KTLA is reporting 2 Fast Moving Wildfires Burning in Angeles Forest

LA CANADA FLINTRIDGE — A new fire has erupted in the Angeles National Forest.

The latest blaze is burning 5 miles north of La Canada Flintridge along Angeles Forest Highway.

The new fire is located to the west of the so-called Morris fire blaze that has been burning out of control on 750 acres near Azusa since Tuesday afternoon.

InciWeb has started reporting on the first fire

The Morris Fire started at 4:27 pm on Tuesday, August 25, 2006 and is burning in San Gabriel Canyon near Morris Dam on the Los Angeles River Ranger District.

The Enplan Wildfire Viewer, which uses satellite sensors to spot fires, has picked up on the Morris fire, but hasn’t marked it yet.

The daytime weather in the mountains is temperatures near 100° and humidity at around 9%. All that is missing is the winds. Steep terrain and Chaparral that hasn’t burned in a quarter century is a set up for a major wildfire. The lack of wind is causing the smoke to settle in the LA basin and sparking a health alert.

Keith Kisser of The Invisible Library has managed to get his second novel, The Lives of Perfect Creatures, out the door.

I assume that it will be available at Amazon soon.

Update: Amazon in about a week, and Create Space now.

The Orlando Sentinel reports on a new study in the NEJM: Study shows some patients get risky doses of radiation from medical tests

A large new study including 170,000 South Floridians found that a small but significant number of patients received dangerously high doses of radiation from medical imaging tests, putting them at higher risk for cancer — sometimes needlessly.

CT scans and the commonly used heart stress tests carrying high doses of radiation were the biggest sources of exposure, but even low-dose X-rays add to the lifetime exposure to radiation that can cause tumors, researchers said in the study published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.
…

The study adds more fuel to an ongoing debate over whether some doctors overprescribe imaging tests to guard against patient lawsuits and to make money. Past research has shown that doctors with ownership in imaging centers order 27 percent to 54 percent more CT scans, MRIs and stress tests than other doctors do.

The “guard against patient lawsuits” claim is malpractice insurance agitprop to get tort reform passed. When it gets passed, the rates still go up and there is no change in the minuscule number of malpractice claims. The awards in successful suits are large because of the cost of the health care required to fix the screw ups. If we passed Medicare for All, the cost of these awards would plummet.

Of course, everyone knows that doctors would never order unnecessary tests just to make a lot of money. 😈

Position: 26.0 N 71.6 W [10 PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West-Northwest [310°] near 10 mph [16 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 50 mph [85 kph].
Wind Gusts: 65 mph [105 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 175 miles [280 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1006 mb ↓.

It is 675 miles [1090 km] South-Southeast of Cape Hatteras North Carolina.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

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