A glacier is never going to form in Sacramento, regardless of it being 70 degrees in May

It's May, the school year is almost over, and it's time for three months of relaxing by the beach and doing outdoors-y type things like hiking and camping. However, for these types of things, a warm temperature is somewhat necessary. Unfortunately, the temperatures lately have been somewhat on the cooler side. Although chilly and not as warm and humid as it usually is this time of year, it is not quite cold enough for say, a glacier to form. A glacier is a large formation of ice resting on land or floating in a body of water. In order for a glacier to form, the climate obviously must be much cooler than it is in Sacramento in May, regardless of how chilly it currently is. Glaciers form in one of two places: either they form in areas of high altitude, such as mountains, or they form outside of the mountains. When formed on mountains or other areas of high altitude, the glacier is called "Alpine". When formed outside of the mountains, in areas of high latitude, the glacier is called "Continental". Wherever the glacier is formed, it must be in an incredibly cold area with high levels of snowfall. This is because glaciers are merely the accumulation of snow that is packed down and compressed and turns into ice. The weight of the top layers of snow compresses the bottom layers of snow, turning it into firn, a pebbly type of snow between soft, fluffy snow and hard, solid ice. After the firn stage, the snow turns into solid ice and becomes a glacier. This can take an extremely long time; as long as 1,000 years in a dry climate such as Antarctica. Obviously, this is never going to happen in Sacramento. 70 degrees in May or not. However, global climate change makes anything possible.

Acid rain and why it can help my life right now

It's getting towards the end of the year and I've stopped wanting to go to any of my classes. It's not that I don't like them, it's just that having to spend at least an hour a day twice a week for the last four months has gotten really tiring and grinding. In the pursuit of avoiding spending an hour a day twice a week in my exhausting, now irritating classes, I've begun ditching. This plan of just not going works very well a majority of the time. I sleep in and no one ever finds out. However, this plan does not work for classes that take roll periodically, which is a fair amount of my classes. For these classes, a more drastic approach is necessary, like praying for a flood or a power outage or perhaps a flat tire for the professor. Or maybe, the swift deterioration of the building due to denudation. Denudation is the term used for all the processes by which weathering occurs. These processes include weathering, mass movement, erosion, transportation, and deposition. The most likely way that this would happen is through carbonation and solution. Carbonation and solution are forms of chemical weathering whereby carbonic acid from carbon dioxide is dissolved in water and deteriorates buildings. This kind of weathering is often described as acid rain, where carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere and comes down when it rains. It can be seen on ancient sculptures ad buildings that look particularly worn and deteriorated. While this kind of deterioration takes years and decades and millennia to work, I can hope that a bucket of carbonic acid has been released into the atmosphere and will come down in acid rain only in the general direction of the halls where my classes are. Or I can just suck it up and wait until the semester is over. Which is only in a few days. So I'll probably just do that.

Clouds; or I Can't Think of a Clever Title

I got out of my Theatrical Lighting Design class early last Thursday and I didn't want to pace for one and a half hours or sit in the Green Room in the theatre building on Facebook for extended periods of time, so I figured I'd go sit in my car and listen to music. I walked all the way to the parking structure, up the stairs to the top floor, got in my car, rolled the window down, put my feet out the window, and turned on the radio. It was relaxing and I nearly fell asleep. Figuring that "I was taking a nap" would be a bad excuse for being late to my next class, I kept myself alert by watching the clouds. This made me think of Geography and what clouds are. Clouds are evaporated water droplets made into ice crystals that are suspended in the atmosphere, meaning that, despite their fluffy appearance, they would be incredibly unpleasant to actually be in. There are several different types of clouds. Cirrocumulus, Cirrus, and Cirrostratus are all clouds that form at high altitude. Altostratus and Altocumulus are all clouds that form at middling ranges. Cumulus, Stratocumulus, Nimbostratus, and Stratus are all clouds that form in lower altitudes. The clouds that I could see from my car window that afternoon were Cumulus, which are the big, fluffy clouds that one thinks of when one thinks of clouds. Cliche clouds. They were moving slowly across the sky, which is due to wind currents pushing the clusters of ice crystals through the atmosphere. It was a hypnotic sight and I wish I could have stayed. But, alas, class was a necessity.

How plate tectonics messes with my summer plans

So I've been thinking about what I'm going to be doing over the summer. I could do a show, or I could just start working full time, but what I really want to do is travel. I want to go to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland to see "Hamlet" or maybe to Mexico for a few weeks or so. But what I really want to do is go on a serious trip like Japan or Italy or France. The problem, of course, lies in the distance. Asia and Europe are so very far away from Sacramento. This raises the problems of travel time and travel cost. It would take hours to fly to Europe and Asia and the travel alone would cost almost as much as I make in a year. It is for this reason that the concept of plate tectonics is so appealing to me. The idea that, at one time, the earth was one large continent is a very convenient idea for tired travelers who don't feel like throwing down several thousand dollars for a two week trip. Plate tectonics is the idea that some 255 million years ago, all of the continents of the earth were one large continent called "Pangea", which means "All Earth." Then, over time, the continents spread out across the earth due to sea floor spreading. Sea floor spreading is the creation of new crust when older sea floor is pushed under newer, less dense continental crust. Continental spreading also occurs due to plate subduction, where crust is pushed down into the earth, melts, and creates trenches.

My point is, if continental spread hadn't happened, if all of the continents of the world were still one large continent, I wouldn't be as torn about travel as I am today. If Europe and Asia and the United States were still the same continent, travel wouldn't be as big of a problem. Granted, Japan and Italy and France would not exactly be a hop, skip, and a jump away, but all I would be stressing about would be gas money. I could theoretically drive to Europe! And that's intense.

Geographic knowledge makes me feel superior

My parents are redoing the counters in their kitchen. They used to be some kind of laminated wood or something and they were getting worn down and full of cuts from wayward knives. Since they've been watching a lot of HGTV and lusting after the counters tops on "House Hunters," they've decided that the best course of action is to get granite counter tops. The upside of this, other than no longer having to stare at the cheap looking dark green counters that used to be in the kitchen, is that I got to feel really smart and exceedingly superior when I told them that granite was a "felsic rock." A felsic rock is a sub-category of Igneous rock. Felsic refers to the composition of an Igneous rock. A felsic rock is less dense than it's counterpart, mafic. It is also colored more lightly, has a higher viscosity, and is found in the continental crust, whereas a mafic rock is found in the oceanic crust. I was also obliged to tell them that granite is an "intrusive" rock as well. An intrusive rock is a subset of Igneous rock that tells us that the rock was formed within the earth's crust and it was cooled below the surface of the earth. An intrusive rock is formed from Magma, which is Lava that has not yet reached the earth's surface, and it has a rougher texture and larger crystals. If you look at granite in a counter top, although by the time it's there it's smooth and shiny, there are large spots of different colored crystals. These large crystals are a defining characteristic of intrusive rocks. Extrusive rocks, which are rocks that are formed and cooled on top of the surface of the earth, are formed from Lava, which is Magma that has reached the earth's surface. Extrusive rocks cool faster since they're cooling above the earth's surface and therefore have a finer texture and smaller crystals.

Granite is an extrusive, felsic, Igneous rock. I feel smart just typing it out...

Air Masses Ruin Spring Break

Spring Break has just begun. Spring Break is supposed to be sunny and warm. You're supposed to be able to lay out in the sun and drink fruity drinks and wear sun glasses. It's supposed to be like a mini-summer. Instead, my Spring Break is going to be cold and rainy. I'm going to be sitting inside all day and watching re-runs of "The Tudors." I could very easily end up turning the heater on. This is decidedly lame. This is because a storm is going to be rolling through. "But why is a storm going to be rolling through?", one might ask. Well, there is a simple geographic explanation for that. It is because an air mass from another region is going to be moving into Sacramento. An air mass takes on the general characteristics of the area the air mass is over. The longer an air mass is over a general area, the more like the climate of that general area the air mass becomes. For example, an air mass moving over Texas is going to become more warm and dry. An air mass moving over Hawaii is going to becomes more warm and moist. What would be nice is if the storm coming was a result of a warm front. A warm front would push over the cold air, the temperature would rise, and the result would be persistent rainfall, but it would be nice and warm outside. This is not the case this time. What is coming for Sacramento is a cold front. It will push up the warm air, the wind will pick up, it will cause a pressure increase, and rain just long and hard enough to completely screw up my Spring Break, and potentially bring thunder and lighting. Thanks, Geography.

Watch me talk about The Today Show and Geography in the same paragraph!!

So I was awake early enough the other day to watch The Today Show, which is weird because I'm seriously never up that early. But on this particular day, I was. After endless segments of cute banter between Matt Lauer and that chick who was on The View and poorly done segue ways from war coverage to a Bobby Flay cooking demo, they finally got to the entire reason I was watching in the first place: the weather. I needed to know what it was supposed to be like outside that day in order to decide on what shoes to wear. This got me thinking about Geography. Later. I honestly wasn't thinking about it at the time, but in retrospect, I'm connecting this situation to Geography. The point is, according to the Koppen Classification system, Sacramento is in a Mesothermal area. This means that the average temperature in a cool period is above 26.6 degrees Fahrenheit and during warm periods, the average temperature is above 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Also, according to an empirical classification system, Sacramento has a Mediterranean climate or a Dry Summer Subtropic, which makes a lot of sense, seeing as how we have pretty dry summers but it's humid sometimes, too. Anyway, the high that day ended up being 60 something. I wore flip flops. It was cold.