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 indeed fish. And not just a single species, but around a dozen species and subspecies. There are nine distinct populations of the Cyprinodon Pupfish, three species of Speckled Dace, and a Poo ..read more

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 were connected to a halo around the sun, but at the top was an "upside-down" rainbow, like a giant smile in the sky. I made use of a highly technological sun-blocking tool that I have in my pockets so ..read more

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, Bryce Canyon, Arches, Petrified Forest, Capitol Reef, Yosemite, Great Basin, or Canyonlands National Parks? What about Ancestral Pueblo cliff dwellings at places like Bear's Ears or G ..read more

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 three simultaneous seasons of California. Yes, it's that time of year in California when three seasons occur at once. Sure, the calendar says it's winter and all, and that is certainly true in the h ..read more

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 place in the world.  The Coast Ranges province is one of those unique regions. Extending some 400 miles from the Oregon border to the Transverse Ranges near Point Conception, it is one ..read more

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 earthquakes are a fact of life in our fair state (and our state is quite fair because of the long-term activity of earthquakes: it's how our mountains formed).  It starts with a modest little ..read more

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 Covid), the changes become obvious. This is a continuing update from a post in 2013, and I'll probably continue updating for the foreseeable future. 2004 Highway 25 in the California Coast ..read more

I had my first look at Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) last night, but my timing sucked, as I didn't locate it until it was close to the horizon and practically lost in the afterglow of the sunset. Tonight I was a bit better prepared, and the comet itself was higher in the sky. It was a beautiful sight, and the finest I've seen since 1997. My phone is new and I've had little time to learn what it is capable of, but I was pleased with what I got tonight. I was focusing between 1x to as high as 6x magnification. I was also just able to see the comet with the naked eye, but it wasn't ob ..read more

  It's not often that I get to see to astronomical phenomena in the same week, but that's what has happened. The other night was an extraordinary display of the aurora borealis in my part of Central California (and most of the rest of the lower 48 states and Alaska). And tonight was my first look at a comet since 2020. Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) is now visible in the west shortly after sunset. It will be rising higher in the sky each night during the remainder of October, but it will be dimmer each night. I couldn't see it with the naked eye, but the night-shot setting on my sm ..read more

Back in May of this year, I saw something I had never seen before: the aurora borealis gracing the night sky over the prairie of the Sierra Nevada foothills. It was an astounding once-in-a-life event. Except it wasn't. The sun has been particularly active this year, and a coronal mass ejection occurred a few days ago that sent charged particles racing towards the Earth. For the second time in my life, I saw the aurora borealis from my home area. I was teaching an online geology lab and happened across a report that auroras were being sighted in unusual places, and anxiously awaited for my st ..read more