Local Weather Forecasts

Unfortunately, none of the local TV weather services accurately reports North Richardson Bay weather; nor does the Weather Channel’s banner for Sausalito. The only one forecaster that does is Weather Underground, a San Francisco-based forecasting service built on a network of 180,000 reporting stations. WU has dozens of local wi-fi reporting...

The Roiling Sea

Sea level is not level at all. Just as the surface of the earth is not flat, the surface of the ocean is not flat. Because the earth rotates to the east and because the ocean responds slowly to the rotation* and the surface of the sea piles up along...

Predicting Abnormally High-Water Events

As described previously, tide tables are merely estimates calculated by averaging the highs and lows for the last ten years and projecting them forward for the coming year(s). During periods of rain, tide tables must be adjusted to higher levels than forecast. Here is a high water level forecasting tool...

Different Floats for Different Folks

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the rivers of the United States were home to entire communities of people living in self-made houseboats. The history of these communities has been explored briefly in river memoirs such as Harlan Hubbard’s Shantyboat Journal but hasn’t been thoroughly examined in a...

A Labor Day Weekend to Remember

A Labor Day weekend to remember—or forget—depending upon how one managed to survive the heatwave. Joy Dryden (West Pier) describes the intense heat—105 degrees in the shade—on the afternoon of Friday, September 1: I decided at the most heat (105°) to seek refuge at my air conditioned office. As I...

Cloud Cover for a UFO?!?

Donna writes: What we caught was a lenticular cloud. It was photographed May 20th over a period of 16 minutes, starting at 7:54 PM. I sent it to a NASA friend who said, “These small symmetrical rather self-contained clouds are typically formed downwind of mountain peaks.” Sort of a condensed...