News and views from the geologic realm
One of my earliest blog posts (in 2008) was a list of my favorite depictions of geologists in movies. I've revisited it once or twice. It came to mind as we prepare to offer a showing of "Tremors" as a geology field studies fundraiser at the State Theatre in Modesto on May 20th at 7 pm. If you would like to attend or donate to our field studies fund, please check out the first comment! What are…
Going to hyperspace? Not exactly... George Lucas had it wrong. No, I'm not talking about the prequels to Star Wars ! It was something much earlier. People could be forgiven for not knowing this, but Star Wars was not George Lucas's first successful film. He was known for another great movie, American Graffiti , a semi-autobiographical film that recalled his days as a young man in Modesto,…
The Red Hills are blooming right now, so I am posting an abridged version of my post from May 21, 2021 explaining the geological conditions that formed the unique landscape. Imagine a world turned upside down and inside out. A place where the underworld realm is exposed to view, where all is out of equilibrium. It sounds like the introduction to a dystopian horror movie, but in this case, it is a…
Grand Tetons National Park, Wyoming Be forewarned. This post is a TRAP! It is designed to draw you in, weaken your defenses, and cause you to do something different than everyday life. Warning given... Have you ever dreamed of hitting the open road and finally seeing those places you've dreamed about, but haven't acted on that dream yet? What if you found out about an excursion that doesn't just…
I didn't really feel like it, but lunar eclipses are dramatic, and this was the last one to take place until 2029, so I got up a few times between 2am and 4am to snap a few shots of the event Lunar eclipses happen when the Earth moves in-between the Sun and the Moon, and casts a shadow across the face of the Moon. The shadow is spherical, by the way, so flat-earthers can re-examine their belief…
Like many others, I've been astonished by the storms of the last few days and the effects across all of California and the Pacific Northwest. It's not quite over, and if you are in one of the danger zones, listen to the emergency workers. They know what they are doing. I've been especially attentive to the stories coming out of Wrightwood in Southern California. It's been a well-known trouble spot…
2002 I've been leading geology field studies trips to lots of places in the American West for 37 years and started to take digital pictures in 2001. I sometimes struggle to find new things to photograph when I visit a place for the 37th time, but in some cases it is not a problem. There are geologic changes that happen on a yearly basis, and with twenty-three years of photos (minus two due to…
The Great Shakeout is planned for Oct. 16, 2025, at 10:16 AM. Source: U.S. Geological Survey We Californians live in earthquake country. The state is riddled with fault zones, and many of them are more than capable of producing damaging quakes. Some of the state's biggest cities are built on or adjacent to active faults, and much attention has been devoted to the probabilities and outcomes of…
The Great Shakeout is planned for Oct. 16, 2025, at 10:16 AM. And why aren't you doing it now?! Art by Zeo NOTE: THIS IS HYPOTHETICAL, NOT A REAL PREDICTION! It is reported that there is a 50% chance that your region is going to be hit with a magnitude 7.5 earthquake within the next four days. What are the most important things you would do in response to this prediction? What questions would you…
Pack up your stuff kids! We're going to a NATIONAL PARK! Cool! Does it have big mountains? No. Oh, does it have deep canyons? No. Can we go swimming in a lake or river? No. Oh, will rangers give an interesting talk around a campfire? No, there's no campgrounds. Does it have trees at least? Well, yeah, but they're all dead. What kind of a national park is this??? It is of course the national park…
Running a geology field studies course is nothing if not stressful. Right on the heels of the most intense storm I've experienced on one of these trips , it was morning and we were on the road to the next thing. A simple thing really, just driving down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. But I had no way of knowing it would happen, given the storms of the previous night. Had the storm affected the…
The Granite Mountains adjacent to the Mojave National Preserve Actually it was a great many bangs. I shall explain... Let's start with some basic statements. It's the Mojave Desert. It's almost summer. It doesn't rain in deserts, sort of by definition. I plan these excursions to avoid the monsoons of the Desert Southwest. And as the host at our first camp told us, "average June rainfall is 0.01…
Devils Garden in Arches National Park What is an adventure anymore? I ask my students to describe the meaning in one of my offbeat assignments in my geology courses and I get all kinds of answers. Many will describe a experience from our local educational camp in the Sierra Foothills, or an excursion they took to a local river or lake. Many of them have almost never left the city limits, and…
Sometimes issues keep coming up. I hadn't heard of updates of the Oak Flat Controversy in a couple of years, but with the new administration, the issue has arisen again as the Supreme Court fast-tracks a controversial land swap to enable the opening of a massive copper mine (with a surprising dissent by Gorsuch). I have posted the following several times as the debates continued over the years. It…
It is the 45th anniversary of the eruption of the St. Helens volcano and as I think of those days, I realize that even though a majority of the population wasn't even alive at the time, the volcano still matters. Not because of the potential for future eruptions (although that remains a distinct possibility), but because of the way we process and deal with the natural hazards that we all face, no…
Quick quiz: What is the name of this waterfall? What is the highest waterfall in Yosemite Valley? Depending on the parameters one can use to determine "height", your assumption may be wrong! Most "authorities" recognize Yosemite Falls (2,425 feet/739 meters) as the highest in Yosemite Valley and North America, and somewhere around the fifth or seventh highest in the world. But it depends on how…
Horseshoe Bend on the Colorado River NOTE: This is an updated and revised version of a post from December 28, 2024 So...about that bucket list of yours. Surely you have one. If you don't, what's keeping you from making one? Here's a version I promoted a few years back (I've made it to around 70% of them so far and feel exceedingly lucky to have been able to do so). In any case, how many of the…
Interesting skies once again! Tonight was a lunar eclipse. The timing was great, with totality being reached before midnight here in the Pacific Time Zone. But we are in the midst of a powerful Pacific storm, and I thought I wouldn't have a chance because of the cloud cover. A lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth ends up passing between the Sun and the Moon, and thus casting a shadow across the…
The pupfish habitat at the springs in Shoshone, east of Death Valley National Park Of all the things one might look for while exploring intense desert environments, what is the most unlikely form of life you would expect to encounter? Fish of course. It's practically an oxymoron to use the term "desert fish". But in the harsh desert environments of eastern California and western Nevada, there are…
We live our lives never truly knowing when the day comes that something remarkable happens. I was doing totally normal errands today in the middle of town when I saw a sun dog, a common enough occurrence, but it was so bright I decided to snap a shot. But as I got out of the car, I realized something more complex had become visible, something I'm fairly sure I've never seen before. The sun dogs…
Horseshoe Bend on the Colorado River So...about that bucket list of yours. Surely you have one. If you don't, what's keeping you from making one? Here's a version I promoted a few years back (I've made it to around 70% of them so far and feel exceedingly lucky to have been able to do so). In any case, how many of the following are (or should be) on your personal list? Possibly Grand Canyon, Zion,…
It was a beautiful Christmas day here in the Central Valley, one of the prettiest I can recall. The storm that blew through yesterday was gone, and the winds were enough to prevent the fog from setting in. I took a walk along the Tuolumne River Parkway Trail in Waterford, and was gifted one of those rarest of things: a clear view of the beautiful Sierra Nevada. And of course it was the moment of…
This beautiful canyon is under serious threat California geology is complicated. Unlike any other state, it is affected by the interactions of all three kinds of plate boundaries: divergent (the crust pulling apart), convergent (the crust compressing together), and transform (the crust sliding laterally). All of these forces have formed a complex landscape with incredible scenery unlike any other…
Today is the Great Shake-Out in California: At 10:17 AM, around 10.5 MILLION people will participate in a statewide earthquake drill. This is also the 35th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake that caused so much damage in the San Francisco Bay-Santa Cruz region, and given that many people in northern California weren't even born by then, and others have moved in, it helps to be reminded that…
2002 I've been leading geology field studies trips to lots of places in the American West for 36 years and started to take digital pictures in 2001. I sometimes struggle to find new things to photograph when I visit a place for the 34th time, but in some cases it is not a problem. There are geologic changes that happen on a yearly basis, and with twenty-two years of photos (minus two due to…