This is day 4 since the Palisades Fire began and it has been quite the rollercoaster.
I stood in a flurry of snowflakes that would not settle.
Regardless, NOAA 18 decided to fly over with an elevation of 89°.
Large, restless and white-grey, they took on the appearance of ashes.
You don't get much better than that.
From Vienna to LA, with solidarity and love.
I decided to visit the Santa Monica Pier as it has great exposure to the sky, and is about as close as I can get to the fire zone.
This is my first satellite image capture of the year.
One of the top destinations for tourists, there was much activity.
Another cold frosty night.
A bodyboarder screams as he catches a wave.
An 80% Moon illuminates the frost on the grass.
The rollercoaster operator ask his riders if they want to go for a second spin.
Tiny ice crystals shimmer and glimmer in brightness of the reflected moon light.
A neon sign above a cafe reads, "Salty air, and not a care".
I try and spot the satellite overhead but lots of fainter objects are fighting for recognition in the blinding lunar light.
On a small island of homes, my house defied all odds - standing strong.
There the pin sharp brilliance of Venus to the west, Jupiter to the south east and Mars rising in the east.
My classroom of 25 years went up in smoke.
On packing away I walk across the grass leaving footprints that remind me of the moon landings or the fossilised prints left millions of years ago by the dinosaurs.
About 6 1/2 minutes into the satellite pass you can see a thin strip of clouds headed out to the ocean.
As I type this I can hear the news from the next room reporting on the fires in California.
The winds have died down, but the fire continues.
What kind of footprints are being left there today and what about the footprints of the generations to come?
At just 11% containment, it is now threatening Brentwood and Encino.
0.1 degrees Celsius
90% humidity
1005 mb
8 months of no rain and some strong winds.
For the Los Angeles fires:
Blame it on the wind: blame it on the ‘devil’s wind’ that gusts over Los Angeles at 60+ mph, ‘fanning the flame’ of five ongoing, devastating wildfires, as yet ‘uncontained’.
It doesn't take much to change your course.
Blame it on the wind, an unpredictable, invisible, seemingly chaotic, uncontrollable force: the easiest scapegoat.
Today is a blustery day in Los Angeles.
The National Weather Service predicts a "life-threatening and destructive" windstorm, with gusts of wind up to 160 kph.
Who remembers its names or its cultures?
Over the last 8 months, southern California hasn't received a rainfall event with more than a few millimeters of precipitation.
Who is willing to counter the ‘blame’ with the knowledge that a wind like the ‘Santa Ana’ has a cultural history more than 5,000 years old in the lifeways of the Tongva, Tataviam, Serrano, Kizh, and Chumash Peoples, on whose land Los Angeles was settled and built?
The landscape is dry and the humidity is expected to drop (currently 20%).
The Santa Ana winds may be arid and dry, originating from the desert of the Great Basin.
A spark from a power line can ignite the extremely flammable brush and then carry embers great distances.
These winds may increase static electricity, topple trees, and produce ‘strange luminosities’ in the sky.
"Fire season" used to refer to late August, September and October.
Yet being affected by a dry, desert wind is not the same thing as codifying it with sensationalist and ‘demonic’ fears.
In recent years, some of the worst fires in California history happened in November, December and January.
In demonising the wind, whose demonic actions go unnoticed?
With a changing climate there is a need to update our terminology.
Which demons are free to roam?
While some people might think this is an excuse to hunker down and ride out the storm, I thought this is a reason to break out the antenna.
As we blame the wind, how can we have a conversation about the extractive legacies of water stealing, draining and rerouting?
I went up into the hills of the Santa Monica Mountains and captured a pass.
Or fire suppression tactics that make the world more flammable?
While writing this weather note, I started hearing sirens.
Or centuries of encroachment on more and more arid land?
A neighbor sent me a text.
How do we talk about the fact that the logic that pumps money into LAPD and enlists hundreds of incarcerated peoples to fight an uncontainable fire for $4 per day is the very same logic that sends arms to Israel as it burns entire cities and perpetuates another prison?
I hopped on my roof and watched flames come over a ridge (see image 3).
How do we resist sensationalist narratives of neighbourhoods where “millionaires are getting a taste of the apocalyptic movies they have produced and acted in” to be able to see the marginalised, differently abled, and elderly existing side by side, whose narratives of ‘escape’, or simply survival, are far less appealing to a media elite?
Ended up evacuating due to air quality.
I pray for the sake of my family home (if it still exists) that the wind relents.
But this disaster is not about the wind.
The winter constellations hang overhead in all their beautiful glory.
(images are screenshots from videos by Steve Engelmann, maps by CalFire, words by me)
Orion, Pleiades, Auriga and Taurus drawing out the maps of ancient skies.
The lawn is crispy underfoot.
The UK is clear on the map except for some small parallel clouds across the counties of Cheshire and the cities of Liverpool and Chester.
I am stood watching Mars and Jupiter fade in out of the clouds along with a quarter Moon.
1 degree Celsius
90% humidity
1001 mb
There are layers of cloud tonight.
Today I thought I would visit LA's Getty Center.
Lower ones are moving fast and in small wispy shapes.
They are coordinating a project called PST:ART which includes over 70 exhibitions throughout southern California with a focus on how art and science collide.
The higher clouds glow an orange colour from the light pollution and as I pad around on the lawn during the pass I hear the splashing of water against my boots and I notice that the lawn is water logged in places.
The Getty Center also has an amazing outdoor area with spectacular views of Los Angeles.
There was so much rain last night and another down pouring of sleet and snow today.
What a great place to also grab a satellite pass - I thought.
Airports were shut, roads and rail lines flooded.
When security took a look at the disassembled antenna I was bringing along, they had second thoughts.
I wasn't able to convince security, or her supervisor, that my intentions were harmless.
3.1 degrees Celsius
99% humidity
990mb
But I've learned to be flexible.
It is hard to pass up an opportunity when a satellite is passing by with an elevation of 87°.
On the spot I hatched a plan B.
Back in Los Angeles I thought I would try out roof-top parking for an unobstructed view.
With 20 minutes to go, I used my speed-walking skills to relocate on an overpass where Sunset Blvd crosses the 405 freeway.
The skies were mostly cloudy with a cool marine layer bringing in a little fog.
On the first image you can see the Getty Center in the background perched on a hillside.
There was also a light scattering of stratocumulus and high cirrus clouds, but no precipitation.
The view was a step down from the Getty, but also, not bad.
The Air Quality Management District initiated an Air Quality Alert.
I'm sure there were many suspicious looks from the busy street with a strange man pointing an antenna at the sky.
An inversion layer, which is common in LA, traps air pollutants low to the ground.
Then again, this is a stone's throw away from Hollywood.
For this reason there is a ban on wood burning.
At a little over 8 minutes in, a commuter bus blocked by reception for two seconds.
The fine particulates get deep into lungs and can trigger a range of health issues.
A line of static documents the interference.
Could use some rain, but nothing in the forecast for the next 10 days.
Life throws us many curveballs.
Went out to capture a satellite pass with a super high elevation (87°).
The next four years should be no different.
Found an abandoned golf course in the process of being repurposed with a relatively clear skyline.
A bright and crisp morning.
The skies were mostly clear with some cirrus clouds toning down the sunlight.
Blue skies and frost underfoot.
It was a crisp 10°C at 10AM, which seems a bit unexpected for someone not from Florida.
There is a stillness to the day and though it's already the 2nd January the new year feels like it's still slowly unfurling.
Just at the satellite was at it's highest point, an airplane left a contrail, as if to mark the spot.
Blue Tits and Robins interject with pips and chirps that are bumped off the musical score by the prehistoric caws and croaks of the corvids.
A low winter sun brushed over the bare trees and though it tried to break through it was beaten by the cloud.
The British Isles are clear.
While the pass happened I moved the outside furniture and bins around in preparation for the windy weather that was forecast for the afternoon.
2 degrees celsius
82% humidity
air pressure 1011 hPa/mb
Got up on a roof in central Florida with my nephew to do a little training and compare two different antennas on a satellite pass.
The sun came in and out of the clouds often.
Cloud whispers across the sky.
Combining the warm December temperatures, humidity and the dark roof surface I came down a little sweaty.
Jupiter is a small smoky dot that battles for attention.
On the last day of 2024 it is always interesting to assess the year that just passed and contemplate what lies ahead.
There is a slight breeze and it feels much colder than the temperature states.
2023 was the warmest year on record regarding global temperatures.
90% humidity
1018 air pressure
The consensus is that 2024 will end up being warmer still.
NOAA 19 from Greece at 09:15AM local time ( 07:15 utc time)
At this moment there is a polar vortex sending frigid temperatures to the midwest and northeast.
To continue our antenna comparison, we sat on the roof shortly before noon with a weatherised V-Dipole and the tripod- mounted Turnstile, looking north.
Ironically, climate change makes these events more likely.
The V-dipole was hooked up to AGS 15, while the Turnstile received via an android phone running SDR++.
Searching for opportunities to dial down carbon emissions would be a great new year's resolution.
The image attached to this post is from the latter.
This was my first time picking up a satellite signal!
After the pass, Steve did a soil texturing test which revealed the local soil to be ‘loamy sand’.
Tiny amounts of rain at receiving spot.
It was chilly (compared to typical Florida weather) and very cloudy, but not windy.
Image shows some rain clouds over France and Bay of Biscay and just off the coast of Ireland in the Atlantic Ocean.
There's a bit of South America in the lower part of the image, such as the Panama Canal, as well as most of the East Coast.
A clear, cool, breezy day here in Florida.
We can see some tougher, perhaps stormy clouds moving in from the bottom.
We stand on separate hills in the former golf course, one of us with a turnstile antenna, another with a v-dipole.
After a few warm, humid days, the air today felt lighter, cooler and clearer.
Later, comparing images, we notice how there is a clear line at the midpoint of the turnstile's image that doesn't appear in the image made with the dipole.
I took a long walk around the neighbourhood, and it wasn't long before I came across the edge.
This line is appearing at almost the same spot in previous images collected with the same laptop and antenna - a signature of the laptop?
A grid had been carved into the land near a local forest, sandy flats exposed, and the sounds of hammers and staple-guns echoed back and forth.
or a glitch in antenna reception, at the peak of the satellite pass?
I walked to the very limit of the housing development and found a gap in the trees, but as soon as I entered the forest I could see someone was living there, or at least squatting for a while, in a shelter made of tree branches.
Later in the day, we test the same antenna from the roof, shaded by southern live oaks.
Being alone around sunset, I turned away and found the empty pavement again.
As there is no wind or rain predicted, we tape it to an old camera tripod found in the garage, simply stand it up on the roof's apex, and run a cable through a crack in a window.
As I returned home, the orange sunset light was glowing through the palms, matching in intensity the light-up candy canes on a nearby lawn.
Another day, another storm in the Southern Ocean.
Cumulus clouds tower to the east of "Patio Homes" in Newberry, so sharp and iridescent, they look like they have crystalline facets.
I thought about removing the tip of my finger from my photo of my station, tucked in with the Zodiac boats and surrounded by coring equipment, but it shows a signal of how difficult it can be to operate anything that isn't tied down.
It is muggy today, but I stubbornly wear my Mom's flannel-lined denim jacket on my walk to the local golf-course-turned-park - I am needing protection.
The rolling of the ship and the strength of the mind make any one-handed task just on the edge of impossible.
The political 'climate' of Florida has been on my mind today.
I don't expect to experience weather like this again in my lifetime, but I also don't hold a lot of expectations that anything will remain as expected.
An organisation called Safehome ranks Florida the second most unsafe state in the USA for LGBTQIA+ people based on current legislation and records of hate crimes.
The unusual humidity and warmth woke me up from a dream in a shadowy landscape, and it took me more than a few seconds to realise I was in Florida.
Governor Ron De Santis' GOP-led 'Don't Say Gay' law, passed in 2022, barred instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through the third grade on its inception, and was later expanded to all grades.
Peaking out the window I saw a suburban street framed by massive palm trees, southern live oak, bald cyprus and lots of ferns.
It had a chilling effect across the state, caused queer teachers to hide photos of partners and take down rainbow flags, queer festivals to be cancelled, and books featuring queer characters to be removed from curriculums.
Spanish moss trailed down from the southern live oaks, sometimes so thick it seemed to cover the entire tree.
It also inspired a series of other similar laws in states like Arkansas, Alabama, Indiana and North Carolina.
On a morning walk I discovered what seems to be an old golf course turned into a neighbourhood park, and I climbed the only hill (a very small mound) to see further across.
A 2024 'settlement' clarified that LGBTQIA+ discussion can happen in classrooms "as long as it is not part of official instruction", and that the law doesn't apply to books with incidental references to LGBTQ+ characters or same-sex couples, "as they are not instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity any more than a math problem asking students to add bushels of apples is instruction on apple farming".
As the landscape is so flat, I could see further than expected.
Though it is a relief to know that some books are being allowed back 'in', it is frightening to think they were removed from teaching in the first place, and the comparison between queer characters and 'bushels of apples' feels particularly wrong.
On the other side of the cul-de-sac where I slept, there appeared to be a quarry full of excavation machinery and a bright turquoise pond, a bit too turquoise to be non-toxic.
Ron De Santis called the 'settlement' a 'huge win'.
As I listened to NOAA-19, a group of men in high viz outfits drove up and down the golf course in small open door vehicles that appeared to be cutting the dry, light brown grass.
In August 2024, all of the webpages on the Florida state tourism website related to LGBTQIA+ resources and travel advice were quietly removed.
I watched them run over and over the same spots, and wondered what the purpose of this was- a seemingly futile looking attempt at edge-maintenance, kicking up small clouds of dust.
On my walk back to 7th street, I notice two American flags raised high on a dedicated pole in the front yard of an olive green house.
I lean out of the hotel window to catch a noisy signal.
Today is my last satellite pass in London during the year-long attempt at capturing satellite images and weather observations that began on the solstice in December 2023 and will come to an end in a few days.
The signal and noise come in waves: signal rising, noise rising, signal rising, rising, rising, rising.
Hackney Downs was the best version of itself for the occasion, a low-lying sun shining across the grass, and reflections from apartment block windows adding a kind of sparkle or glimmer.
"Assad’s gone." "I told you," my closest Syrian friend writes from Hong Kong.
Tomorrow I travel to Florida to visit my Mom who moved there a few months ago.
"How are you celebrating?" I ask.
As I traced the typical arc of the satellite orbit, I realised I would need to invent a somatic ritual for this year's solstice- both as a way to recognise the culmination of this near-daily practice of satellite image capture and weather sensing, but also as a means to start a new cycle, a new set of practices that I can't quite foresee yet.
He sends a photo of him looking sharp, wearing a Mercedes cap, with a keffiyeh draped over his shoulders, holding a slice of red velvet cake.
On a call with two very good friends later in the afternoon, this sentiment was confirmed.
"U have no idea how ecstatic I am," he writes.
Speaking a set of rituals they have carried out during a time of transition, a time that is joyous but not without difficulty, one of them said "everything is meaningful, everything is magical - it has to be".
No one I know believed that this day would come.
The view from the bluffs was a sunny and calm Pacific Ocean with only a distant layer of low clouds hugging the horizon.
A fifteen minute drive north along the coast would take you to Malibu where roads are closed due to the Franklin fire.
"I'd written off a future without Assad," WhatApps a former human rights colleague who, in 2016 interviewed survivors of Saydnaya Prison.
A week earlier a fire erupted late at night.
I recall her saying that the investigation had almost folded as they could not find enough interviewees because so few people left the prison alive.
8 homes were burned as Santa Ana winds gusted to 100 kph and humidity levels dropped to 5%.
I watch on Al Jazeera as a stream of men and women walk up a dirt path between mine fields, into the open gates of Saydnaya.
Pepperdine University was completely surrounded.
London is all glare and reflection today as a very low cloud-mist settles over the city.
The fire stands at 43% containment, but dry winds are expected to return in a few days.
The sheen of street signs, asphalt, vans, and buses makes everything more obviously aggressive and frantic.
In November of 2018, the Woolsey fire burned 97,000 acres in just a few days.
As I cycle to south London after dark, a white Prius pulls out in front of my bike, so close I have to skid to a halt.
The term "fire season" has little meaning at this point.
When the driver looks over his shoulder, and sees me braking and motioning my fright, he hardly blinks as he merges into the centre of the road.
Insurance companies have been refusing to write new policies due to the increased risk of loss due to the changing climate.
The tops of tall buildings are drowned in cloud so it feels like we are living in a reduced space, the ceiling coming down.
This last week California agreed to allow insurance companies to increase their premiums in response to the new climate reality.
I am reminded of the fictional city Ravicka in Renee Gladman's novel Event Factory.
This is the farthest south towards Antarctica my body would go, although I didn't really put that together at the time I was receiving this image.
Ravicka is a city of smoggy, ‘yellow air’ that, “vibrates around the foreigner in the street” (Gladman, 2010: 41).
This day was sunny and clear, which was very rare to see during my trip through the Southern Ocean.
Edges and borders shape-shift as the city appears to rearrange itself, or, as the main character observes, “the singing structure eludes me” (Gladman, 2010: 93).
The second mate has told be this is the grayest, stormiest research cruise he's ever been on.
Today, in Gaza, a house was flattened in the packed Nuseirat refugee camp, while two separate strikes targeted local workers securing aid convoys.
But this particular morning broke clear and bright and while it got a bit dark midday the afternoon was sunny again which offered a shadow of the ship onto the pancake ice.
US officials claim they have a 'jurisdictional dispute' with the ICJ and reject its call for arrest of Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant; another 'structure' that continues to elude.
Later, at what would be considered night but is in fact still light, the people of the ship would all pour out onto the decks to see the last glorious iceberg patch we would end up having passed through.
This is an image taken from the porthole next to my desk on the RVIB Nathaniel B.
The remainder of the time at sea would be in open ocean.
Palmer on the day I imaged the weather.
Whether by icy air or circulation of blood, the act of going out for a satellite pass at lunchtime managed to break a mild migraine - my first ever, I think - that had been ongoing for the last twenty four hours despite many painkillers, salves, and hours lying down.
Typically the weather decks on the ship are closed during storms like this, but I was allowed outside to take my satellite reading.
By the time my brain and vision had relaxed from the pain enough for my senses to be alert to detail in the world, the sun had fallen.
It was so windy I had to hold onto the antenna and my computer the entire time.
I haunted the park at night, peering into blue-lit windows and noticing the ways streetlights highlighted the elegant curves of plane tree branches from below.
to / desire / the world / as it is / not as / it was / falling / feather / attaches / to new life
The third poem in CA Conrad's book 'Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return' makes me forget to breathe while I read it over coffee.
A faint oval-shaped pink cloud hovered over one hill of the park like an omen.
for a moment / when the hammer / approached we thought / is that thing coming this way
I think of the many 'hammers' still falling on Gaza, on Syria and Lebanon, and of the metaphor of a meteor strike as world ending event, when we already have so many-
we are the fractal / drop to hear / our own / harmonics / in the muffled / underground / hum of seeds
Two dogs tossed and tumbled in the dark, their paws vying for dominance and their teeth glowing.
The sky was a thin, eggshell blue when T and I woke up this morning.
They were eerily quiet except for their panting breaths.
Two cats, a ginger and a spotted black one, were playing hide and seek in the overgrown grass of the back garden.
A person pushing a baby stroller walked briskly along a lit path with a tied up Christmas tree slung across their back.
For a few hours, perhaps three or four, the sun shone in London, but the night came so quickly that every flat on the street had lamps turned on by three.
"You look like the old man from Back to the Future" T says to me as I head out to capture a satellite image in still-raging Storm Darragh.
I spent most of the day writing and thinking about projects sent to me by a network of friends and collaborators from whom I had solicited 'new and exciting work in the geohumanities beyond the US / UK'.
"You mean Christopher Lloyd?!" I ask and she smiles a yes.
My friend Cecilie sent me a link to a project called The Conference of the Birds, a transdisciplinary, socially engaged arts collaboration named after the 12th century epic poem by Persian poet Farid ud-Din Attar.
I wonder about the resemblance as I walk to the middle of the park and set up a makeshift shelter for my laptop with one of the umbrellas borrowed from the communal umbrella area near the entrance of our building.
Focused on the loss of birds in the High North, the project involves community based exhibitions and events in Norway, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland and North-Russia.
No matter which umbrella I chance to grasp, I always end up with a wire poking through torn Rayon, like a featherless wing.
Reading the conference programme, I learned that one of the participants is a twenty five year old person who left home at 17 to learn birdsong and learn to survive alone in the forest.
To keep the umbrella firmly over my laptop, and thus to protect it from random sprays of rain seeming to come from all directions and nowhere, I stood on the handle with one foot while shakily steering the antenna.
Apparently they can now sing the songs of 130 different species of birds, and they continue to live outside of human dwellings.
When sharp unexpected gusts threatened to carry the umbrella away from my exposed keyboard I had to lean my entire weight on top.
In their profile photo, they are pictured shoulder up, with bright blond hair in dredlocks, and a small black bird on their shoulder, to which their face is turned in affection.
There were a surprising number of people in the park with their dogs, so these antics were in full view.
News came over the weekend that the Assad regime has fallen in Syria.
A chocolate Labrador came bouncing over.
We see scenes of thousands of people celebrating in the streets, crying and cheering.
Normally I am happy to play with dogs while holding my antenna, but this one threatened to collapse my entire delicate balance in the wind.
On Democracy Now, an interviewee refuses to 'analyse' the political moment, saying that analysis needs to be suspended while the feeling of this moment resonates.
"You nosey dog!"" I heard a woman's voice say before the wind drowned her out.
As I look ahead to the final sprint of a writing project, for which I will be submerged in books and my laptop the whole weekend, I am inspired by the collections of geographical thinking and arts practice that I pull out of the towering pile of books on my desk's side-table.
When I finally got to the end of the pass and started packing up, my fingers were so icy cold they fumbled, and somehow I managed to get a slab of mud on my trackpad.
I read of 'volcanic polyphonies', 'magmatic languages', 'fluvial hydropoetics', 'sand saltations', 'geo-mimicry' and 'reclaiming energy flows'.
Later at Cafe Oto I saw the great poet, ritualist, mystic and queer icon CA Conrad read their poems.
I think about the ways in which, across scholarship and creative practice, artists and writers are amplifying the animacies and memories of the elements, from Sotaventine rivers in Mexico, to tidal islands in Scotland, to the humid 'warm fronts' of Southeast Asia.
For almost fifty years, CA has travelled by car across the US, writing poems and inventing somatic rituals.
In the satellite image that I capture today from Hackney Downs, I wonder about the repeated patterns and rehearsals of clouds in the North Atlantic, and consider these patterns as another form of air's 'working memory...
One of their rituals involved leaving tear off paper notes on notice boards across Philadelphia inviting people to call a number and leave a message for Elvis.
a memory of energy' (Szerszynski, 2019).
Several people would call each day, some multiple times.
The satellite image starts in darkness.
Another ritual involved them bathing their body in the sounds of extinct species.
Absent of any rays of light from our nearest star, the top left hand corner of the image is almost pure black.
Later they started working with the sounds of coyotes, crows and foxes: "We've got to learn to love the world we have, not the one we lost" they said.
I think of NOAA-18 and its near-infrared sensors trying to capture any stray photons as the satellite crosses the Arctic circle and the Nordic countries.
I was moved by all of their poems, but one in a new pamphlet (created in collaboration with Jacken Elswyth, a queer banjo player) resonated especially well today.
The darkness feels vast, like what I imagine the deep space around Earth must feel like.
It ends: "I've got the wind I say / with both hands".
While planting a willow tree named Hildegard at the Stave Hill ecological park in South London on my lunch break yesterday, I dug into deep, black layers of topsoil.
This weather note was written by Weitao Wang, PhD student in the Geography department at Royal Holloway University, currently doing a fantastic project on the 'The geopower of air and fire: a cultural geography of fiery rituals in China'.
Rebeka, keeper of Stave Hill, had inherited a mountain of rubble deposited from war-ruined buildings, as well as imported trash, on which the eco park was established in the 1980s.
“It’s a typical day in the UK, partly cloudy day, a bit windy, and not too cold.
She asked all of the schoolchildren from nearby schools to bring worms to the hill, and over the decades, the worms got to work.
As it’s the first time for me to participate, I feel a sort of transit in terms of the ‘body-(satellite)-weather’ relation.
The deep, dark mulch that I dug into yesterday is the intergenerational inheritance and gift of these worms, and the soil that my almost seven year old willow tree will grow into.
At the beginning, I found myself disconnect with the weather (and satellite) because I had no idea of where it would come from and where it would go.
Hildegard joins around ten other willows of ‘diverse varieties’ planted in a new willow coppice near Russia Dock Woodland and the Globe Pond.
However, as time moved on, I felt my body gradually coordinate with the satellite movement in the sky as I listened to the noises in the signal.
As Rebeka explained to me, over the decades, these small twig-like willow trees will sprout from their bases, and their bendy branches will be sustainably harvested to build fences and other infrastructure around Stave Hill, another gift for the future.
At the end, the signal slowly faded with noise, which made me wonder whether my direction was still correct and thus feel out of sync again with the satellite".
I've been testing open-weather Automatic Ground Stations all week, and as we are still seeing some unusual patterns and distortions in the images, I brave Hackney Downs long after sunset tonight with AGS 12 and my Yagi-Uda antenna.
"The weather images produced on the screen reminded me of the previous remote sensing course I had took before, where the date collection process was more detached, abstract and rational because we were just sitting in front of the computer, clicking, and typing.
It is wet and cool but not freezing.
However, today’s outdoor data acquiring seems to invite me to be closer to the real-time weather dynamics.”
Today the pressure on my home weather station (given to me by Soph on my birthday last weekend) reads 1024 hPa, and points toward the symbol at one pole of the barometer that says 'clear bright sky'.
In a recent article on 'Clouding knowledge in the Anthropocene', Kate Lewis Hood proposes a "cumulative reading - where cumulative shares an etymological root with cumulus, a type of cloud (OED, 'cumulate') - that shifts from clear skies to fog, between atmospheric transparency and opacity" (2018: 83).
This feels at odds with the low-hanging cloud that I feel all around Hackney, but it is true that the weather is stable, and it doesn't feel like a storm is brewing, yet.
Exploring poetry including The Weather by Lisa Robertson and Drift by Caroline Bergvall, Lewis Hood suggests that "such experimental practices enable a shift from asking whether to read or interpret in a certain way to engaging with the weather system of a text: its unpredictable changes and complex patterns" (2018: 185).
I found myself at the Southwark Reuse and Recycling Centre shortly before 11am this morning.
If today's weather system in London was a text, it might read like this passage from Robertson's The Weather:
Our skies are inventions, durations, discoveries, quotas, forgeries, fine and grand.
I have been fascinated by this place for a while- it is a series of gigantic warehouses where one can bring any kind of object, from clothes to appliances to batteries to cleaning equipment to stones and plates to furniture, in any condition, and after putting each item in the right place, the team at the Centre takes care of sorting, testing and repurposing.
Clothes and linens are sent to local charities, appliances are tested and re-used if possible, batteries and old phones are recycled and household items of all kinds are either repurposed or ground down into their raw materials to make new things.
As I pulled up in a cab with a bunch of stuff from my old flat in the trunk, an older man with long gray hair was manning the entrance, and assessed me and my things before allowing me entry, like a guardian or gnome giving way to a magical place.
I took my time sorting my things into different corners of the warehouse, and was amazed at everything else that was there, from phones that looked like they were last used in the 90s, to very nice bags of clothing.
The day pours out space, a light red roominess, bright and fresh.
In various corners and levels of the cavernous space, I could see staff moving around.
As there was a satellite pass shortly after I left the centre, I found a corner of a nearby housing estate- one with at least three tower blocks of dozens of stories each- and propped my laptop on a mossy wall.
Later I noticed how odd the concrete infrastructure of the estate was.
There were multiple sharply angled concrete features built into the walkway in between the tower blocks.
Their shape and star-like structure, and simultaneous brutalist aesthetic, reminded me of some of the socialist monuments I had seen in Croatia and Bosnia while on fieldwork earlier this month.
The crisp blue sky opened above the estate, and magnified the concrete edges.
Captured this satellite pass from a helicopter landing site on a ridge of the Santa.
Went out to the Venice Pier to capture a satellite pass on Thanksgiving.
Monica mountains with the San Fernando Valley to the north and the Pacific to the south.
From the image it looks like blue skies for the entire California coast.
From the overlook you could see small patches of light precipitation.
The pier was busy with sport fishermen.
I was visited by a curious crow and a grizzled hiker.
One approached me and asked me if I was looking for aliens.
The hiker had more questions.
The aliens he was referring to, however, were not extraterrestrials.
After another round of Automatic Ground Station testing late last night, I saw that there would be a NOAA-15 pass around 7:50am today.
He was suggesting that immigrants were coming ashore via boats at night.
Carrying the AGS in a tote bag, and my turnstile antenna in another, I found a spot on the largest field in the park, as the sun searched above the horizon toward an array of small cottonball clouds.
We I explained that the NOAA-19 satellite was harmlessly taking our photo, he suggested we all give it the finger.
A man was in the middle of the field before me, pacing up and down with a flip phone in his hand.
Sarah Josepha Hale had been campaigning for decades that the US celebrate Thanksgiving.
The grass was damp and water-logged.
In 1863 she finally convinced Abraham Lincoln to make the last Thursday in November a national holiday.
A few schoolchildren hurrying along the park's main path looked over and pointed in my direction.
In the midst of the Civil War, it was intended to find common ground and unify the country.
As storm Bert leaves I take the opportunity to test my mobile rig consisting of electrical wire in a joiner, a short coax, RTL-SDR and a Samsung Galaxy S6.
Many Americans express anxiety at sitting down with relatives and navigating the inevitable awkward conversations.
With no rain and a light breeze I was quite happy wandering around and aiming it roughly.
Sometimes I wonder if I am the "crazy uncle" at the table.
I did not expect it to work so well after reading up on the 137MHz antenna variants and the precice calculations, pass filters and leaky coax.
The air bit my fingers as I held onto the metal handle of my turnstile antenna in the pool of darkness that is Hackney Downs at night.
I feel a dangerously numb to news of extreme weather.
A police siren rang out in the distance and a high-speed chase progressed, two police cars tailing another car around two sides of the park.
Yesterday, as I read a long and moving article about drought hit farming communities in South Africa, Storm Bert inundated costal towns in the UK.
Suddenly a faint neon light appeared to bounce and leap toward me, revealing itself to be a small bulldog wearing a glow-in-the-dark collar.
Is numbness what happens when, to quote deputy first minister of Wales Huw Irranca-Davies, the feeling is “here we go again.
NOAA-15 circled overhead, scanning the outlines of North Africa, Italy and Croatia until I lost the transmission in the blurriness of the Arctic.
These traumatic weather incidents are a pattern of our weather”?
Overnight, mountains of plane tree leaves have amassed on sidewalks, against walls and fences.
I went to the Lois Ewen Overlook in the Santa Monica Mountains hoping to maximize my capture length, but missed the first few minutes of the satellite pass.
Leaves paper walls, cars and bike sheds.
At the beginning we were in complete fog-out with a visibility of maybe 20 meters.
While Storm Bert has resulted in mass-rearrangements of leaves in London, elsewhere in the UK roads have been flooded, and thousands of people were without power.
By the time I took photos there was better visibility.
Although relatively minor compared to these other events, the leaf-mountains feel oddly dramatic in today's calm, blue sky weather.
The day before was the first precipitation of the year, though not even 1 cm.
Photographs don't do them justice- they are space-invaders, yellow-brown fillers of unused corners and parking spaces, where the westerly wind carried and dropped them.
Slightly more rain in a few days.
Storm Bert - the 'named storm' that was brewing on the Atlantic when I last contributed to the Archive on Thursday - is sweeping the UK this weekend.
Los Angeles is rare in that it has a mountain range that bisects the city.
"More than 200 flood alerts put in place and three men die on roads as wild weather crosses country" reports the Guardian this morning.
The COP 29 negotiations ended today.
The flood alerts are due to the rapid melting of ice and snow across the north of England and Scotland, as the storm brought milder temperatures.
Experts assess that $1 trillion/year is needed to assist developing countries as they address climate impacts and build a low-carbon infrastructure.
Indeed today in London, it is shockingly warm, around 17 degrees- a huge jump from previous days.
The countries agreeed to $300 million.
The Met Office has issued yellow warnings for rain and wind across large swathes of the country into Sunday, and this is felt in London, with gusts battering houses, trees and infrastructure.
The Trump presidency vows to withdraw from the Paris agreement - again.
As I braved the park with my turnstile antenna, I noticed how a mountain of plane tree leaves had been pushed against the fence near the train tracks, drowning two bikes and the fence itself.
Took another satellite capture from the bluffs over-looking the Pacific Ocean.
In the middle of Hackney Downs, the force of the wind meant that people walked with their heads down, hoods pulled over their faces.
Over the last couple of days a "bomb cyclone" formed and is making landfall in the Pacific Northwest.
My laptop flung wildly left and right as I tried to track the satellite pass.
The name comes from how fast the storm developed.
The turbulence reminded me of a day back in 2021 when Soph and I went out to Burgess Park to capture an image of Storm Eunice- against the advice of the Met Office- and I had to kneel on my laptop to keep it from flying away.
Heavy rains and strong winds have hit Washington state already.
The blustery conditions affected the satellite image I captured today, as I struggled to keep hold of the antenna.
A few lives were lost to falling trees.
Oddly, although the Guardian headlines its reports with various numbers of injuries and deaths across England and Wales, reading further into the reporting, a phrase consistently repeats: 'It was not clear whether the incident was linked to the storm'.
From the image you can see a tail of the cyclone that might bring some precipitation to Southern California in the next few days.
Today's test of an Automatic Ground Station involves me carrying the AGS in a tote bag to keep it dry and away from dogs, and tracking the satellite with my Yagi-Uda antenna.
While recording the pass a construction worker came over for a chat.
The results show a diagonal current of squigly lines in channel b - lines we think might have something to do with a recent update to the code in the AGS system that attempted to produce clearer images, but might have introduced other noise signatures.
He asked if I was recording aliens.
The air is still freezing, and I regret not bringing gloves and a woolly hat.
I later pulled up a hotspot, decoded the wav file and showed him the image.
A freezing night in the park, with a clear, faintly star-lit sky.
He then asked me if the world is really round or flat.
As I return to Hackney Downs long after sunset to test the open-weather Automatic Ground Stations, I am getting better at recognising night-time park activity.
I guess sometimes it is however you want to see it.
Though many people warned me of entering the park at night, I am growing to feel more safe.
It has rained, it has snowed, and the crevices and corners of London are thoroughly drenched in semi-freezing moisture.
Perhaps its something about holding a tall pole with a metal object attached at the end.
This is testing the infrastructures of the city, a city that one might expect could have weathered many cold winters in its time.
I've also realised that, while daytime park activity happens on the fields, with dogs galloping and racing around each other, night-time park life stays close to pathways and the deeper shadows of trees.
Yet, one of my best friends, K, who was over for a spontaneous Monday dinner last night, told me and T of her crumbling, disintegrating roof in Dalston.
I have rarely seen another person walk directly across the largest field, where I stood this evening.
The roof has been leaking for months, and mould has been growing along the walls and in corners.
As I watch the BBC weather report later in the evening, I learn that the beginnings of a 'possibly named storm' are brewing in the North Atlantic.
She had stopped paying rent after her umpteenth attempt to ask the landlord for repairs, failed.
I wonder and try to anticipate what the name of this storm will be.
Within weeks of her stopping payment, the landlord had workers visit the flat, and they claimed to have 'fixed' the issue.
It was 8am, but the sun hadn't properly risen over Hackney.
But yesterday, when she got home after dinner, she texted me photos and videos of the rain coming straight down onto her floor.
As stream of uniformed children ran across it diagonally, somehow in an evenly spaced line, sleepily on their way to the primary school on the opposite corner.
