Congrats to the Chiefs. (Although it seemed like a slow game for three quarters that then that had a phenomenally exciting finish.) And now baseball spring training begins . . .
SUPER BOWL COMMERCIALS WINNUH - State Farm with Ahhhnold.
ENJOY IT WHILE YOU CAN - Just when you think the worst is behind us, you look at the forecast and realize we've got another storm headed our way, supposedly starting next Saturday (2/17) and lingering for a number of days. So hopefully you got out this weekend or will be able to get out this week at some point, because it looks like the El Niño is going to hit the fan again. (Unclear on how or if this will affect the Avalon Underwater Cleanup on 2/24.) And even though the last storm caused many problems, it could have been a LOT worse. There have been numerous stories in the L.A. Times about how the design of the L.A. River and rain and flood diversion projects made the impacts much less than they had been during past big storms. One they keep pointing to happened in 1938, before the river was made into a concrete channel and damage was widespread. Did you know that at the mouth of the river in Long Beach, the flow was 65,000 cubic feet of water . . .
PER SECOND??? That's 5.6
BILLION cubic feet of water each day. Impressive. And engineers say the river can actually deal with three times that amount (and I would certainly hope we never have to put that to the test).
PERSPECTIVE - The average home swimming pool contains about 2,500cf of water. So this daily capacity of the river is somewhat akin to emptying out (or filling up) 2.2 million home pools each day. Yikes!!!
WATCH THE BEACHES - But even with all of this rainwater being diverted, if you're doing any shore diving this week, see if you can get a read on the water quality before you take the plunge. There are two places you can go for this info:
L.A. County Dept. of Public Health -
http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/phcommon/public/eh/water_quality/beach_grades.cfm/
Heal the Bay Beach Report Card (you can zoom in or out on the map) -
https://beachreportcard.org/33.91029999999999/-118.51929100000001/11
PAUL HUMANN HAS DIED - If his name is not immediately familiar to you, his work probably is as Paul was co-author on all of the New World Publishing fish ID books that we use for our Fish ID course and just about every dive shop sells and most dive boats around the world have a copy for their region. Paul was a big believer in the idea that if you took time to learn how to dive, shouldn't you also take time to learn about what it is that you're seeing? Paul died peacefully at his home in Florida at the age of 86.
