Nino's a Myth!"  That myth has included predictions of rain for several days during the last couple of weeks -- rain that did not materialize.  The latest was for today, and I was not happy that I would have to drive home in the rain.  As I left Santa Barbara, there were about 10 raindrops on the windshield of my car, which had been outside overnight.  As I drove home, the sky became lighter and lighter -- it is now clouding over again now.  The drive was easier than any I can remember for several years -- less traffic, dry roads, more consistent traffic, and nothing to slow me down.  The prediction for tomorrow is for a much stronger storm -- the second in a series that is predicted to bring up to a total of 6" by the end of the week.

Watch for more posts in the next day or two -- and for more consistent posting again now that it's a new year!

Those of you who have followed my posts for a while may remember that about 1-1/2 years ago I showed photos of a beach that had disappeared completely -- one that I have photographed many times in the past to show the various changes in the creek inlet to the sea.  This past summer I haven't stopped there very often, and not to take pictures.  As the weather got hotter, so did this beach become a good place to go to cool off -- and it became impossible to park in the small lot.  Yesterday, it was considerably cooler, with gray, almost stormy skies, and there were considerably fewer cars parked.  Having the camera with me, I decided to stop for a few minutes.  This seagull walked slowly towards me, looking to see if I had food for him -- when he lost interest in me, he turned to walk away -- and his feathers caught my attention.

The sea was relatively calm, though there are always waves breaking at this beach.

Turning slightly to the left -- this is the regenerated beach that had disappeared the last time I was there.  You may remember that I calmly said it would return!

It has returned so nicely that the fire-pits have been replaced -- there are usually huge crowds of people around each one of these.

Shortly after returning from the fumigation escapade, I noticed a strange object under the tree in front of my home.

Upon closer inspection, I noticed that it was a mushroom.

Our seasons have been strange this year, but I thought that mushrooms grew at the end of the rainy season, rather than the beginning!  I think the landscapers must have put down some mulch recently that contained spores which were activated by a light rain followed by high humidity.

You may have read recently of our mudslides.  Although it's  been overcast in this part of the world, there hasn't been much rain.  However, on Thursday evening, about dusk, when a lot of northbound traffic was on the one major freeway about 100 miles north there was a huge downpour, with about 4-6 inches of rain falling in an hour.  That much rain, in an area where two years ago there were severe brushfires, causes major mudslides.  People who were there said that it started with the freeway turning into a river, then to a river of mud as a hillside collapsed.  Well over 100 vehicles were trapped in the mud in about 15 minutes, and similar slides occurred in other areas, making it impossible to travel north from LA except through Santa Barbara.  They said the traffic back-up on that highway was as long as 50 miles!  I'm glad it wasn't a weekend for which I might have driven to Santa Barbara!

While that was all happening, the weather here was overcast, quite warm, and very humid.

I drove to Dana Point to see what weather might be coming from the coast, and saw these boats arriving.

The sky was gray, but the water was calm, and the weather not threatening.  We have now had several days like this, and expect to have several more before the sun returns.  I have been glad to be at home, where I am relatively safe and comfortable when this type of weather happens!

As a side note, any rain that falls in such deluges doesn't do much to break our drought.  What little might fall into a reservoir will help bring a mouthful or two of drinking water to the area, but the rest flows away to the ocean.   If we have a winter of rains like that, enough might fall into lakes to 'ease' the drought, but it will take several rainy years to break the 5-year drought we have had.

It rained today, and may again overnight.  We had about 1/4 inch of rain last night and this morning, and they are saying there are more showers on the way!  That doesn't sound like much, and it isn't -- but after months with no more than 1!0 inch of rain, every 1/4 inch is important!  Hopefully these small rains will break the ground, too, so that if there is a big el nino rain, it won't just run off.  Stay tuned to see what happens next!

As a way to help myself settle in and feel at home again, last week I drove to the beach.  There wasn't much going on, but I did capture this sailboat motoring into the harbor.  Tomorrow I'll get the patio furniture back outside so I can once again enjoy my patio.  And there's always lots of paperwork to go through when I've been away -- I'm still plowing through that!

The saga of the HOA has continued!  My home was scheduled for fumigation on 9/15; however, it rained that day, and my home was rescheduled for 9/16.  I decided then that it was a good thing I had chosen to stay away for a week, rather than the required 3 days.  On Friday evening, I had a call saying that the Gas Company had left the property without turning my gas on, and could I be there at 7:15 the next morning -- I told them that I expected to be home on Monday afternoon, and that I further expected to have the gas turned on by then as had been promised.  It was, but there was a problem with my furnace that was not resolved until today.  Fortunately, it was ok to use the air conditioner, as the temperature has been around 95-100 since I returned.

On Monday, 9/21, I returned home.  My home was fumigated during the first of two weeks of work to accomplish the complete fumigation of 197 homes!  When I arrived home in the mid-afternoon, the homes at the end of my street looked like this (note the folded tarps draped over the roof).

As the day progressed, homes began to look like this:

   The tents came down on Friday (9/26), and the community is now recovering.  There has been some damage to the newly repaired trim and paint (such as this on my home), which will again be repaired,

 and there will be a roofing inspection and patching, which will not be intrusive.  Hopefully, now, life will be back to normal very soon!

The net effect of the drought is that the countryside is drying up.  Trees are dying or, at the very least, stressed.  Lawns are being replaced unless there is reclaimed water available.  When we do the day trip to see the Lake, we often eat lunch at the River Golf Course, just outside Solvang.  The golf course itself is looking pretty brown, although they do have senior water rights and have been receiving some of the water currently being released from the lake.  Not only are the edges of the course beginning to brown, but the hillsides are terribly dry, and some of those trees are pretty stressed.

The fairways are browning, and the river is by the side of the brown fairway -- in winter, after it rains, you can sometimes see river water in that stream-bed.

Last time I was here, that brown patch was still quite green!

Not only is the lake looking rather sad, but all the land surrounding it is pretty dry.  There are actually some beautiful roads in this area that I won't travel now -- the brush and trees are so dry that it might be very difficult to escape wildfire, should it begin.

Concerned about the safety of returning to my home, I stayed in Santa Barbara for a week, which also gave me plenty of time for visits and day-trips.  On Saturday, we went to see what the lake looks like.  Since I was last there, there was a drop of rain -- I believe that two inches fell at the top of the mountains, but not very much into the lake.  Additionally, they were able to obtain a little more State water, which has been deposited into the lake.  But there have been several weeks worth of 100 degree weather, with lots of evaporation and other usage, and they were required to release 7 feet of water for downstream water rights -- for people who live downstream, and for the fish that are native to the river that is dammed.  The net effect is that the lake is now at 17.5% capacity.  That is enough to last for about a year, by which time hopefully their desalination plant will be ready and operating.  That will provide about 1/3 of the city's requirements -- in the meantime, they are hoping for rain.  Normally water flows to the city through a tunnel that goes through the front range of mountains.  Currently, the lake level is so low that they must pump the water up to the opening of the tunnel.  But the pump sits on a barge -- the lake level is so low that the barge is sitting on silt at the bottom of the lake -- they are having to move the barge to a spot a couple of miles downstream to a deeper part of the lake!  There is an el nino forming, but it is not yet certain that it will produce any rain in this particular area (or even at all), and the current predictions are for at least two more weeks of heat waves with 100 degree temperatures.

I took several shots from the same viewpoints I've used before.  The first two look back at the County Park in the center right of the photo -- this was the first time I've seen that massive sand bar going almost all the way across the lake!

Turning slightly left, we saw the little inlet that has always been very popular as a fishing hole -- it is quickly drying up!

And just a little farther to the left, you can see very graphically the drop in water level -- the dark line near the water level is only slightly above where the water line was the last time I was there.

From that viewpoint, we moved about a city block down the road to the main viewpoint -- the next shot shows this viewpoint looking over the dam.  I've taken many shots from here before, but have not shown the viewpoint itself.

The dam face looks about the same from this spot, although it too has a lowered water level.  There are two hoses running down the face of the dam -- the smaller one, just before the bend, is for State water input.  When we were there, it was gently flowing -- but they input water in minimal amounts each day.  The larger hose, which goes through the flood gates, is for water being released to the downstream areas for water rights.

From this viewpoint, I was also able to get a better shot of that little inlet that is drying up.

Today a Santa Barbara on-line news site published an aerial photo of the lake that gives better perspective of the parts of the lake that I have shown above (the County Park at center right, and the dam at center left).  It is reprinted here, with credit to Noozhawk.

Hopefully this is about as low as the lake will be, but there is no guarantee of continued State water, or of any rain during the winter.  It will be interesting to watch through the next few months!

On the agenda of a Santa Barbara trip these days is a visit to my two little great-nephews.

"Janet. Janet -- look at my new blue shoes!  Look what they do when I stomp my feet!"

"Oh, and have you met my little brother?"

Such enthusiasm for life and all the discoveries it brings!

Summer began for me in about March, when it was announced that the white trim on our homes in the Townhome Association where I live would be repaired during the spring, followed by painting of the homes.  This meant that twice during the spring and early summer everything would have to be moved off patios, and we could not use patios while workers were doing their thing.  The trim repair began in May, by which time I had moved everything into the  garage (through the house).  Rather than moving it all back in June and then again to the garage in June, I left everything alone until the painting was completed.  This was not the way I would have preferred to spend the spring and early summer, but I had just completed a couple of months of physical therapy for my lower back, and chose not to re-injure it so soon.  In mid July, I made a trip to Santa Barbara, returning on a Thursday afternoon -- I found a letter from the HOA saying that I must attend one of three meetings to be held that Friday, Saturday, or Monday, and needed to be out of my home for three days and two nights while the house was to be fumigated.  With such short notice, and no explanation of the process that led to that requirement, the entire Association of 197 homes went ballistic.  There were threats of lawsuits, as well as lots of misinformation about what the fumigation involved.  A town-hall meeting was held, and people were encouraged to attend the next Board meeting.  The fumigation was postponed (for how long was not announced, leading to even more speculation).  In mid-August, it was announced that we must again attend a meeting about how to prepare for fumigation, which now was to be done in the two middle weeks of September (last week and this week).  After all the upheaval, and unable to determine good answers to the safety of returning so quickly to my home, which is in the middle of a group of homes being fumigated all at once, I decided that, rather than a 2-day trip to San Diego, I would go to Santa Barbara, where I could visit family and friends, and stay a full week without the cost of hotel fees.  After a week in Santa Barbara, I'm finally home, and my house is gradually being put back together, though not without a little further trauma.  I have not taken lightly to the insensitivity of the Board, the lack of good information about the use of a nasty gas (2 weeks before our complex was done, a family in Florida followed instructions for return to their home, and the entire family fell seriously ill, with a child having severe brain damage).  I felt that my home had been hijacked for the period from May until now, and rather than enjoying the things I enjoy doing here, I retreated.

At the same time, the great blue herons that had been my friends for the last several springs and summers disappeared, and the beach no longer even was calling to me for photos!  While I was in Santa Barbara, my friend and I went out to dinner one evening at a restaurant that we enjoy across the road from the wharf.  There was a photographer with a long lens (probably 300 mm) taking photos up in the tree.  It didn't take long for me to find a couple of night herons.  The light was fading, and we were headed for a reservation, but I was able to get a few reasonably good photos.

During this trip, I also visited my great nephews, and made a trip to Solvang with the purpose of seeing Lake Cachuma.  I will post more on those events in the next few days.  Meantime, I am now home, dealing with replacing the food I had to remove from the house; making sure I understood the gas company's warnings and requirements, and that I have hot water; and replacing the patio furniture that has been in the garage all this time; and taking care of a myriad of appointments that had been rescheduled around elusive fumigation dates!  Hopefully, I will now be able to use my home to its fullest, and enjoy life again.

It's been a while since I've posted -- I've been busy putting my house back together after a spring and summer of trim repair and painting, each of which required moving everything off the front porch and the patio, and now getting ready for termite fumigation, which was delayed from a couple of months ago and will happen over the next 3 weeks (mine is among the first slated for next week.  It's a long story, but there has been little sensitivity to homeowner needs and safety.  I will not again buy into a Homeowners Association.  In addition, the weather has been brutal, with temperatures over 90 for a week at a time (our average is roughly 80), and humidity considerably higher than our normal.  Over the long weekend, we had some wonderful thunder clouds against the mountains, and I happened to be out around sunset to see very colorful clouds.  These are not composed shots -- I simply picked up the camera where I happened to be, and took the pictures.

In addition to getting the house ready for fumigation (which basically involves removing all food (or double bagging it) and valuables, I have taken the opportunity to do some "fall cleaning" and repairs of my own.  One day the plumber came, another the blind salesman, and again the blind installer.  I have had miniblinds in my bedroom for the last 20 years -- one of them has been inoperable for several years, so I have simply left it in the down position -- this was time to replace it and the others in that room.  I decided on honeycomb shades with a "top-down/bottom-up" feature, meaning that I can open them from either the top or the bottom.  The goal of this is to allow for privacy while allowing some air flow and light to come in.  The next shot is of two windows in a corner, with the shades opened from the top.  On the left side, you can see the neighbor's house behind me -- that's the top of their bedroom window.  This is why privacy becomes super important.  I awoke this morning and saw a hummingbird sitting on a branch of that tree!

The next is an angled shot (not very good!) of the larger window, with the other two reflected.  It also shows the shade opened from the top!  I think when I get used to how I want to se them I'll be very happy with them.  I was absolutely amazed at the immediate effect they had on the temperature of the room, too!

Yesterday evening we also had some beautiful clouds.

And as I came out from the restaurant where I had supper, I saw this reflection on the windows of a nearby office building (I think the camera was a little confused about focus!).

Turning around, this is what I saw.

Our summer continues, with a second heat wave in full progress.  As often happens in these late-summer heat waves, we also have had some fires.  Wherever there are brushy areas, there is a risk of fire right now -- the brush is dry, super-heated, and any spark can catch.  Fortunately, the fire fighters are also out in full force, and they have stopped most of the more urban area fires very quickly, and we haven't had devastation of residential areas thus far.

I spent last week visiting in Santa Barbara.  In addition to the friend I stay with and my nephew and his wife and son, there were two additional people I wanted to see -- my month-old great nephew, and my sister, who has just moved back to Santa Barbara after 45 years of living in Rome, Italy.  This post will not show people, but it will show the latest progress of the lake, and the beach park just south of where the oil spill occurred a couple of months ago.

Lake Cachuma is the primary reservoir of water used by the city of Santa Barbara.  When full, it holds 138,030 acre feet of water -- on the day we were there last week, it held 43,563 acre feet.  They are releasing water this month to honor the water rights of those living and working downstream (including steelhead trout), and will lower the lake level by 7 feet.  I'm not sure how many acre feet that will mean, but before they are through with that release, they will also have to pump water up from the lake to the level of a tunnel that takes it through the mountains to the city!  The following photos were taken in sequence as if I planned to make a panorama of them -- they each show visible drop in lake level since the last time I was in Santa Barbara, about 6 weeks ago!

As we often do, we viewed this in awe, and moved on to a golf course outside Solvang for lunch -- it was a hot day, and that was the coolest place of our favorites in the valley!  The golf course is also showing the effects of the drought -- it is green on the putting greens, and browning on the fairways.  The hills behind also are showing the brown grasses, and the old oak trees are looking very stressed.

We can't go through Solvang without stopping for Danish pastries.  As we sat there enjoying a pastry for dessert, I looked up and spotted the following scenes.

It's a little hard to see him, but the creature in the center of this shot is a man, smoking a pipe, and holding a soup bowl out in front of him (in front of the roof behind).

On the way home to Santa Barbara this time we were able to stop at Refugio State Beach Park, where there was an oil pipeline spill in mid-May.  The oil has been pretty well cleaned off the surface rocks, but I had never been to this park before.  I begged off a $10 parking charge by promising not to turn off the engine, so was only there for a very few minutes.  These shots do show how pretty the beach is there.

One of my readers commented this evening that he was concerned about the fire at Point Concepcion, but had heard that it was nearly contained.  I have not heard of that particular fire.  It is quite possible that there is a fire at Point Concepcion that I would not hear about -- the Point is on base at Vandenberg AFB, and we often don't hear about fires on base.  There has been a public announcement that there are 21 fires burning in the State right now.  CalFire is wondering where that rumor began, since there are 40-60 fire complexes.  Most of them were started by lightning strikes in the last week.  The biggest fire is the Rocky Fire (I've mistakenly been calling it the Lake fire), in the northern end of the Napa Valley near ClearLake, about 100 miles north of San Francisco.  It began as several fires, which have now burned together into one huge fire.  The reports are that this fire is behaving in ways that veteran firefighters have never seen happen before, and it must be VERY scary for people in the area.  Some 1,300 people have been evacuated from their homes.  They are keeping 3,000 firefighters on the fire overnight tonight.

So far, the fires have mostly occurred in northern California, although there have been several in Southern California.  We are at the very beginning of our fire season, which won't end until we have our first good rain in the fall.  There have been several days of "monsoon flow" weather, with thunder and dry lightning, but little or no rain.  It appears that weather may be shifting at this point, but everybody will continue to be on alert until the fall rains begin, and hope that there will be no major disasters in populated areas.

Last night I was sitting at my desk and happened to look up just as the sun was setting.  There was a lot of moisture in the air, and the whole sky appeared to be pink.  I grabbed my camera and took several shots through the window, blinds and all, for fear that if I went outside it would have disappeared.

Five minutes later, it was even more brilliant!

Life in my little townhouse has been a little rough recently.  Through the spring, I've had to have my patio furniture, hoses, etc. in the garage because they were repairing trim boards and painting the complex.  This took from mid-March until late July.  The week before it was finished, there was a notice in the mail announcing that the Board had signed a contract for termite fumigation, and that everybody must attend a meeting that weekend to learn about preparing our houses -- and, by the way, you need to be out of your house for 3 days and 2 nights on their schedule, 3 weeks ahead, so that the buildings could be tented for this fumigation.  That would have meant that right after the painting was completed I would have had to remove all food from the house, as well as valuables, etc.   The entire complex was in an uproar sufficient that the project was postponed.  It has now been decided to go ahead with the project, but no date has been announced -- they are required to give us 15-30 days notice!  I expect that sometime in September I will have to be out of the house.  Because they use a really nasty gas for fumigation, and because my unit has little air circulation, I expect that I will try to be gone for a week, rather than just the 3 days required.  Maybe by October I'll be able to put the house back together and live my life without feeling quite so hijacked!  Oh the joys of Homeowners Associations in California!

Meantime, for the last few days we have had temperatures around 90 degrees and high humidity.  Today was about the same temperature, but the humidity had dropped considerably, so it didn't feel that hot.  The high humidity is very unusual for this part of the world, and it has been a bit uncomfortable -- I understand better now the comments about heat and humidity that come from those of you in the Southeastern part of the country!

Over the weekend, Hurricane Delores moved northward off the Baja California coast, where she has been breaking up.  We had a good soaking rain for about 4 hours on Saturday, overnight on Saturday night, and another two hours on Sunday afternoon.  This is far from enough to break our drought, but it is more than we've had for a long time.  In fact, we have now broken the record for rain in all of July, and it's only the 21st.  Monday and today were warm and sticky as the storm continues to break up -- and there was more rain against the mountains.  This first shot shows the rain splashing up from the road, and the dark skies from which the rain was falling.

When it wasn't actually raining, thunder clouds built up against the mountains that run inland from the coast.

On Monday, I had a visit from a friend who lives in Arizona -- he had visited his son in San Diego, and came northward to visit a couple of friends and move on sightseeing.  We had lunch at the San Clemente pier, where there is a nice little fish restaurant.  But first a short walk out onto the pier.

There is a lifeguard tower on the pier.  The yellow flag just below the American flag is a caution signal -- there have been big waves coming up the coast from Hurricane Delores, and the lifeguards have been watching swimmers and surfers particularly carefully.

We stood near the lifeguard station and watched the surf for a little while.  Looking northward towards San Juan Capistrano, there were a number of surfers in the water.

In the southern direction, there were again surfers in the water, although they were farther away from the pier.

Looking downward, I shot these random shots of medium sized waves just as they were about to break, or as they broke.

It was a lovely time, and I felt very refreshed after some good conversation and some time by the beach.

The North Fire (the one that burned all the cars yesterday) moved off the freeway towards a small village, where it burned several more homes and 45 or so more autos!  It is now 45 contained, thanks to a rainy day!

The weather here has changed, as was predicted.  It felt cooler, although the report is that it got to 87 degrees.  Beginning at about noon, there was a slow, soaking rain that kept up until early evening.  This was the backlash from Hurricane Delores --it is supposed to be similar weather tomorrow, but with temperature and humidity considerably higher than today.  If so, and if new fires are not triggered by lightning, another day or two of this weather should help extinguish the fires that are currently burning.  As I write this, the sky is clear, but I can sense changes in the air pressure -- tomorrow is likely to be hot and sticky!

For those of you watching television this evening, there is a terrible fire burning north of San Bernardino.  It began around 2:30 this afternoon, and by 4:30 it had burned 2,000 acres (by 8 pm, 3,500 acres), jumped a freeway, destroyed 20 vehicles, and damaged many more -- 50-75 cars were abandoned as people ran for their lives.  The freeway is the main road from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, and on Friday afternoons in the summer it is a very busy road as people begin their vacations or spend the weekends in Las Vegas or at the river (the Colorado River or Lake Mead).  I've seen fires in the area previously, but this one moved so fast in heavy winds that they couldn't stop traffic in time to protect it from the flames.  There are still evacuation orders, and the fire is nowhere near under control.  Four structures have been destroyed.  I can't remember ever seeing a fire this serious -- fortunately there were no injuries thus far -- but this is a harbinger of things to come later in the summer.

Last week I drove past the site where hopefully a retirement community will be built in another year or two.  If that happens, it is likely that I will live somewhere on these hills.  The trees in front and those on the crest of the hill are orange trees.  It is part of a new community being built about 2 miles inland from Dana Point.

And a couple of days ago there was a fire that was visible from the roads near where I live -- although the fire itself was about 20 miles away.  At this time of year, the eyes quickly scan the horizon for smoke clouds, often similar to thunder clouds, but often like this -- you can spot them because they are alone in clear skies.

Ironically, this particular fire began when a CalTrans (road department) employee was mowing the grass alongside one of the freeways.  Over the last couple of days, it has grown to about 260 acres, and is pretty well contained.  Two abandoned houses were burned, and a major campground was evacuated.  It could have been much more serious, though, as it was in a canyon area, bordered not far away from homes.  The smoke you see in these photos disburses over time and becomes part of the polluted air we breathe -- there were air quality warnings yesterday in much of the area.  Drones have become quite an issue this year in fighting brush fires -- they've had to suspend aerial drops of phoscheck several times because of concerns about the big fixed-wing planes colliding with drones observed in the fire areas!  Even a 10-minute suspension is significant, and phoscheck drops are the most effective way of stopping the flames.

Talking of weather concerns, I had a short email today from Zakiah (ZSA_MD), saying that there had been a tornado in their city overnight.  They have no power, and there was lots of damage in Quincy, but her family is well and unharmed.  She only had access to the internet through her phone, so didn't say more.

And in other strange news, I have been completely off-line for a couple of days.  Late Monday evening, I was on the web, and a popup appeared encouraging me to update Adobe's flash player.  I did, and immediately my computer was infected with 169 viruses!  On Tuesday morning I took the computer to Staples, and they have cleaned the viruses from it, and updated all the programs that needed updating.  The lesson learned is to NEVER follow popups to update anything (I knew that, but this looked real, and I was getting sleepy!).  Today on the news, I learned that Adobe is suspending its flash player because of the susceptibility to hackers!  I now am back on-line with a cleaned computer -- it feels like a new computer now!

I had a call today from my nephew in Santa Barbara telling me that the new little family member has arrived.

His name is Rocco.  Here he is being held by 3-year-old big brother Marcus, and supervised by dad Luca.

He looks a lot like big brother Marcus when he was that size!  The whole family asked me, one by one, when I will make the trek to Santa Barbara to meet Rocco!

As I was reading emails this evening, I looked up to see the beginnings of a pretty sunset -- I grabbed the camera and went outside to see how it progressed.  Over the next five or so minutes, this is what I saw.  It seems that some of the humidity we've had over the past few days is beginning to move eastward, and this was the back side of that cloud.

It's still warm, and still somewhat humid, but nowhere nearly as bad as it has been.  It's fire season now, though, and there are spot fires all over the place.  Today there was a 30-acre fire in Laguna Canyon, about two miles from here as the crow flies.   I was able to see smoke, but there are hills between me and where the flames were, and the wind was going in a different direction.  I just heard that this fire was started by a tree falling on wires, which further caused 5 trees to fall.  It was located very close to the Festival Grounds -- today was opening day of the summer festivals!  It's going to be a long summer, but thus far the only fire that's grown to a huge size has been in wilderness area.

June is going out with a bang this year!  This afternoon, we had thunder and lightning, and a few drops of rain go by.  It was moving northwest from San Diego to Los Angeles, and all LA County beaches are currently closed because of the potential for lightning strikes.  Below are photos of the rain we received at my house as I listened to the thunder!

It has been over 90 degrees here, and the humidity must be pretty high too -- there is a slight breeze right now, perhaps enough to signal another thunderstorm about to go through.  We are on a flexalert, meaning that we've been asked to minimize power usage until 9 pm to prevent brownouts!

From the 12th to 18th of June, I was in Santa Barbara for another visit.  It was summer traffic in both directions, so took 5-1/2 hours to get there, rather than the usual 3-1/2 or 4 hours!  The first night, when we went out to dinner, we learned that a large part of the traffic might have been due to the fact that it was graduation week at UCSB!  Knowing that traffic would be crazy, we did one round to see the lake, and to see what we could of the oil spill area.

The lake now is down to approximately 50,000 acre feet.  When it gets much lower, they will have to activate a pump system that will raise the water to the intake of the tunnel through the mountains to Santa Barbara.

We had lunch at the Alisal River Golf Course, just outside of Solvang.  This is a private golf course, but apparently they have cut way back on the water they are using, greening only the greens and the center of the fairways, and allowing the rest to go brown.  The hillsides also look very brown, very dry, and the oak forests are visibly suffering from the drought now.

It wouldn't take much to spark a huge fire in this valley, or anywhere in these mountains now.  Yesterday's little haiku was prompted by the fact that I had been listening to the news as I drove about 20 miles down the freeway near home -- listening to one new brushfire after another.  The fire departments are jumping on every spark that catches, keeping most of them to less than about 10-20 acres, but there are a couple that have run away from the fire fighters.  The Lake Fire, near Big Bear, above San Bernardino, is one of these -- it grew very quickly to something over 20 thousand acres, and evacuations are now being ordered in that fire.  There have been others already that have grown to that size.  With the drought and the lack of available water, it will be very easy for fires to get away and grow to be huge fires!