ReportWire

Tag: last winter

  • “We had a plan and then things kept moving”: battered yet enduring, Highway 1 remains closed

    “We had a plan and then things kept moving”: battered yet enduring, Highway 1 remains closed

    [ad_1]

    When a series of atmospheric rivers flowed into California last January, the Big Sur coastline was quickly swamped, and Highway 1, a lone life raft connecting San Simeon in the south and the Monterey Peninsula to the north, was overcome.

    Long vulnerable to the whims of nature, the iconic serpentine is especially susceptible to landslides, debris flows and terrain ever bowing to the weight of water, no more so than a lonely and lovely stretch of road just south of the New Camaldoli Hermitage and the nearly forgotten outpost, Lucia, and just north of redwood-forested Limekiln State Park and the Ragged Point headlands.

    Here at Paul’s Slide, fencing and K-rails were no match for last winter’s deluge that piled stones, mud and debris over the pavement, forcing Caltrans to stop traffic and once again create two of the most picturesque cul-de-sacs in California, if not the country.

    Ten months later — even with crews working seven days a week throughout most of the year — the road is still closed, and holiday travelers, hoping to take in the broad vistas of sea and sky en route to destinations north or south, will be frustrated, having to settle for Highway 101 or even Interstate 5.

    The effect of last week’s rain on the construction site is not known, but with an El Niño-fueled winter ahead, no one is making any predictions.

    “Highway 1 is a dynamic location due to the geography and nature,” said Jim Shivers, public information officer for Caltrans’ District 5. “It is always in a state of movement. In recent weeks we have been able to make good progress … but the exact opening is unknown.”

    Famously troublesome, Paul’s Slide has long been scrutinized by geologists ever mindful of the large movements of land along this edge of the continent. Unlike Mud Creek 13 miles to the south — where one Saturday morning in May 2017, a hillside collapsed, sloughing an estimated 1.5 million tons of rock and mud over the highway and into the Pacific — Paul’s Slide is less dramatic.

    But, said Shivers, “each incident on the Big Sur coast is different; no two situations are the same. When you talk about Mud Creek, an entire mountain came down and took out the highway and spilled into the ocean. That was a major landslide.”

    Paul’s Slide, however, is a different geological phenomena. It moves slowly yet persistently, raining the highway with debris and topsoil and ever gradually shifting underneath to the weight of water and gravity. One-lane closures are not uncommon.

    Earlier this year, as designers for Caltrans completed one set of blueprints for rerouting Highway 1 in the aftermath of last winter’s storms — and as contractors began to line up their skip loaders and dump trucks — Paul’s Slide shifted a second time, according to Shivers, requiring a new design and causing new delays.

    “We had a plan,” said Shivers, “and then things kept moving.”

    The new and improved road will eventually take travelers further inland and slightly higher, according to Shivers.

    Until then, the two scenic dead ends invite travelers to linger without traffic, without rushing, without a destination in mind — before turning around and going back the way they came.

    [ad_2]

    Thomas Curwen

    Source link

  • Want to know if your gas bill will increase this winter? SoCalGas can warn you with a text

    Want to know if your gas bill will increase this winter? SoCalGas can warn you with a text

    [ad_1]

    In response to last winter’s abnormally high gas bills, the Southern California Gas Co. has launched a text-messaging service that aims to alert customers so they can adjust their gas and energy use accordingly.

    SoCalGas customers were warned at the start of 2023 that their natural gas bill could be double what they paid a year earlier.

    At the time, a combination of out-of-state natural gas supply constraints, early cold weather conditions and low storage inventories in the western region drove up commodity prices, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

    To give customers a direct notice of potential increases in the future, SoCalGas recently created the Natural Gas Price Notice. This is an alternative way customers can be alerted, other methods include through email, mail correspondence and the utility’s website.

    Don Widjaja, the service provider’s vice president for customer solutions, said people are used to getting important messages through their cellphones.

    “We feel that this is an opportunity to meet the customer where they are and the expectation is, a text message alert is important and it’ll catch your attention,” he said.

    Once the customers have the information, they can make an informed decision about their gas usage, especially during a seasonal billing increase, Widjaja said.

    The optional notification system will send customers a text message when there is a 20% or more increase in the monthly natural gas commodity cost, which affects a portion of the bill.

    The alert will not notify customers when their increased usage leads to a higher bill. Customers who wish to track their usage can do so from their online account.

    If there is a need to send out the alert, it will be between December and March 2024.

    Customers can sign up for the text alert through their online SoCalGas account.

    If an alert is sent, here are ways customers can conserve energy at home and reduce their gas bill.

    Energy-saving tips

    Customers who are looking to save energy can start by lowering the temperature on their thermostat. Pacific Gas & Electric says customers can decrease their bill by about 2% for each degree that the temperature is lowered on the thermostat. Turning down the temperature from 70 to 65 degrees, for example, saves about 10%.

    Cold showers in the winter aren’t ideal but cold water uses less energy, according to Widjaja. That also applies to doing laundry with cold water.

    Turning down the temperature on a water heater to 120 degrees will also reduce the amount of energy it takes to produce and maintain the hot water. The U.S. Department of Energy offers a video tutorial on how to properly set the water heater temperature.

    How someone warms their dinner can also be an energy-saving practice. PG&E says reheating leftovers in a microwave takes less time and uses up to 80% less energy than a standard oven.

    Staying warm without a gas bill hike

    As Southern California enters the winter season next month, the crisp and anticipated 50-degree weather makes it difficult for people not to turn on their wall heater or furnace.

    Instead of using the natural gas-powered wall heater, people can opt to use a space heater instead.

    To avoid using the heater for long periods of time, retain the heat in the house by ensuring any gaps or cracks are sealed.

    The Natural Resources Defense Council advises that people check their baseboards and attic hatches for openings that can be sealed to make the living space less drafty.

    Wind can also get in through the front door if the weather-stripping is worn. If the weather-stripping can’t be replaced, cover the opened space with a towel or blanket.

    [ad_2]

    Karen Garcia

    Source link

  • Should Everyone Be Masking Again?

    Should Everyone Be Masking Again?

    [ad_1]

    Winter is here, and so, once more, are mask mandates. After last winter’s crushing Omicron spike, much of America did away with masking requirements. But with cases once again on the rise and other respiratory illnesses such as RSV and influenza wreaking havoc, some scattered institutions have begun reinstating them. On Monday, one of Iowa’s largest health systems reissued its mandate for staff. That same day, the Oakland, California, city council voted unanimously to again require people to mask up in government buildings. A New Jersey school district revived its own mandate, and the Philadelphia school district announced that it would temporarily do the same after winter break.

    The reinstated mandates are by no means widespread, and that seems unlikely to change any time soon. But as we trudge into yet another pandemic winter, they do raise some questions. What role should masking play in winters to come? Is every winter going to be like this? Should we now consider the holiday season … masking season?

    These questions don’t have simple answers. Regardless of what public-health research tells us we should do, we’ve clearly seen throughout the pandemic that limits exist to what Americans will do. Predictably, the few recent mandates have elicited a good deal of aggrievement and derision from the anti-masking set. But even many Americans who diligently masked earlier in the pandemic seem to have lost their appetite for this sort of intervention as the pandemic has eased. In its most recent national survey of health behavior, the COVID States Project found that only about a quarter of Americans still mask when they go out, down from more than 80 percent at its peak. Some steadfast maskers have started feeling awkward: “I have personally felt like I get weird looks now wearing a mask,” Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist at George Mason University, told me.

    Even so, masking remains one of the best and least obtrusive infection-prevention measures we have at our disposal. We haven’t yet been slammed this winter by another Omicronlike variant, but the pandemic is still here. COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are all rising nationally, possibly the signs of another wave. Kids have been hit especially hard by the unwelcome return of influenza, RSV, and other respiratory viruses. All of this is playing out against the backdrop of low COVID-19-booster uptake, leaving people more vulnerable to death and severe disease if they get infected.

    All of which is to say: If you’re only going to mask for a couple of months of the year, now is a good time. “Should people be masking? Absolutely yes, right now,” Seema Lakdawala, a flu-transmission expert at Emory University, told me. That doesn’t mean masking everywhere all the time. Lakdawala masks at the grocery store, at the office, and while using public transportation, but not when she goes out to dinner or attends parties. Those activities pose a risk of infection, but Lakdawala’s goal is to reduce her risk, not to minimize it at all costs. A strategy that prevents you from enjoying the things you love most is not sustainable.

    Both Lakdawala and Popescu were willing to go so far as to suggest that masking should indeed become a seasonal fixture—just like skiing and snowmen, only potentially lifesaving and politically radioactive. Even before the pandemic, influenza alone killed tens of thousands of Americans every year, and more masking, even if only in certain targeted settings, could go a long way toward reducing the toll. “If we could just say, Hey, from November to February, we should all just mask indoors,” Lakdawala said, that would do a lot of good. “The idea of the unknown and the perpetualness of two years of things coming on and off, and then the confusing CDC county-by-county guideline—it just sort of makes it harder for everybody than if we had a simple message.” Universal mandates or recommendations that people mask at small social gatherings are probably too much to ask, Lakdawala told me. Instead, she favors some limited, seasonal mandates, such as on public transportation or in schools dealing with viral surges.

    David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, is all for masking season, he told me, but he’d be more hesitant to resort to mandates. “It’s hard to impose mandates without a very strong public-health rationale,” he said, especially in our current, hyperpolarized climate. And although that rationale clearly existed for much of the past two crisis-ridden years, it’s less clear now. “COVID is no longer this public-health emergency, but it’s still killing thousands of people every week, hundreds a day … so it becomes a more challenging balancing act,” Dowdy said.

    Rather than requirements, he favors broad recommendations. The CDC, for instance, could suggest that during flu season, people should consider wearing masks in crowded indoor spaces, the same way it recommends that everyone old enough get a flu shot each year. (Although the agency has hardly updated its “Interim Guidance” on masks and the flu since 2004, Director Rochelle Walensky has encouraged people to mask up this winter.) Another strategy, Dowdy said, could be making masks more accessible to people, so that every time they enter a public indoor space, they have the option of grabbing an N95.

    The course of the pandemic has both demonstrated the efficacy of widespread masking and rendered that strategy so controversial in America as to be virtually impossible. The question now is how to negotiate those two realities. Whatever answer we come up with this year, the question will remain next year, and for years after that. The pandemic will fade, but the coronavirus, like the other surging viruses this winter, will continue to haunt us in one form or another. “These viruses are here,” Lakdawala said. “They’re not going anywhere.”

    [ad_2]

    Jacob Stern

    Source link