The slough at the headquarters area of Dos Rios State Park Back in the 1980s, Douglas Adams published his hilarious "trilogy" of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe. The second book, the The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, was not about a restaurant at the edge of the Universe, but rather it was a place where you dined and watched the actual destruction of the Universe (you had to use a time machine to get there).  Today's blog is about the end of the Tuolumne River. But it isn't as bad as it sounds: it's about the spot where the Tuolumne River ends by flowing into ..read more

Totality of the solar eclipse of 1991 from San Jose del Cabo. The corona, an aura of plasma and gases, is only visible during totality. Photo by Dr. William Luebke. There is a major celestial event coming up next month, a total solar eclipse that is going to sweep across a wide swath of North America. I'm here to say that if you can, make the effort to see it. Why? It's a truly unique experience that has mystified (and terrified) humans during our entire existence. Seeing a partial eclipse is interesting. A glimpse of a total eclipse is truly awesome. I can't make it this time, but ..read more

Imagine a lake that's six miles across flanked by dramatic mountain peaks reaching heights greater than 10,000 feet. We're in California, so it's got to be Lake Tahoe, right? But it's not. It is the lowest and driest place in North America, and the hottest place in the world. It's Death Valley. And big lakes are not a normal part of the scenery here. Badwater Basin is normally a dry salt flat. What has happened here? In a word, it's rain. An extraordinary amount of rain has fallen in and around Death Valley this year, around 300% of what is normal. That sounds more dramatic than saying that ..read more

Are you looking for a bit of adventure?  I invite you to join our Modesto Junior College Anthropology 190/Geology 190: Field Studies in the Hawaiian Islands from May 30 to June 11, 2024. This once-in-a-lifetime journey spans nine days on the Big Island of Hawai'i and four days on Kaua'i.  There is still time to join us for 13 days exploring volcanoes, coral reefs, tropical rainforests, tropical deserts, ancient foot trails, petroglyphs, and archaeological sites! Our itinerary includes Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Mauna Kea, Hilo, the archaeological parks of the Kona Coast, and on ..read more

California's Great Valley is many things: one of the most important agricultural regions in the world, America's Serengeti Plains where millions of migratory birds spend the winter, and one of the most polluted air basins in the country. The pollution is a shame, causing all manner of health problems for those who live here, and obscuring the incredible mountains that ring the valley. Except on a few select days out of the year. Today was one of those days. Gray, Red and Merced Peaks in Yosemite National Park We had a fairly intense storm last night, and it was followed up by windy c ..read more

Copyright: Jonathan DiMaio One of my earliest blog posts, back in 2008, was a top-ten list of the depiction of geologists in movies. I've revisited it a few times, most recently in 2018 when I added in the movie "San Andreas" (the real hero in the movie was Paul Giamatti's role as a geologist, not the Rock). It seems I need to update that list once again. An independent movie was released last year called "Unconformity", and it has perhaps the most honest depiction of a geologist that I've seen in film. Directed and produced by Jonathan DiMaio, it is the story of Alex (portr ..read more

2002 I've been leading geology field studies trips to lots of places in the American West for 30 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 30th time, but in some cases it is not a problem. There are geologic changes that happen on a yearly basis, and with twenty-one 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

This week was the Great Shake-Out in California: At 10:19 AM last Thursday millions of people, especially kids, participated in a statewide earthquake drill. Just to put an exclamation point on the whole idea, there was an actual earthquake alert for many people in Central California on Wednesday. The quake wasn't much in this case, a magnitude 4.1, but what timing.  This was also a few days after the 34th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake that caused so much damage in the San Francisco Bay-Santa Cruz region. Given that many people in northern California weren't even born by then ..read more

Today's eclipse at the greatest coverage of the Sun, about 80% There was an eclipse today! This is perhaps not entirely news to my North American readers, as the eclipse was visible to some extent across the entire United States. The eclipse was not a total eclipse, as the Moon was farther from the Earth, and could not completely cover the disk of the Sun. This is called an annular eclipse. Those on the main path of the eclipse were treated with the "ring of fire" effect, as the edge of the Sun formed a perfect ring around the Moon. I didn't have the opportunity to be in that area, s ..read more

This is a short blog series of informational articles from my college faculty website that is soon to be extinct (arcane unsafe software, they say). Way back in 2002, the parent of one of my students offered me a flight of my choosing, and I knew it had to be Stanislaus Table Mountain. It is one of the more famous geological features of our region, and it is best appreciated from above. Please buckle your seatbelts, and comply with the no smoking signs... Our flight takes us from Oakdale, a small town at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, to the Sonora-Columbia area in the Sierra Mother Lode. Our ..read more