Tag Archives: Gualala

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Cooks Beach, just north of the town of Gualala, has a large pocket beach, a creek for little ones to play in, and a beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean. It's a perfect place to go to see the sunset. Eric Duff did just that a few weeks ago.

I love the reflection on the wet sand. Thanks to Eric for allowing me to share his photo with you here. To learn more about Cooks Beach, here is the link to the Redwood Coast Land Conservancy: http://www.rc-lc.org/

Some smoke has flowed into the coast from the inland fires today. It's not too bad, but you definitely can smell smoke. There are a lot of evacuees here, and we are trying to help them as best we can. We pray the rain in our forecast materializes. It is forecast for late Wednesday. Rain would be such a boon for Northern California.

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The young of our resident Gray Foxes are awfully cute. Once in a while they will make a den under a deck or wood shack. That's what happened for Michael Tilles at his place on The Sea Ranch. There are four kits in Michael's photo.

Then Janice O'Conner let me know she had a family of SIX kits at her place in Gualala. That's a large family, for sure.

  Gray Foxes live on the Mendonoma Coast year round. Thanks to Michael and Jan for allowing me to share their photos with you here.

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Peggy Berryhill noticed these unusual clouds a few weeks ago. Scott Gasparian identified them as mammatus clouds, often a predictor of wild weather.

Scott wrote, "When I used to fly paragliders cross county, I found there are two sizes of clouds: those that are small and fed by an updraft, and those that get big enough to internally generate lift. We refer to the second type as 'cloud suck.'

"The normally flat bottom of the cloud starts to dome upwards as the freezing/cooling water in the clouds starts to accelerate. When the vertical column reaches up far enough to get into the really cold air zone, then we get hail, and thunder and lightning.

"If it keeps getting higher, with enough warm wet air to feed into it, tornadoes and waterspouts can spawn. If you see mammatus, and they start to rotate, duck. If moving away from you and rotating, sound the alarm. I lived in flat Missouri for a while and have seen two tornado starts, and a bunch of almosts, scary thrilling power to behold."

We Mendonomans will stick to a little hail and lightning, thank you very much.

Thanks to Peggy for allowing me to share her photo with you here, and thanks to Scott for teaching us about mammatus clouds.

 

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Bob Rutemoeller and Sandy Hughes both noticed this big moth resting at the Gualala Post Office. It's a Western Cecropia, or Giant Silkmoth.

Harm Wilkinson photographed a Ceanothus Moth just a block or two away.

They each have the distinctive white markings on their wings, but the colors are different and the markings on the bottom of their wings is different. Still, at first glance, I would have thought Bob's moth was a Ceanothus. We are seeing wild lilac, Ceanothus, in bloom right now, which always attracts Ceanothus Moths. They are quite large and exciting to see. The Giant Silkmoth is a rarer sighting for us.

Thanks to Bob and Harm for allowing me to share their photos with you here.

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Tom Eckles looked out his window in Gualala and he saw this beautiful Peregrine Falcon in the distance.

peregrine-falcon-by-tom-ecklesA good place to see a Peregrine is at Gualala Point Regional Park. Peregrine Falcons have been seen there looking for a meal of a tasty Duck. To hear the call of a Peregrine, here is a link to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Peregrine_Falcon/sounds

To see more of Tom's photography, here is his website: http://www.tom.eckles.com/