The following beaches have elevated levels of indicator bacteria and are posted.

Ocean Beaches

• Pillar Point #5 (Capistrano Beach)
• Pillar Point #7 (Surf at West Point Ave)
• Pillar Point #8 (Mavericks Parking Lot)
• Pillar Point #9 (Outer Harbor)

Creeks where they meet or cross the beach

• San Vicente Creek (at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve)
• Frenchman’s Creek (at Venice Beach North)
• Pilarcitos Creek ( at Venice Beach South)

My neighbors and I on Lincoln Street in Moss Beach would love your help to make it safer in the open land across our street near the water towers. Many of us love this land and use it regularly to play, run, walk and enjoy some peace. Unfortunately, lately we’ve had some problems recently, which are detailed below.

• Off-roading vehicles are driving thru recklessly, making it dangerous for kids playing and people walking. Barriers are regularly removed and the driving continues. We’ve had a few near misses recently with young kids, as they are hard to see.
• Fires are being set (one was set last week), which could spread with our drought. A fire did spread on this land last year and the fire department came to put it out.
• Garbage dumping occurs regularly and has included construction materials, mattresses, a boat motor and more. We’ve been actively working to clean it up whenever it happens, but it keeps happening.
• The skate park is drawing groups of teens and young adults during day and at night from other areas, including San Francisco, Central Valley and Dublin.
• A homeless person was living in the skate park for a while.
• Underage drinking and drugs are used in this area regularly. Vodka bottles and beer cans are found and removed often. One neighbor reports seeing drug deals happening there regularly, and suspects they include cocaine and meth.
• We were told by firemen last summer that a rape had occurred at the skate park, and a neighbor confirmed hearing it take place.
• My car was recently keyed, and it may have happened in my driveway. Other neighbors have had recently had cars in their driveway broken into and items stolen.

Police are now involved and regularly monitoring, and have asked us to report anything suspicious. If you see anything strange happening in this area, please record license plates and/or take pictures and call Deputy Sheriff Phil Watson at 650-228-6043 or report via the after hours non-emergency line at (650) 363-4911.

If you know teens who use this land, please encourage them to be respectful and responsible…or maybe consider using some of the many other wide open space areas on the coast instead for things like off-roading, so young kids, seniors and others may walk and play safely here.

My neighbors and I are also working to coordinate a meeting with Don Horsley to talk about what else we might do to keep it safer here. When we have more details on that meeting I will post them so others can attend too.

Thank you in advance for your support!

Kate Handel
Moss Beach

Wikipedia

Promotional poster for original Broadway production of All Shook Up

Which nightmare scares you more?

Nightmare A:  You find yourself in front of a large audience.  You have no notes.  They are expecting you to entertain them.  And you’re not wearing any pants…

Nightmare B:  Some bureaucratic mix-up has sent you back to high school.  You’re twice as old as all the other students, have no idea where any of the classrooms are, and don’t know what you need to do to escape.  The lady from the lunch line is giving you the evil eye….

Well, the Blue Blanket Improv troupe will experience both nightmares AT THE SAME TIME on Friday, March 14th at 7:30PM at the Half Moon Bay High School (except the pants part…  We will be wearing pants.)

Members of the cast of ‘All Shook Up’, Half Moon Bay High School’s 2014 spring musical, join Blue Blanket Improv for a special one-night-only performance of short-form improvisational comedy. Audience suggestions are incorporated into unexpected comedic scenes made up on the spot.

Fortunately for the BBI improvisers, we’ll have our very own high school immersion experts, as more than a dozen members of the HMB High Schools 2014 Spring musical will join us as we create characters and stories, defy the odds, beat the evens, and bet it all on black!  They’ll provide the jolt we need to make sure you’re laughing out loud.  And be careful—there may be quizzes!  (What’s your favorite hobby?  Extreme adventure sport?  Famous person?)  Your answers will fill in the blanks to start our scene!

So come on back to high school!  You’ll be rolling in the aisles (if you ignore the campus ban on scooters and skateboards) and you’ll get to see some of rising young talents in Coastside drama.  It’s a preview for the main event, “All Shook Up” - March 21, 22, 28, & 29 at 7:30 PM (Fri & Sat) and March 23 & 30 at 2:00 (Sundays).

Tickets are $10 – Bring the whole family since Blue Blanket Improv will match the cost of your admission for the first 50 audience members in support of the 2014 Spring Musical. All proceeds directly benefit the Half Moon Bay High School 2014 Spring Musical ‘All Shook Up’

Multi-purpose room at Half Moon Bay High School, Friday, March 14th, 2014: doors open at 6:30pm, show runs 7:00 – 9:00 PM Tickets available at the door or in advance.

The agenda for Wednesday’s MCC March 12 meeting is posted with supporting documents on the MCC website.

First up is Plan Princeton Existing Conditions Report - Phase 2 of the multi-year Princeton area land use planning and zoning update.  Desired Outcome: Informational

Next is La Costanera Restaurant – Consideration of Revised Initial Study & Negative Declaration which addresses environmental impacts of a Use Permit Amendment to expand restaurant hours on Fridays and weekends (10AM – 2AM), formalize and improve adjacent dirt Montara State Beach parking lot, and legalize exterior building improvements including lighting and patios.  Desired Outcome: Approve MCC comment letter concerning adequacy and correctness of the Initial Study and Negative Declaration.

The meeting is the usual time and place - 7pm at Granada Sanitary District meeting room, 504 Ave Alhambra, 3rd floor, El Granada.

The coming of the winter rains is good news, but it has raised some issues for Coastside Children’s Programs. CCP provides preschool services and school-age aftercare for kids at Farallone View, El Granada, and Hatch Elementary Schools.

CCP serves families who pay full tuition, and provides essential support for those who cannot afford to pay full tuition. Disclosure: I served on the board of CCP until last year.

CCP needs to replace three (surprisingly expensive) doors, patch up two large sections of roof, and has a number other non-weather-related facilities projects (such as termites and floor repairs).

It’s easy to give online, through Paypal on the CCP website. Your donations can provide:

• $4,000 – Purchase & install a regulation, public facility door for a classroom
• $2,400 – Provide literacy enrichment to both CCP preschools for an entire year
• $1,200 – Support additional sports activities to one school-age program for an entire year
• $500 – Buy healthy snacks for an entire month for the largest CCP school-age program
• $250 – Support cooking activities for a school-age program for half a school year
• $100 – Replenish books for one center, for the entire year

NOAA’s Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary advises San Francisco Bay Area boaters to watch out for and steer clear of whales, which migrate into the San Francisco Bay Area in large numbers during the spring and summer. Gray whales are at a particularly high risk of collisions with vessels, as they often travel near shore and may even wander into the bay.  San Francisco Bay and Tomales Bay always have a few springtime gray whale visitors.

Boaters should use caution year-round, but springtime presents a greater chance of coming into close contact with whales. From March through May, thousands of migrating gray whales make their way north from breeding grounds off Mexico to feed in Arctic waters near Alaska. Many of these whales travel through busy shipping lanes off San Francisco in the Gulf of the Farallones sanctuary just outside the Golden Gate.

While they also migrate south through the sanctuary in the winter, gray whales – including mothers with newborn calves – swim closest to shore in the spring. Cow-calf pairs can sometimes be seen from shore, and may even pause in the surf zone for the calf to nurse or rest, and to avoid killer whales.
       
Boaters should watch for the gray whale’s blow—or exhalation—which looks like a puff of smoke about 10 to 15 feet high, since very little of the whale is visible at the surface. A whale may surface and blow several times before a prolonged dive, typically lasting three to six minutes.

Boaters should not:

• Approach within 300 feet (the length of a football field) of any whale
• Cut across a whale’s path
• Make sudden speed or directional changes
• Get between a whale cow and her calf – if separated from its mother, a calf may be doomed to starvation.

Specuation is increasing that there will be an El Niño later this year, bringing with it the wet fall and winter weather we’ve been missing.

However, NOAA’s consensus forecast, based on an analysis of 18 individual climate models, is that there’s 50/50 chance of an El Niño event in the fall of 2014. The good news is that this is a higher forecast probability of an El Niño than we had in 2011, 2012, or 2013. The bad news is that it’s something short of “likely”.

The NWS Climate Prediction Center leads its discussion of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation’ (ENSO):

ENSO-neutral is expected to continue through the Northern Hemisphere spring 2014, with about a 50% chance of El Niño developing during the summer or fall.

But some in the media are overly optimistic. The San Francisco Chronicle ran an AP story with the headline “Here comes El Niño; good news for US weather woes”.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Relief may be on the way for a weather-weary United States with the predicted warming of the central Pacific Ocean brewing this year that will likely change weather worldwide. But it won’t be for the better everywhere. ...

Mike Halpert, acting director of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, says the El Niño warming should develop by this summer, but that there are no guarantees. Although early signs are appearing already a few hundred feet below the ocean surface, meteorologists say an El Niño started to brew in 2012 and then shut down suddenly and unexpectedly. ...

Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who wasn’t part of NOAA’s forecast, agreed that an El Niño is brewing.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Dr. Kim Cobb, a climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is already alerting fellow scientists and disaster preparedness agencies that 2014 could be a big year for El Niño and they should be ready for it. But in email to Coastsider, she agreed that those of us who don’t have to prepare for the worst should be more cautious:

Operating in this uncertainty means different actions by different stakeholders: scientists who do not want to miss this chance at getting out there should get ready! However, CA water resource managers will want to make decisions based on the most conservative route - that an El Nino will not materialize to help CA’s water woes out this next winter.

The County recently applied to SMC Transportation Authority (TA) for funding for planning/permitting of the southern segment of the Midcoast Highway 1 Parallel Trail, from HMB city limit to the Coronado intersection in El Granada.

Competition is fierce for County Measure A sales tax funds for pedestrian and bicycle projects, which are generally considered every two years.  For the current cycle, the preliminary staff report [pdf] recommends only the top 10 of 23 projects for funding.  The Midcoast Hwy 1 Parallel Trail is ranked #11, only 0.6 points behind #10 in the scoring system.  No Coastside projects were recommended for approval—apparently there are no points added for geographic diversity. 

The TA Board of Directors will hear the initial staff presentation of proposed funding allocations at their meeting on Thursday, March 6, at 5PM, at 1250 San Carlos Ave, 2nd floor, San Carlos (Agenda Item #11a).  Final decision on funding allocation will be made at their April 3 meeting.

The Midcoast Community Council wrote in support of the grant application [pdf] last December.  Community members can email their support for this project to the TA Board members ([email protected]), or speak at the March 6 meeting.

More information is on the Fog Fest website.