daily timewaster

Ouch!

This is good news: Peak streamflows on Mono Lake’s tributaries exceed expectations

It's local news, but in a land where everyone is intensely tuned into water news, it's a good thing that Mono Lake is getting its fair share of the wet stuff this year.

2018 has been a remarkable year for Mono Basin hydrology. A wet March pushed the Mono Basin year-type from the “Dry” category (with no required peak flows) to the “Normal” category (with significant peak flows). The last snow surveys around April 1 occurred prior to a very wet April and May, leaving a lot of uncertainty about how much snowmelt runoff to expect this year.

In addition, Southern California Edison is emptying Saddlebag Lake Reservoir by September 1 in order to repair a sinkhole, and it is keeping its upper Rush Creek reservoirs low due seismic concerns (as it has done each year since 2012). This also makes flows this spring higher than expected.

The Los Angeles Department of Water & Power issued an April 1 runoff forecast of 85% of average, however all indications are that it will be wetter, perhaps over 90% of average.

You can track most Mono Basin stream flows in real-time right here.

An Absurdity of Riches.

I was saving this for the Friday Open Road, but somehow it's appropriate for today. Riding high.

Truth x3

Yip!

The ruggedness of aircraft produced by Grumman’s “Iron Works” is demonstrated by this late production F6F-F3 Hellcat, witch was returned to the plant for workers to see. It had more than 200 bullet holes in it from combat.

Civilization

Boar spear, 16th c. Germany

The Iceman cometh: two of Russia's largest Arctic out-shipment points for oil and LNG have become "packed with ice" leaving tankers and carriers stranded in the "paralyzed" area, which hasn't been this packed with ice at midsummer in four years.

To help put the ice-pack in perspective, the blog Climateer Investor published a pair of heat-coded images showing the extent of the sea ice thickness in June 2018:

According to Rosatomflot, its icebreakers will be working at least through the first week of July to free stranded ships from the ice. Two icebreakers, the Taymyr and the Vaygach, are working overtime. There are also several smaller tugs and icebreakers working in the waters around the Sabetta port.

One Rosatomflot representative pointed out that the climate change fears which had analysts worried about rapid melting of ice caps in the Arctic have apparently receded.

The global warming, which there has been so much talk about for such a long time, seems to have receded a little and we are returning to the standards of the 1980s and 1990s, says company representative Andrey Smirnov.