Grab your bear can or camp chair, kick your feet up and chew the fat about anything Sierra Nevada related that doesn't quite fit in any of the other forums. Within reason, (and the HST rules and guidelines) this is also an anything goes forum. Tell stories, discuss wilderness issues, music, or whatever else the High Sierra stirs up in your mind.
You'd have to do some study of historical levels to get familiar enough with it to be able to tell at a glance what is going on, since this is not relative data, just absolute.
I looked up "ducks" in the dictionary; "providing a false sense of security - always leading the wrong direction".
There's an interesting story behind the three webcams at Mineral King (one of which is shown below). They were designed and built by a former JPL engineer (RIP). Each is on solar/battery power and the update frequency depends on the amount of sunshine. They use an old land line feed from MK, which has proven amazingly consistent over the years. Too bad they can't figure this out for the Tioga cam.
tioga had a land line. more reliable than the cam. then the park "said" they went satellite phone. ok, hook them up.. The PC is in their support cabin on the north side of the entrance. I know that because i was emailing with their Support person. there was work one summer in the cabin and they filled the PC with sawdust shavings.
I recommended the CDEC uplink hook-up. They are sister orgs. nothing. kind of frustrating after what, 4 years.
I decided against Virginia Lakes/Dunderberg; so no report on conditions. Not much snow means icy conditions and the days are pretty short right now for a slowpoke like me. I did get out, but to lower and warmer areas.
Conway Summit one of my favorite areas during the fall! View at the US395 scenic pullout for Mono Lake just south of the summit is one of the best in the state, especially at dawn between October and February when the sun rises over Mono allowing wonderful dawn skiers.
Interesting comment on remote sites being damaged by lightning. Not something I had heard about. Turned up this page with a search.
The last 5 years I have been repairing business phone system media gateway switches that run across Ethernet LANs. Most models have multiple connections for older POTS analog phones that connect up to all manner of telephone lines. And of course lightning often hits telephone lines, especially those connecting for miles sticking up high atop telephone poles. Thus I see lots of switches that have had lightning damage which sometimes causes rather spectacular visible damage with gnarly black charred remains though more often the overvoltages by time they reach our equipment merely destroys semiconductor integrated circuits internally. So lots of interesting electronic troubleshooting for this old electronic tech.
Thus within the telecommunications industry there has been a long term battle against lightning damage with lots of engineering continually coming up with better system designs and protection devices to survive strikes. Would expect the current issues with remote sites, particular all the recent CDEC sites will if they are being zapped, be solved in near future. I'm guessing solutions will include hauling up some lengths of heavy guage wire by packer horses to encircle remote equipment boxes thus allowing lightning strike ground currents to dissipate into the ground nearby. They already have usual wires atop the boxes going down to the ground for lightning that directly strikes at the top from the sky just like buildings anywhere. Trouble is if they just stick some metal stake in the ground right at the equipment shed, that may still have high resistance to the rest of the nearby terrain.
