Tag Archives: SoCal

San Gabriel Snow and Clouds


San Gabriel Snow and Clouds, originally uploaded by Kelson.

Yesterday morning on my way to work, I looked over and saw the San Gabriel Mountains practically glowing with the morning light of the sun. A layer of cloud blocked the sun where I was, making the distant peaks look that much brighter. I stopped at a spot where I knew I’d have a good view of the mountain range.

It turned out to be a really interesting view, as you can see from the panorama below.


District Mountain Panorama, originally uploaded by Kelson.

By lunchtime, the sky above was mostly clear, and clouds were bunched up against the mountains, completely blocking them. I was indoors most of the morning, but it seemed as if the cloud layer had just blown northward until it hit the mountains, then stopped.

Click on either image to go to its Flickr page.

Side Note: Stitching

Since Canon’s PhotoStitch no longer works on Snow Leopard, I’ve tried out Hugin again. It’s come a long way since I first tried to use it and spent hours just getting a panorama to break up spectacularly and went hunting for PhotoStitch on the disc that came with the camera! I can’t get it to automatically detect control points on Fedora, but it does a surprisingly good job even when I’ve only marked around 10 or so. The ability to customize things like which pieces appear in front of others, or which projection to use, has turned out to be useful as well.

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Elf Storage


ELF STORAGE, originally uploaded by conradh.

A decade ago, Katie saw a self storage place with the first S missing from the sign. She didn’t get a picture, and has been looking for another sign with the same failing ever since.

Last summer we spotted a sign with the S broken. It turns out that the S eventually did fall off the rest of the way.

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Magenta Sunset

Watched the sun set, its disc tinged almost magenta by the smoke plume from the Morris fire near Azusa stretching along the horizon.

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Lost Food: Panda Panda

Panda Express as it stands today. (Literally, today, 20 minutes before posting this.)

When I lived in Lake Forest during the year 2000, I used to frequent a place called Panda Panda. It was your basic steam table Chinese restaurant, but it was good. I remember the occasional evening on which I’d think, “Do I go to the store, buy ingredients, come home, then spend time cooking just for one person, or do I go out and grab some fast-ish food?” Panda Panda was a frequent winner of these decisions.

It was located at the corner of El Toro and Raymond, near the library. Panda Panda shared a building with a Quizno’s sandwich place and was one driveway away from a Wendy’s.

I don’t know if they were a small chain or a solo restaurant, but they were eventually bought out or otherwise assimilated by Panda Express, which I’ve never particularly liked. (Though Panda Inn, a table-service restaurant owned by the same company, has been consistently good.) Naturally they homogenized the menu as well.

That was the end of that.

A few years later, as part of the big project to renovate the area, both buildings were bulldozed to make way for a new strip mall segment. Panda Express got the prime spot in the new building, but all traces of Panda Panda are lost.

For the record: I’m currently sitting in a Wahoo’s taco place roughly where the driveway used to be.

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Catalina Island Inversion

Catalina Inversion, originally uploaded by Kelson.

The south end of Santa Catalina Island as viewed from Newport Beach this morning around 9am. The winds have cleared out a lot of the haze that would normally obscure the island, and I had a great view of its entire length.

Interestingly, while the sky seemed clearer at 8am than at 9am, by which time a thin layer of gray haze clung to the horizon, the photos taken at 9 are sharper. It’s almost as if the dust settled during that hour, clearing above the layer and obscuring below it.

There was also a definite mirage caused by that same layer. You can tell the lower 1/3 of the island is distorted.

Catalina Panorama 9am

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Green Lots & Venus

Green Lot

Walking to lunch. Vacant lots are actually green! #

Spotted Venus at 1 in the afternoon! Thanks, Sky Map app! #

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Saddleback Snow – Two Days Later

I’ve added a few more pictures to my Snowline photoset showing the unusual amount of snow in the local Santa Ana Mountains.

There’s a few more from Thursday, plus a couple of pictures I grabbed Friday morning, like the one shown above.

Saddleback Snow Quail Hill View

Update: Here’s one more, from a batch of photos I took at lunch today. More at Flickr…

Saddleback Snow - Quail Hill Revisited

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School of Night & Snow

Just got back from seeing “The School of Night” in LA. Good play. Awful drive. Must sleep. #

They’re taking the Great Park Balloon up! Would be the perfect day [all the snow]…but I don’t have time! #

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Woodbridge Snow View


Woodbridge Snow View 1, originally uploaded by Kelson.

Saddleback and the Santa Ana Mountains got an amazing amount of snow yesterday, and I went out to a couple of spots this morning to take photos. Check this Flickr set for more.

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Misty Mountains: Another San Gabriel Snow Panorama

Last January when I caught a view of the entire range of the San Gabriel Mountains absolutely covered in snow, I figured it was a once-in-a-lifetime sight. Sure, they get snow every year, but they usually don’t get that much snow.

Amazingly, I got to see something similar again today. In a way, even better, because this time the sky was clear, providing better light and an unimpeded view.

After yesterday’s rain and a prediction of more showers today, I was surprised to see empty blue sky this morning. While driving over a bridge I looked out the window and saw the mountains just coated with snow. As soon as I dropped Katie off at her office, I made a beeline for that spot near The District in Tustin that (for now) offers an unimpeded view of the mountains that dominate the skyline (on clear days) of Los Angeles County.

By then a few clouds had begun to swirl around in the distance.


San Gabriel Snow (Section 1), originally uploaded by Kelson.

I couldn’t tell at the time whether Saddleback had any snow or not, since it was still backlit (this was around 8:20 or so in the morning), so I didn’t take any pictures of it.

Here’s a panorama of the mountain range. Click on the image below to see the full thing.

San Gabriel Snow Panorama Thumbnail

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