Here Comes History

My world has been heavy with history for a month. The last week of May was wall to wall battleship. The USS Iowa's transit through San Francisco Bay made for a peak experience for SturgeUrge and I as we followed the big battlewagon from Richmond to Angel Island on an uncommonly calm afternoon.

Astronomically it was a couple of good weeks with the Annular Eclipse and the Transit of Venus.

I marked the 70th anniversary of the pivotal Battle of Midway in this space.

Last week we marked the 68th year since Allied forces landed on the Normandy beaches. D-Day the beginning of the end of Nazi Germany's reign of terror.

History was made in space when private contractor SpaceX successfully sent a cargo ship named Dragon to the International Space Station, docked, and a few days later, undocked, reentered and slashed down safely in the Pacific off the Baja California coast.

The 96th Indianapolis 500 and the 70th Monaco Grand Prix marked motorsports milestones, and this week I watched Matt Cain pitch his Perfect Game.

Looking ahead, Truckee will be hosting some history the first week of July, when two of the original Tuskegee Airmen will be feted at a dinner kicking off the Truckee Tahoe AirFair & Family Festival.

The Tuskegee Airmen were the first black aviation unit in the Army Air Corps during WWII. The heavily decorated all black 322nd Fighter Group is told in the George Lucas 2012 film "Red Tails"

All this excitement has me plumb tuckered out...perhaps this weekend's 24 Hours of Le Mans will recharge my batteries...

Past and Future

I'll just wrap up some past stories to make way for the future stuff.

San Francisco Giants:
While the Giants club dates to 1883, baseball didn't start keeping real stats until 1918. I became curious over the past weeks because so many club records were falling or in danger of falling, and usually the copy read: "...since 1918"

USS Iowa:
Smooth sailing for the big battlewagon, her hull work completed, she entered Los Angeles Harbor Saturday morning.

The photo is courtesy of Donna Littlejohn, DailyBreeze.com The Victory Ship in the foreground is the SS Lane Victory built in Los Angeles and returned from distinguished service in WWII, Korea and Vietnam, she's a museum now. The Lane Victory has been restored to seaworthy condition and offers "Victory at Sea" summer cruises.

The Lane's website features an incredible photo album from the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond that includes day by day photos of a Liberty Ship on the ways under construction. It's really worth a look.

OK, now on to the Future:
There's bunches of spaceflight news this week.

Private/Public Spaceflight tallies historic first milestone.
The SpaceX Falcon/Dragon mission to the International Space Station is a rousing success. NASA says in light of the mission's success, approval for continued resupply missions under a $1.6 billion contract would be a mere formality.

Not everything in civilian spaceflight is rosy:
Sea Launch, another commercial spaceflight contractor successfully launched an  Intelsat 19 communications satellite into geosynchronous orbit. There was a problem with the satellite however when one of the spacecraft's two solar array wings failed to deploy.

X-Ray Space Telescope Nears Launch:
The NuSTAR space telescope will be launched by Orbital Sciences Corp. as early as June 13th, 2012. This satellite is launched from a converted Lockeed L-1011 airliner that launches a Pegasus rocket plane that carries the NuSTAR into orbit.

There's Military Spaceflight News...sort of:
The Air Force's XB-37B "Mini Space Shuttle" will return to Earth after it's classified 15 month mission in Low Earth Orbit sometime in the next few weeks...


Sutter's Mill Meteorites Found:
This story is getting a little long in the tooth, but I suppose it's the nature of the beast...I don't recall Mark Twain reporting on every nugget and vein discovered in the Comstock when he was a reporter for Virginia City's Territorial Enterprise


Video of the Sutter's Mill Fireball surfaced this week, and to date almost a pound of the meteorite has been found and reported. I wonder how many bits of the meteorite were found and sold on the spot to meteorite dealers at $1000/gram... At least one piece made it's way to a UC Davis geologist so far...


Don't toss those eclipse glasses just yet:
You'll need them again Tuesday June 5th to view the Transit of Venus across our Sun. Sky and Telescope have a good observation guide.

Head On a Swivel

OK, I feel all rested up from the busy weekend.

My Memorial Day Weekend was all about history...looking back if you will...WWII Battleship USS Iowa...70th Monaco Grand Prix...96th Indianapolis 500.

Even baseball brought the history. On Monday, San Francisco Giants left fielder Melky Cabrera passed Willie Mays' 1958 record of 49 hits in the month of May. Wednesday night the Melk Man knocked his 51st hit, tieing the all-time-any-month Giants record that goes back to 1918.

When SturgeUrge and I were on San Francisco Bay Saturday, the boat traffic became so crazy that SturgeUrge's head looked like it was on a swivel...call it Combat Boating. Well, Skipper 'Urge brought us back to dry land in one piece to float another day.

This evening, I feel like it's my head on the proverbial swivel. My world is all on the up and up tonight...after watching the Giants lose 4-1 to the Arizona Diamondbacks, my twitter feed was suddenly full of spaceflight tweets...

As I write, I'm keeping an ear on the SpaceX Dragon and the International Space Station's LIVE ungrapple and departure stream. The Dragon Capsule will leave the ISS tonight on it's way back to Earth. As it turns out, all this spaceflight stuff is history too...SpaceX's Dragon is the first commercial spacecraft to visit and dock to the ISS. The Dragon will shuttle people back and forth from the ISS after some more test flights and NASA approval.

SpaceX aren't the only private outfit building commercial spacecraft for the ISS delivery market either...

Orbital Sciences Corp. is developing their Antares rocket/ Cygnus capsule system to serve the ISS, too.

Another company, Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic received the necessary permits from the FAA to test their SpaceShip Two with full rocket motor power. Virgin who call themselves the "First Commercial Spaceline" (as opposed to airline), is going after the Space Tourist Trade...short sub-orbital rides into space, complete with the dramatic, firey atmospheric reentry.

I'm so grateful to these companies picking up NASA's slack. NASA seems to be dithering lately, and time is running out for me to see earthmen walk on Mars. When I was a kid watching NASA blast off into the New Frontier, it was a given that men would be on Mars sooner than later...now it's been forty years since we last landed on the Moon! NASA gets it budget slashed every year while the Feds run up World Record deficits...

You know, all this internet/smartphone/Facebook/Twitter/iPad stuff is all the product of kids who were inspired by the Space Program and it's offshoots. Back in the day, we all felt like we were helping the astronauts...willing them higher, farther, longer...to the next unbelievable breakthrough, milestone after milestone, until Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface in 1969. We all carried astronaut lunch boxes to school, scores of toys and commercial tie-ins exploited our space mania. Is Tang still on grocery store shelves?

Well, in the Internet Age, pandering is as easy as click, click, click, only in the 21st Century they're giving it away. Here's some SpaceX Dragon fun that's free save the price of printing it on your home printer:

Print and build your own paper Dragon Spacecraft

Have fun kids!

No Rest for the Curious

Formula One's Free Practice One LIVE from the streets of Monte Carlo begins at 1AM PDT about an hour and fifteen minutes from now.

I was starting to nod off when I saw a tweet touting LIVE coverage of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft performing some maneuvers including a "FlyUnder" of the International Space Station in preparation for Friday's berthing with the ISS.

Nothing like some untried spacefaring to juice up the ol' adrenaline levels!

Enjoy, you can all sleep after history is made!

Wednesday Battleship Update

Tuesday 2PM Facebook post from the Pacific Battleship Center:

"Tuesday Weather Update: the system has picked up a little bit with gale wind warnings on Weds/Thurs/Fri down the central and southern coasts. We are still looking late in the week for departure. As soon as we have more information we will put it out there."

I was driving west from Reno about an hour after the Facebook post...those forecast gale-force winds were howling right down the Truckee River Canyon. One unplanned almost-lane change got my attention in a New York second!

Jeremy Bonelle Photo from The Pacific Battleship Center Facebook Album. Iowa's new paint looks great!

I know I promised photos, but I can't make any until Iowa is underway...and my attempt at eclipse photos yielded weak results...I need a solar filter for my 90mm telescope, or a digital point and shoot camera with a much longer lens than what I've got now.

At 96% exposure time is long thru the eclipse glasses...I was a little excited...

Enjoy this awesome photo I found online:

I'm pretty sure the Milky Way was photo shopped in back here on Earth. I love the New Moon's shadow on the cloud bank...I'm sure that's a real image, but these daylight photos from ISS never show stars...the Earthshine overwhelms the starlight, and after all, the Milky Way is all stars...

In a related note, SpaceX launched the first commercial spacecraft to go to the International Space Station Monday morning. It was pretty cool watching it LIVE online.

Now I've been watching live NASA launches since I was a kid...I started watching before there were astronauts onboard. Monday morning's launch had something I've never seen

When the Falcon 9 rocket with the Dragon capsule on to made it successfully into orbit, the SpaceX people jumped up and down for joy...like children their joy and relief showed like CinemaScope on my little laptop screen...it was such a genuine human moment...something I never saw before... from the buttoned-down NASA guys.

The only thing close wasn't NASA per se, but JPL scientists getting first data from their planetary probes several years after they were launched...still great happiness, but no jumping up and down like giddy children.

We'll be seeing more scientists doing the happy dance when NASA's next Mars Mission arrives at the Red Planet on August 5th, 2012. This mission includes a Mars Rover named Curiosity that's the size of a small SUV.

Snow Globe

Well, with nothing to look at on the Sierra Nevada Ski Resorts' webcams, I found something to watch via the web that did show Mother Nature's fluffiest falling from the sky. But that's not the whole story!

I was watching my twitter stream blow up over a 60 Minutes report of US Congressmen using their privileged knowledge to engage in insider trading, which in the case of US Congresspersons is not against the law! Do as we legislate...not as we do, says the new saw!

Anyway, while my blood pressure was rising, tweets from  @SpaceflightNow began to catch my eye: "Inside 90 minutes to blastoff for an American astronaut and 2 Russian cosmonauts at 11:14pmEST: Live coverage: http://t.co/MDSL1MoS"

This was the first human launch into space since NASA's Space Shuttle Fleet was retired. I followed the link and low and behold, there was a LIVE view of a Russian Soyuz rocket ready to blast off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

I was amazed when the feed began...it was snowing...hard!

Now I've been a NASA kid since I was...well, a kid... I watched all the launches of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo Projects as I grew up enthralled with America's race to the moon. All these launches were from Cape Canaveral, Florida, later renamed Cape Kennedy for President John F Kennedy who sent the nation on the quest of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth".

In five decades of watching NASA blast astronauts into orbit, not once did they launch into a snowstorm! I'm not sure if it's even snowed in Florida in those five decades! The only time I even saw ice at The Cape was on the unfortunate Space Shuttle Challenger and it's Launch Tower before it's doomed launch in 1986. That very ice compromised the elasticity of the Solid Rocket Booster's O-Ring Seals leading to the explosion and loss of the Challenger and her crew of five men and two women.

Launching Pad Ice the morning of the Challenger disaster

The ice on the Shuttle's Launch Tower looked daunting in hindsight, so the blizzard on the Soyuz launch was a little unsettling for me. NASA TV's stream from Baikonur was flawless as was the launch.



The spacecraft was obscured by snow within seconds of liftoff (something that NASA would never allow at The Cape) so the video feed switched to the inside of the Soyuz capsule showing the two cosmonauts and the American astronaut as the rocket ascended into space on their way to the International Space Station. It was a kick listening to the Russian controller's accents as they reported in English, the progress and data points of the launch. The Russian accents weren't as thick as you'd think if you were raised on Cold War Spy Movies and James Bond Villains...it's funny how that firm Russian edge adds a perceived regimented authority to the proceedings.

Another Good Tired

Watta night! I've just watched the inaugural GP of India LIVE from New Dehli. Young Champion Sebastian Vettel scored his 11th victory of the season, set the record for most laps lead in a season, and scored his first Grand Slam...Winning the Pole and the Race, leading every lap, and recording fastest lap of the race.

Before the race, the drivers, crews, F1 brass, and crowd observed a minute of silence in honor of IndyCar racer Dan Wheldon, and MotoGP rider Marco Simoncelli, who both perished on the track on the last two weekends.  It was a very moving minute before an exciting race.

About a third of the way into the race, I streamed the Soyuz rocket launch carrying the Progress 45P resupply ship for the International Space Station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on the internet.

The weather has turned warm, Boreal says they hope to re-open next weekend-stay tuned.

I'll be going to bed now...

Without a Trace

Well, it's been more than 24 hours and NASA still doesn't know where UARS fell to Earth.

I hope they're sandbagging for National Security reasons...I'd like to believe Strategic Command when they say they're tracking 22,000 pieces of Space Junk from four inches across to the football field sized International Space Station.

NASA and USSTRATCOM, please don't turn out to be another Department of Motor Vehicles or Post Office!

Tonight everything is coming down, except yours truly who's up at the DaveCave for a short stopover.

UARS is probably at the bottom of the North Pacific a few hundred miles off the Washington/Oregon coast. The satellite was not observed by a soul when it should have been transiting between Portland and Seattle. Good deal, I didn't wanna do the math on those odds again.

The San Francisco Giants came back to Earth in Arizona Saturday night. Their big 15-2 loss in a weird game where Mike Fontenot ran into the 2nd base umpire  fielding a hit in the first inning, and the lights in Chase Field went out for about a half an hour in the 7th inning! There's your dark metaphor...mercifully the Giants' announcers didn't break into a rendition of Dandy Don Meredith's "Turn Out the Lights, The Party's Over"! Just a little over six months until Opening Day 2012!

Upside news from the DaveCave...I have a DVR up and running, and the TV is still tuning all the stations, too. Good on me for hooking up the newer DVR, my alarm is set for the 0430 start of the Singapore Grand Prix coverage...but it's almost 1AM now and staying awake for much after the green flag is looking problematical...

The mercury seems to be falling, too...time to get under the covers...

Tracking Error

God this heat wave is playin' hell with my sleep this week! I was up trying to fall asleep until 2AM last night. Thank God for streaming internet radio! I found a stream of the Dennis Miller Show, and while I was too hot to sleep, I wasn't to hot to laugh out loud!

My alarm aroused me at 0600 and I tuned in the Armstrong and Getty Show...I faded quickly and rejoined the conscious listeners around 0800.With a start,I remembered that the UARS satellite was set to reenter any hour now,so I hit the 'net for the latest intel.

It seems that the satellite is slightly confounding the tracking people. After some high solar activity last week,the Sun has settled down enough to allow the Earth's upper atmosphere to contract enough to allow UARS a few more orbits before the inevitable.

Tracking maps I've seen show some debris tracks over the United States! NASA says the final orbit will now be late Friday or early Saturday EDT. Depending on which orbit is the last one, the debris field could be near New Orleans, across San Diego, with the debris field stretching into  Southern Nevada, and Arizona, or a few hundred miles offshore from Oregon.

I've spent a couple of hours trying to download the latest tracks and images,but all the tracking websites are overloaded now. Still standing is Spaceflight Now's UARS tracking page.

I found a twitter feed from @UARS_Reentry. They say four more orbits with reentry between 7:55PM PDT and 8:20PM PDT which puts it on the United States West Coast. It looks like off the Oregon coast.

KirkVallus, got a hard hat?

3:30PM PDT Update

It looks like splash-down will be off the Washington State coast, still in the 7:55-8:20PM PDT window.

Up UARS!

There's space news this week! Sometime around mid-day Friday PDT, a NASA satellite the size of a school bus, weighing 6.3 tons, will reenter the Earth's atmosphere, begin to tumble and break up, and then burn up...except for 26 larger pieces that may make it intact to  the surface. NASA and US Strategic Command who track these things, say the surviving bits will land along a 500 mile path. NASA and USSTRATCOM say the largest piece will weigh about 330 lbs.

As I write (5PM Thursday PDT), the impact track is forecast to be over the Pacific Ocean, east of the Philippines Islands.

From my viewpoint, this is one of those Good News/Bad News deals. The good news is those big chunks won't hit anybody (unless there's a sailor out there with really, really bad karma). The bad news is "you can't see it from here!"

As we move into the future, we're looking at a few more years of these reentering space junk episodes. Today, USSTRATCOM is tracking 22,000 objects in Low Earth Orbit that range in size from four inches across to the 900,000 pound International Space Station that's roughly the size of a football field.

Friday's entry in the Space Junk Derby is named UARS, the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite. It was launched from Space Shuttle Discovery on September 15, 1991, and decommissioned in 2005. UARS studied the upper reaches of the atmosphere with emphasis on the ozone layer.

More recent satellites now in orbit are equipped with reentry guidance controls, theoretically giving the satellite's minders some measure of control upon reentry. The next few years will see the last of the crap-shoot style reentries of these derelict satellites.

You can track the reentry of UARS at the Heavens Above website. Take a little time at Heavens Above to input and save your location data. I have bookmarked three locations at Heavens Above: The DaveCave, The Ancestral Digs, and My Mountain.This makes it a snap to find satellite passes and print them before I head out for the night.

I still get a kick out of watching the ISS pass overhead...I did see two Space Shuttle Reentries, thanks to Heavens Above, and I was able to see Russia's MIR Space Station and the Space Shuttle at the same time just weeks before MIR was deorbited. You can also find astronomical data on the Sun, Moon and Planets as well as comets and meteor showers. Heavens Above has printable sky maps for most observable events, as well as satellite pass info for radio hobbyists.

The internet is tailor-made for events like this one. All the data you need to know of, and view these global events. Even in today's 24/7 CableNews world this event is only getting cursory coverage. This is very different from the first major reentry of the Space Age...

I remember NASA's Skylab fondly, and remember the worldwide media circus surrounding it's reentry. The year was 1979. Being the first big satellite to return to Earth, Skylab was on everybody's radar. In San Francisco both daily papers held contests. The Examiner offered $10,000 for the first piece of Skylab delivered to the Examiner Offices. Not to be outdone, the SF Chronicle offered $200,000 to any subscriber who suffered personal injury or property damage from Skylab's fall.

On the fateful day, my girlfriend and I were in San Francisco. It was Wednesday July 11, 1979. In Union Square we ran into the LIVE Remote of KSAN the FM album rock station.The DJ asked the girlfriend where she wanted Skylab to land. She didn't hesitate to answer: "On the jerk who stole my bicycle!" The small crowd laughed and broke into applause.

Pieces of Skylab did land near Perth, Western Australia. The Examiner Prize was claimed, and a hunk of Skylab debris was displayed on stage at the Miss Universe Pageant which was held in Perth on July 20th. Wikipedia has the whole story and it's a fun read.

Reading the Wiki on Skylab raised some questions. Back in 1979, NASA estimated that the odds of a human being struck by Skylab debris were 1 in 152. Though I can't find the source I that saw this week, today NASA says the odds are 1 in 3200 for the human hit.

OK, I'm no math whiz, but one or both of these odds must be off. Higher odds in 1979 when there were 4.4 billion human targets, but today much better odds of a miss despite almost twice the targets- almost 7 billion people are walking around on Earth now.

Color me confused...now where's my Skylab Hard Hat?

Serendipity Saves My Night

Circumstances turned yours truly into a Big Crankypants Saturday night. I got all my sleep and everything...to no avail...

One of my guys, Eskimo, must have had too much caffeine because in the space of a mere three hours, he'd come up with three new Game Plans for his shift...all without any impetus from changing weather, machine breakdowns, or crew illness. He was on a roll, and I couldn't squelch his fervor to save my life.

I've always been a "don't say anything if you can't say something civil" guy...in fact I make it my business to never call out an employee over the 2-way radio...in fact if one of my guys needs a talking-to, I wait until the next shift when my blood pressure has returned to normal, and I've had a chance to "sleep on it". These bumpy roads are really opportunities if you don't squander them in a white hot fog.

So there I am...grinding around the hill at a slow walk...even with my boss reflexes fully aroused, and after a full day's sleep, "highway hypnosis" finally turns my eyelids heavy, so I key the mic and announce: "I'm goin' 10-7 for lunch", pull up to a remote steep, throttle down, turn off my lights, recline the throne, and set the timer on my iPod for 30mins...

In a second or two, my night vision kicks in and there's the International Space Station, scudding across the sky headed NNE! Not that bright really, but still an awesome sight as it glides by.

All the stars had aligned to give me that exact moment...Eskimo's over-caffeinated "planning" and every other little change-up combined to award me with that little moment.

Eskimo will get my treatise on planning next week...after a relaxing weekend...

After my nap Sunday, I looked at the internet to confirm my ISS sighting...I found another satellite that caught my interest, NASA's NanoSail-D2. This micro satellite surprised NASA when after it was believed lost to malfunction back in Novenber, the little loaf of bread sized satellite deployed it's 100 square foot solar sail and phoned home!

This guy is not very bright in the night sky, and it will reenter and burn up in 90-120 days, but I'll keep my eyes peeled for this one!

Sunshine Daydreams

May 2010 Aurora viewed from the International Space Station

What's this? Every day lately, it seems like there's new, confounding news about our Sun. Just this morning I saw a story about the low state of the Aurora Borealis:

"The Northern Lights have petered out during the second half of this decade, becoming rarer than at any other time in more than a century, the Finnish Meteorological Institute said Tuesday."

So, the Solar Minimum has been hanging on for at least two years longer than historical observations suggest it should. Solar watchers are getting encouraged by a slight uptick in sunspot activity, and the associated auroral displays...there's a sweet photo gallery at the link as well.

Darn the luck! I've yet to see the Aurora Borealis with my own two eyes, despite being up all night every Winter these past 30 years! I remember the last time we had a big display of the Northern Lights...

I want to say it was 1997 or 1998. I woke up early, before my alarm went off. I was listening to Art Bell on the radio, and he had callers from across North America calling in relating the awesome show they were seeing.

I live in a densely wooded neighborhood, on the south facing side of a pretty good grade. Before I even got out of bed, I phoned a friend on the Westren Slope of the Sierras, woke him up, and quizzed him about what he was seeing. "Oh...My...God"...was his first response. He said: "The whole sky was red, so bright that the aurora is throwing shadows!"

"Thanks, enjoy yourself, bye!" I replied as I hung up, threw on some clothes and ran up to the street where I could barely make out a dull red tinge to the sky through the forest. It looked like the glow of a far-off forest fire...no movement, no shimmering curtains of color, no aurora overhead in the sliver of sky above my street.

A couple of hours later, I walked into the Groomer's Locker Room, and the Swingshift Crew were lit up like the skies had been earlier. They'd seen quite a show from their perch atop the Sierra Crest! There eyes were a little wider than usual at shift change, and they had a little extra spring in their step. I quipped the next morning that "I was worried that All Star Winch Pilot would trip over his tongue!" That night's Aurora Show was seen as far south as the Baja Peninsula!

These guys aren't Groomers...still, they are driving SnowCats!

I was pretty disappointed that I missed the show, but I was happy for my guys. Hurry up Sun, let's get Solar Cycle fired up! I want to see the show with my own two eyes!

What? More Fire Weather Already?

On Friday's Noon News the weatherman on Oakland's KTVU Channel 2 said we're in for a cooling trend starting early next week. In the happy-chat wrap-up segment, the Anchor Woman asked about the effect the cooling would have on the Fire Danger. WeatherDude said the danger is way below warning levels for July.

My curiosity piqued, I remembered Reno's Fire Weather Watch for Sunday, so I clicked on Reno's AFD, and voila:
UPDATE...A FIRE WEATHER WATCH FOR DRY LIGHTNING GUSTY OUTFLOW WINDS WAS ISSUED FOR PORTIONS OF EASTERN CALIFORNIA AND WESTERN NEVADA FOR
SUNDAY AFTERNOON. WITH THE EXTREMELY DRY AIR MASS IN PLACE AND MIDLEVEL MOISTURE ADVECTING IN FROM THE SOUTH...IT LOOKS LIKE CONDITIONS ARE PRIMED FOR DRY THUNDERSTORMS ON SUNDAY. MORE DETAILS WILL BE INCLUDED IN THE FIRE WEATHER DISCUSSION THIS
AFTERNOON.

There's no substitute for being prepared to paraphrase the Boy Scout Motto, however the fuel moisture levels should still be low...closer to early June levels than the more explosive September/October tinderbox levels. I heard the KCRA3 weather woman mention thunderstorms, so I checked the Sacramento AFD. Typical over exuberance from Channel 3's junior meteo-team...to wit:
INSTABILITY INCREASES A LITTLE OVER THE AREA TODAY AS A WEAK VORT MOVES THROUGH. MID LEVEL MOISTURE MOVES INTO THE NORTHERN SIERRA THIS AFTERNOON COMBINED WITH THE INSTABILITY WILL PROBABLY SEE SOME CUMULUS BUILDUPS NEAR THE SIERRA CREST THIS AFTERNOON AND EVENING. HELD OFF THE MENTION OF THUNDERSTORMS FOR NOW BUT WILL LOOK AT 12Z INFO AND DECIDE IF WILL ADD THEM TO AFTERNOON
FORECAST

By the time I watched the 6 O'clock newscasts, there was wildfire news from SoCal. I heard a news tease citing a fire near Santa Clarita that could be threatening homes. I searched the net for some local intel, and there were a couple of fires actually...looking to me like arson, as they all broke out about the same time, in the same area...no lightning, no thunderstorms...just clear dry sky.

The KCRA3 News reported a morning grass fire somewhere in the Big Valley, but again it was human caused and controlled.

You may wonder why my intense interest in wildland fire. I live in what insurance underwriters call the "Urban/Wildland Interface", so I stay Fire Aware as a matter of habit. There have been some uncomfortable days, listening to the fire traffic on my police scanner, when I knew the incident to be nearby. Once, when things were happening near my end of town, I called the TV Station to correct some erroneous information they were broadcasting...Their On-Screen Map had a local wildfire burning right through the middle of Truckee...when in reality it was four or better miles west of downtown, and three+ miles west of the DaveCave!

There is a groomer/firefighter connection, too.

Over my career, I've worked with dozens of Wildland Firefighters. They're naturals as groomers go. They are used to long hours, handle high stress levels with aplomb, they baby their equipment, and they need a winter job every year! Another plus is they're usually pretty easy going, too.

*Photo Note*
The top photo is of a Thunderhead, taken from the International Space Station, during Expedition 15 (April 2007-October 2007)

Whatever Gets You Through the Night

OK, I'll admit it right here, right now. I'm a captive to the weather. Call me a Weather Hostage.

@CorduroyPlanet follows Anthony Watts' excellent Climate Blog, Watts Up With That? This morning @WUWT tweeted: "WUWT at the top of the heap?" I went to WUWT, and the Blog is The Number One Science Blog online!

I read the post, then scrolled down to see what else Was Up. It seems the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) issued a La Niña Watch Thursday:

•A transition from El Niño to ENSO-neutral is underway.
•Sea surface temperatures are decreasing across much of the Pacific Ocean and have recently become below-average in portions of the eastern half of the basin.
•Although many models predict ENSO-neutral conditions, there is a growing possibility of La Niña developing during the second half of 2010.

This is bad news for yours truly. (Like I need a reason to obsess over the weather) I guess I'll just resign myself to a Summer of Paying Attention.

The CPC issues an Expert Discussion/Assessment every week.
This Product, in .pdf form is 30 pages long this week, and packed with images and data. It's quite the tome for WeatherGeeks, and it's loaded with tangents to investigate.

While reveling in all things ENSO, I had the TV tuned to 24/7News, who were tracking the launch of SpaceX's commercial rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

When did we quit calling it Cape Kennedy? Why?

As always, "busy" Government bureaucrats put too fine a point on the name...officially, it's now "The Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral"

After some short delays for "Sensor Anomalies", the Falcon 9 rocket blasted off in picture-perfect fashion, carrying a dummy Dragon Capsule. SpaceX has been awarded a $1.6 billion contract for up to 12 operational logistics flights to the International Space Station.

"Operational Logistics Flights" is NASA-speak for hauling freight up to the ISS.

Buoyed by today's apparent "Bullseye" performance of the Falcon 9, SpaceX want's to take ISS Cargo to the Station on their next flight, foregoing an extra mission to prove out the cargo ship's rendezvous capabilities.

SpaceX contends the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule could be ready for human passengers by 2013, if NASA awards a contract for the work this year.

All this seems very ambitious to me, given NASA'a stately and deliberately paced flight test history. SpaceX is a Contractor in NASA's employ, and the customer calls the shots, so to speak.

SpaceX isn't the only Commercial Launch Outfit on the scene. More established companies like United Launch Alliance, which oversees Atlas and Delta rocket flights, and Orbital Sciences Corp., SpaceX's main competitor in the market for cargo services to the space station are part of Manned Spaceflight's Future in the Post-Space Shuttle universe.

Back on Earth, a quick look at the forecasts and radar images shows today's event staying far enough to the North to keep the Inland Valley dry. That looks like it for the foreseeable future. Back to the Diggins!

Beginning of the End

Random Thoughts

Tonight Space Shuttle Discovery launched into the dark Florida sky on it's way to the International Space Station. Spectacular video, starkly lit by the light of the Solid Rocket Boosters and a big waxing Moon. Tonight's launch was the first I've seen on a High Definition Television...wow! I also had NASA TV streaming on the computer...total coverage.

Monday morning, the Space Station is going to make a brightly lit pass over the ancestral digs...I'll get up early to see it transit...I haven't seen a pass since the astronauts deployed the new solar arrays...should be really something, unless the Marine Layer and it's overcast reappear.

After tonight's launch, there's only six more Shuttle Flights scheduled before the program sunsets forever. NASA's spent the last two decades messing about in Low Earth Orbit, but they're making plans to go back to the Moon, and ultimately out to Mars. I hope we make it while I'm still here to see it.

I can't wait for this week's heat wave to break up. This afternoon the upper 90's temperatures were joined by some Subtropical Moisture and clouds from ex-Tropical Storm Ignacio...it feels like Baja, only without the smoky smells and humid evening breezes. Another six weeks or so, and we'll be out of the frying pan, so to speak. The 11 o'clock weathercast said we're cooling off big time...starting tomorrow! Hooray...if it happens.

So far, Fire Season hasn't gotten out of hand. Some of the family are in Carmel-by-the Sea for a wedding. They needed to check on a wildfire in the area before they left...all clear, for now. A couple more weeks, and the campers in the mountains will break camp and head back home, and the temperatures will cool. I hope we can dodge the big fires for the remainder of the season.

I'll be headed up the hill in a few weeks. It's time to visit the Mountain, pick up a month's worth of mail, and spend a few hours with a trout rod in my hand. I'm looking forward to a couple of days at the Reno Air Races, too. It will be nice and cool in Truckee...it could go either way out at Stead Field for the Races.

Over the years, I've broiled in the Sun out there, and a couple of years I've nearly frozen to death. In the early 2000's, the final Sunday of racing ran ahead of schedule. In more than 25 years of going to the Air Races, it was the only time the Unlimited Gold Race was early. It had to be done, there was a solid white snow-squall line marching towards the Stead Valley as the temperature plummeted. The Big Boys got 'er done, and all the race planes were recovered before the flurries began.

I don't have a clever quip to end on tonight...it's too hot in here. I'm fully hydrated though...maybe I'm poached.