Mustard is beautiful, bitter, spicy, invasive, quick to grow and almost impossible to uproot once it becomes established. This plant’s brilliant golden flowers are synonymous with spring in the Santa Monica Mountains and all over coastal California, even though it is a relatively recent invader. The first mustard seeds arrived during the Spanish colonial period, but mustard’s campaign of total domination had more to do with the Gold Rush, American expansionism, and mid-century disaster response. It’s a larger than life epic for a plant that may be hated, but is still the stuff of legends. Photo by Suzanne Guldimann. Cover design and concept by Urs Baur
Topanga Canyon Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway reopened just in time for Memorial Day Weekend, and the fiftieth annual Topanga Days festival at the Topanga Community Center. For the first time in five months it almost felt like things were, if not back to normal at least more like normal used to be. There is still a long way to go for the families who lost their homes in the fire, and both roads are still in the process of being repaired—our first trip on TCB required three stops and a pilot car escort—but this was a major milestone on that journey. And all along the road, nature is recovering. Fire-following flowers are blooming on fire-scarred hillsides—purple phacelia, and white bindweed. Even the trees are beginning to show signs of life. Topanga is recovering.
The Summer solstice, which marks the astronomical change of season, won’t arrive until June 20, but for many of us, Memorial Day is the start of the season, and the wave of warmer weather this week makes it feel like summer. We talk a lot about the weather in the TNT editorial: heat warnings in the summer; fog in the canyons; fire warnings that usually come in the autumn but that can now occur at any time of the year; storm warnings and flood risks in winter; beach hazards and surf reports and rip currents. All of these things are important to our readers, and the source for them is the information provided by top scientists and researchers at NOAA—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The current report for local weather in the Topanga area warns that temperatures will be headed for triple digits by the end of the week, when this issue of TNT is published, and also that a cut-off low may bring a chance for some rare June rain early next week.
The long range forecast right now is ENSO-neutral, meaning neither El Niño nor La Niña conditions are present. ENSO-neutral conditions are anticipated to continue throughout the summer. NOAA is predicting a normal, or less active, Pacific Hurricane season this year in the eastern Pacific (the West Coast also has a hurricane season—even though hurricanes seldom make landfall in California, and NOAA reports that the first potential tropical storm of the season is already forming off the coast of Mexico).
Below normal would be good news for the portion of Pacific Coast Highway impacted by the Palisades Fire and the property owners on the beach side of the road whose homes were destroyed, because fewer storms would mean less risk of storm-related surf further damaging the already fragile coastline. Even when cyclones don’t reach the California coast, the waves they create do. The other side of the country is preparing for an Atlantic Hurricane season that is forecast to be more active than usual—potentially 60 percent more active. Millions of people are in the potential path of destruction every summer.
Accurate forecasts can be the difference between having time to take precautions and evacuate during a fire, storm, or flood, and being slammed by disaster. The Surfrider Foundation outlines cuts that will have a direct impact on the California coast: $1.7 billion in cuts to NOAA programs that would end funding for the Coastal Zone Management Grant Program, which supports states in managing coastal resources and planning; $1.3 billion cut to NOAA operations, research, and grants, terminating a variety of climate research, data, and grant programs; and a $209 million cut to NOAA weather satellites and infrastructure, weakening critical weather monitoring capabilities.
The budget bill approved by the House also proposes cutting almost all federal funding for real-time data collection used to provide marine hazard warnings and predict the intensity of hurricanes, tropical storms, and patterns like ENSO that directly impact all Americans, regardless of their beliefs, economic status, or political orientation.
The cuts at NOAA are just a small part of the numerous, critically important government agencies and federal programs that are in danger of being eliminated if the budget, currently being debated in the Senate, is approved in its current form. If everyone takes a moment to contact their senators maybe some of the damage can be averted. https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm.
How’s the weather? If NOAA’s weather monitoring programs are eliminated the forecast is going to be bleak. Having the ability to accurately forecast the answer to that question has the very real power to save lives.
Stay safe, be well.
