Posted on 09/10/2012 2:31:50 PM PDT by BenLurkin
STUDIO CITY (CBSLA.com) — Authorities on Monday investigated widespread reports of a foul odor detected across the San Fernando Valley.
Shortly after 5:00 a.m., a “rotten egg-type” smell was reported “widely across (and possibly beyond) the north San Fernando Valley and Foothill communities of Los Angeles”, according to Brian Humphrey with the Los Angeles Fire Department.
No illnesses or any specific hazard has been associated with the odor, Humphrey told KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO.
The sulfur-type odor — which Humphrey said “appears to be organic in nature” — had been reported as far west as Simi Valley and as far east as Cathedral City and Perris in Riverside County.
While officials worked to investigate the source of the smell, officials did acknowledge the smell could be affecting a wider swath of Southern California.
Stephen Harrison with the National Weather Service office in San Diego told KNX 1070′s Vytas Safronikas that whatever the source or sources of sulphuric odor, wind currents have been moving in an east to west direction from the Salton Sea into parts of the Greater Los Angeles area.
“It’s always possible to get some kind of odor coming from the Salton Sea up through the Coachella Valley through the Banning Pass and into the Inland Empire,” said Harrison.
Los Angeles Unified School District spokeswoman Monica Carazzo said the odor is affecting schedules at some local schools, including Osceola Street Elementary.
“Some schools are implementing a rainy day schedule, meaning that once kids get their lunch, they go inside of the classroom, recesses are inside, that type of thing,” said Carazzo. “But that’s school by school.”
Residents do not need to call 911 to report the odor unless they are experiencing a medical emergency, Humphrey said
Fresno's a long way from LA. CA's pretty spread out.
The mystery is solved.
It’s the damned Swedes
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2928650/posts
When I first smelled it I thought the was a skunk (animal or herbal).
The problem with that theory is that the methane released from the ground wouldn’t smell like rotten eggs. Natural methane is odorless, they have to put the “rotten egg” smell into it with an additive, otherwise nobody would notice if they had a gas leak.
![](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_btnd9BYbP6o/TSvcw6TXteI/AAAAAAAAAF8/yn_dvSOvTX8/s1600/tule%2Bfog.jpg")
Oh, I've been stuck in that stuff. It's thick as glue and the visibility is about as good.
Boy does that bring back memories. I have been in it even thicker than that. What is really scary is when someone passes you at a VERY high rate of speed.
Air Quality Officials Continue to Probe Source
of Widespread Sulfur Odors
September 10, 2012
Air quality officials are continuing to investigate the source of a rotten-egg odor reported last night and today across much of Southern California, from the Salton Sea to the San Fernando Valley.
“Several factors indicate that the Salton Sea may have been the source of these odors,” said Barry Wallerstein, executive officer for the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD). “However we do not have any definitive evidence to pinpoint the Salton Sea or any other source yet.”
AQMD deployed field inspectors today to the San Fernando Valley, Long Beach, Colton, San Bernardino, Riverside, Perris, Temecula, Banning, Palm Springs, La Quinta and the Salton Sea in an attempt to locate the source of the odor.
Several sources have reported hot weather and a possible release of bacteria from the bottom of the sea due to winds there. Those conditions could cause strong sulfur odors.
In addition, strong thunderstorm activity in the Salton Sea area and resulting high winds from the southeast could have pushed odors into the Los Angeles basin. However, it is highly unusual for odors to remain strong up to 150 miles from their source, Wallerstein said.
AQMD will collect air samples this evening in several locations throughout the Coachella Valley and at the Salton Sea. An analysis of those samples may provide further evidence of a possible source.
Since midnight last night, AQMD has received about 200 complaints of sulfur- and rotten-egg odors. Most callers were from the Coachella Valley and other portions of Riverside County as well as San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties. Only a few calls came from Orange County.
A strengthening onshore breeze tomorrow may keep any additional odors from spreading as far west as they did today, AQMD officials said.
AQMD is the air pollution control agency for Orange County and major portions of Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.
Well, sulfur smells like rotten eggs, and that does come back around to an earth-shifting scenario.
Smells can travel a long way though - when the big forest fire happened in TN awhile back, we caught whiffs of forest fire all the way up in central AP (it did smell like what it was though, burning forest).
H2S smells like rotten eggs, not SO2. Got a 50 ppm cylinder sitting in my car.
The outflow boundaries pushed across the area from southeast to northwest last night, so it is probable that whatever the source of the smell is was transported within these outflow boundaries from thunderstorms. I just looked at the network of weather stations in the Coachella Valley and around 9:00 PM last night, winds up to 50 mph were measured throughout the network and were from a southeasterly direction.
Winner!!
you do know when you go to that site, your location is revealed on the revolving Earth on the left hand side of the screen?
I suspect this is volcanic activity/release of gasses. The release of steam has been documented on weather radar in California.
Liberals who energetically molest Americans at the airports, claiming they are “probing” smelly gasses in California just gives me the creeps. Watch out, California. Liberals are armed with plastic gloves and fixin’ to probe your area.
Earthquake Ping List.
If you wish to be removed from the Earthquake Ping List or added to it, please FReepmail me.
Unfortunately there still is no scientifically proven predictor of an impending earthquake. The foul odors today here in the Los Angeles area cannot be scientifically or reasonably assumed to indicate an impending major earthquake. However that does not rule out a major earthquake occurring soon.
If a major earthquake were to occur in the area in the next 48 hours, it's still unlikely that the bad odor could in retrospect be proven to have been a predictive indicator. Prior to the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco and the 1971 Sylmar (Los Angeles) earthquake, there were no unusual odors noticed or reported prior to any of the earthquakes.
Seismologists and now local authorities remind us that colorless, odorless and carcinogenic radon gas is released prior to and at the time of a fault-line rupture. Some believe that radon emission may account for unusual behavior noticed in small animals prior to some earthquakes.
Sulfuric odors have been noticed as recently as March 2012 near the Madrid Fault Line, which some bloggers believed meant an impending major earthquake. A major earthquake on the Madrid Fault Line still has not happened, however.
In 2011 some San Diego residents noticed strong chemical odors near a beach and feared a major earthquake which also has not happened.
Venezuelan residents in August this year noticed a strong odor of sulfur hours prior to the tragic explosion at a local refinery. That explosion has been reported to have been caused by a gas leak.
Below describes a little of what Caltech, U.C. Berkeley and the USGS have been working on in order to predict earthquakes and create an early warning system.
An earthquake early warning system can provide a few seconds to tens of seconds warning prior to ground shaking during an earthquake. The warning messages can be used to reduce damage, costs and casualties in an earthquake. Earthquake early warning systems are currently operating in Mexico, Taiwan and Japan, but not in the United States. In California, the California Integrated Seismic Network (CISN) is testing an early warning system, using its real-time operations.A CISN early warning test system caught the M 5.4 Alum Rock earthquake of 2007. This map shows the distribution of ground shaking intensity predicted using the first few seconds of data recorded by seismometers near the epicenter in San Jose. The data used to generate this map was available a few seconds before the shaking was felt in San Francisco.
How does Earthquake Early Warning work?
The objective of earthquake early warning is to rapidly detect the initiation of an earthquake, estimate the level of ground shaking to be expected, and issue a warning before significant ground shaking starts. This can be done by detecting the first energy to radiate from an earthquake, the P-wave energy, which rarely causes damage. Using P-wave information, we first estimate the location and the magnitude of the earthquake. We use this to estimate the anticipated ground shaking across the region to be affected. The method can provide warning before the S-wave, which brings the strong shaking that usually causes most of the damage, arrives.
Feasibility studies of earthquake early warning methods in California have shown that the warning time would range from a few seconds to a few tens of seconds, depending on the distance to the epicenter of the
Earthquake Early Warning
Late in 2007, MHDP participated in discussion with Caltech, U.C. Berkeley, and the USGS to create an Earthquake Early Warning System. As contributors and end-users have considered the results of the ShakeOut Scenario, the discussion about earthquake early warning has been re-engaged, in examining how it might mitigate injury, property damage, and the loss of life in the ShakeOut earthquake.
Currently, work is being done in partnership with the California Integrated Seismic Network (CISN) to develop the tools and algorithms to provide a warning that an earthquake is underway and strong shaking will reach you based on your distance from the fault rupture...
End of excerpt. Article continues here: Earthquake Early Warning
saw that. thanks for letting everyone know. they don’t have my location right. i noticed a few blogs have that what is your isp address thing.
Thanks for the ping...good stuff.
Was in San bernardino this morning on business, didn’t smell anything. Back home later in Beaumont, didn’t smell anything unusual. We have about 2500 ft elevation. You guys are beginning to freak me out.
Ahhhh memories from my childhood, yuck. :-)
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