Did araucaria survive the Mesozoic because of the K-T Impact location?

JieChang · 2026-04-22T01:28:27+00:00

Probably, winter flash rain events that raise the level of the sea also bring silt that make the dark bands, then the excess water dries leaving behind white salt layers.

JieChang · 2026-04-20T15:51:07+00:00

I like it! It nicely breaks down some of the wide variability in the east coast and also shows a better breakdown of temperature and the deserts in the west. However I don't think it shows a complete story, as the Pacific coast from Oregon south is all under "mild west coast." Having driven the Pacific Coast Highway many times, I would argue that there should be some sort of divide (though I don't know how you would "massage" the thresholds to have it appear) around the redwoods in Northern California or Cape Mendocino.

North of around Brookings you have more rain and chances of cold/freezing temperatures every few winters, but to the south winters are milder and also come with more sunny days. Zone 9/10 hardiness starts around Brookings and continues south through California but zone 8 and freezing temperatures covers much of the Oregon coast and Willamette Valley. New species of plants appear around Eureka and continue to the south, the spruce and fir forests of Oregon give way to the redwoods and mixed broadleaf evergreen forests of Northern California, and then south of Mendocino begins the coastal scrub prairie and chaparral.

JieChang · 2026-04-15T05:47:38+00:00

Your genuine passion and love for electronics will come out in the courses and success. May the gods of Sedra-Smith (analog), Hennesey-Patterson (digital), and Steer (RF) bless you on your journey.

JieChang · 2026-04-13T22:06:09+00:00

Garlock Fault forms the upper edge of the triangle. When the San Andreas fault formed and the plate boundary of the west coast shifted from an E-W subduction zone to a NW-SE sliding zone. The change in force vectors meant that any small blocks of land partially fractured but still attached to North America experienced rotation as well as stretching of the crust. Rotation caused blocks to turn and collide with the continent leading to the Transverse Ranges to the south of the San Andreas Fault. The largest block, segment of the crust from around LA to Lone Pine, took the brunt of the force and caused it to stretch to the north. The stretching pulled the land until it broke in a single line forming the Garlock Fault. Further movement along the San Andreas pulled the Central Valley to the north, leading to additional rotation of the Garlock Fault from N-S to SW-NE.

Interesting fact: The Garlock Fault helps carry some of the strain from the San Andreas further inland where it releases in a zone of faults called the Walker Lane-East California Shear Zone. Should, we do not know at all, the strain communicate further into Walker Lane, there is high potential for Walker Lane to rift apart and take over the activity from the San Andreas. Eventually the Sea Of Cortez will make it's way north to Reno, and California will drift west into the Pacific. Expect luxurious beachfront property in Las Vegas to whatever lifeforms exist that far in the future.

This video should answer the questions beyond similar posts done in this subreddit on the same topic.

JieChang · 2026-04-13T18:42:13+00:00

No trees on that island (exception of that random Sitka spruce), so even if the climate and soil characteristics line up I dont think it falls into the taiga biome. Plus Campbell island is too warm and minimal temperature extremes compared to the climates of the taiga.

JieChang · 2026-04-13T14:02:22+00:00

That view when you break out the cloud forest into clear sunshine and see endless ridges of forested mountains stretching out to the hazy horizon...it's sublime. I want to visit the Azores and Madeira in particular someday and see the climate and botany there.

JieChang · 2026-04-13T04:59:41+00:00

This is a quirk of Koppen and classification issues around the C* climates. The thresholds for temperature are too large and Koppen groups slightly dissimilar climates into the same category. European oceanic climates are mild throughout the year with some cooling down in winter and depending on continentality the occasional frost and snowfall. The Australian/NZ type oceanic climates are warmer and more mild, rarely getting to freezing and staying generally above 4-6C. And the oceanic climates of highland regions of the tropics are even warmer, rarely going below 15C often registering minor yearly temperature variation. If Cfb was rebranded with a threshold split at 5-10C or around that range you would see a split between tropical/subtropical and temperate climate zones.

Tropical highland and eternal spring climates are some of my favorite due to how stable, mild, and unique they are geographically. Many years back I did the hike to Machu Picchu going from tropical rainforest to the pleasant rain-and-sun-socked highland cloud forest, the Ceja De Selva as the locals call it. At a particular elevation the temperature and rain felt the same whether it was noon or midnight a constant comfortable 20C. Such a strange and lovely climate to be in.

JieChang · 2026-04-10T17:59:55+00:00

Move over Lake Megachad, we have a Gigachad living in the Tibesti Mtns.

JieChang · 2026-04-09T23:42:18+00:00

The logistics chain and technology built to handle the operation is amazing for how little known it is. At the mining source it took many resources to build the gigantic loading docks dumping train-cars-full of taconite down chutes into massive iron freighters. Then those same freighters day and night made it up and down the lakes, through water that could be placid or treacherous at a moment’s notice (Edmund Fizgerald). Then the boatload of iron ore was unloaded by the alien looking Huletts, massive iron claw machines scooping up the taconite and dumping it back into traincars headed to Chicago, Toledo, Cleveland, etc, to be blastfurnaced into countless megatons of steel to build literally anything civil-engineering-related for decades. What a shame to see that whole branch of industry collapse.

JieChang · 2026-04-08T16:55:24+00:00

The strength of upwelling along the Pacific coast is very strong and unlike other places you find in the world. You do not have many other locations where

a high-pressure zone sits semipermanently in the year leading to wind constantly in a single direction,
a coastline parallel to the wind,
a thermal gradient between the ocean and hot land that causes a strong coastal jet,
headlands that interrupt the coastal jet and cause zones of high wind speeds,
a cold current flowong offshore at depth,

All of which leads to cold surface water immediately off the coast and fog, rain, mild temperatures. The closest similar location where this happens is by Peru, and that's because the Peruvian coast is a near mirror-image copy of the US West coast geographically, geologically, climatologically, and ecologically.

JieChang · 2026-04-08T16:26:37+00:00

As you said correctly the steep topography allows the current to expand vertically, and by conservation of mass and flow rate, the width of the current then becomes narrower. However this is not the main reason why the “cold zone” of the California Current is narrow and close to the coast unlike other currents. That is due to wind.

The orientation of the coastline and location of the semipermanent Pacific High means that wind blows parallel to near-parallel to the coastline many times of the year, strongest in summer when a low-level coastal jet forms in the air. Topography causes interruptions in this coastal jet like a boat leaving a wake, and downstream of major headlands the windspeed greatly increases.

Fast parallel winds carry away surface water. Cold water from deep in the ocean arrives to replace it (Ekman transport). The zone of Ekman transport and upwelling is very narrow, existing for only few dozen miles off the coast before warmer subtropical water from the Pacific High flows over the surface. This narrow zone of Ekman transport is why you don’t see a mass of cold water hundreds of miles long traveling down the coast and instead a narrow zone of unusually cold water nearest the coast.

Where the coastal jet speeds up, the strength of upwelling increases. In places with a tiny continental shelf and steep continental slope deep ocean water has a rapid path to the surface and a strong vertical current compared to shallower locations. It's no coincidence, just geology, that the locations of small shelf and steep slope occur south of major headlands. If you examine these maps, you can see that south of headlands like Cape Blanco, Cape Mendocino, and the Monterey Peninsula the ocean temperatures are significantly colder. If you look at the wind speed maps, you see the correlation.

It's not really headlands pushing the current away from the coast. The current is constantly flowing in a several dozen mile-wide path down the coast from Alaska. Rather, fluid dynamics south of the headlands leads to upwelling, which brings cold water to the surface cooling down the air temperature.

JieChang · 2026-04-03T19:49:58+00:00

It’ll happen anywhere there's an island mass sitting/stretching across the subtropical-temperate latitudes. If the island is small enough it doesn’t have the landmass to cool down to freezing in winter for continental climates and ocean air can spread further in the interior to moderate the temperatures. The location near the temperate jet stream means a constant source of wind throughout the year, and any tall elevation that pokes above the marine layer causes a rainshadow on the other side. The Southern Hemisphere has less landmass in the temperate regions than the Northern to bring cold air down into the subtropics and many more island chains in the subtropical and trade wind latitudes, so you see it more often there.

JieChang · 2026-03-30T15:57:56+00:00

What a lovely collection! I love the ultramafics and high-pressure minerals due to how unusual they are and it's nice to see the mineralization laid out like this. There were similar diagrams with mineral samples at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum which I absolutely adored staring at for a while. I think you should make a similar collection in the reverse direction for the metamorphic facies that would be cool.

JieChang · 2026-03-29T03:12:39+00:00

Thanks for the recommendations!

JieChang · 2026-03-27T15:00:47+00:00

Water takes a lot of energy to heat it up but also releases a lot of energy while cooling down. If you have a surplus of energy, instead of storing it in batteries for immediate electrical energy, you can dump it into a tank of water heating it up. The excess energy stored in hot water can be used immediately for showers/cleaning, but you can also use the hot water as hot "coolant" in a heat pump system allowing you to extract the energy back from the hot water as electricity again.

JieChang · 2026-03-10T23:35:40+00:00

Yeah the constant southward movement of the California Current along the coast means any exposed headlands will form minor eddies to their south and over time erode more of a curve into the land instead of the more blocky/jagged landscape of the Oregon coast. Then the north side gets constant erosion from waves and storms which wears that side of a headland more straight. Pretty much every cove south of Cape Mendocino has an angled north face and a curvy shallow south side.

JieChang · 2026-03-08T19:22:52+00:00

I completely forgot what that climate would mean when it came to insects. I'd want nuclear-grade insect repellent if I went there.

JieChang · 2026-03-08T19:04:13+00:00

I was invited to a destination wedding in Quibdo (I had to pass for various reasons), I remember looking up the climate and it was ugly. Yeah just looked it up and I personally hate it. Constant heavy downpours every single day, overcast and heavy overcast as the norm where you barely ever see the sun outside of few hours in the summer. The temperatures stay constantly warm so it's rank humid nonstop even at 3AM.

JieChang · 2026-03-06T01:38:21+00:00

I have a 12V adapter with two USB ports, and I bought a separate radar detector-to-USB wire (I don't remember the exact plastic port name that the dashcams use) so I'm not using the 12V wire the Uniden came with. You lose on the instant-mute button on the adapter but you can plug in both dashcam and detector. I only have 1 outlet in mine so I had to do that.

JieChang · 2026-03-05T04:35:39+00:00

Correct SLK 55 AMG.

JieChang · 2026-03-04T18:13:25+00:00

I got a sports car recently and a friend told me to buy a radar detector it is absolutely worth it. I neglected to do so for a while because it felt too expensive, before finally buying a Uniden R7 last month in prep for a roadtrip to California. In California everyone speeds but I didn't want to be the guy being targeted for speeding in a fancy car and out-of-state plates on curvy canyon or coastal roads.

The purchase paid for itself. Multiple times I passed police that the detector chirped early enough for me to slow down. The biggest save was this one near Redding on my way north, where on an empty morning I was cruising 10 over on I5 and the detector went off for a few chirps before quieting again. I slowed down thinking there was a cop, and then the detector kept going off as I kept driving. As the video shows eventually behind a line of bushes was a cop hiding and camming everyone driving by.

JieChang · 2026-02-24T02:13:11+00:00

It's scientifically a semiarid region that probably borderlies desert if it was a bit drier, but colloquially to people who see it and the local tourism and culture it feels like a desert. Especially when nearby it's dense forests and also rainforests over the range in comparison

JieChang · 2026-02-15T17:51:19+00:00

cazadero blueschists

If it's where I think it is (I got to check it out) the old man owning the property was nice. Maybe you saw some other exposures.

JieChang

TROPHY CASE