Posted on 08/06/2008 10:49:47 AM PDT by Ben Mugged
The ground is so hot in one part of Southern California it can melt the shoes right off your feet.
An unexplained "thermal anomaly" caused a patch of land in Ventura County, just north of Los Angeles, to reach a temperature of over 800 degrees on Friday, baffling experts who have been monitoring the area for weeks.
The anomaly was discovered after the land got so hot that it started a brush fire and burned three acres last month.
Firefighters were brought to the scene after reports of a blaze, but by the time they arrived only smoldering dirt and brush remained.
~snip~ One theory is that natural hydrocarbons, such as oil or gas, are burning deep in the earth and seeping out through cracks in the area, causing the surface to rapidly heat and generate smoke.
According to the Star, Allen King, a former geologist with the U.S. Forest Service recently stuck a thermometer into the ground and got a reading of 550 degrees — so hot that it melted the glue holding the sole of his boots together.
"After that we were more cautious about standing in one place for too long," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Southern California is full of natural gas vents.
Gosh, people. Quit standing around measuring the temperature of the ground and writing articles about how hot it is, get busy building a power plant there. That 800 degrees is more than hot enough to boil water to make steam to drive a turbine.
They better get that nasty oil out of the ground ASAP and into my gas tank, before somebody gets hurt.
Put a geothermal steam generator there. Clean, efficient electric “green” generation. Surely, the environuts won’t complain.....oh, yeah. Sorry. They always complain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parícutin
I suspect we're seeing another Paricutin. It started in 1943 with smoke rising from a farmer's field in Mexico. It is now a good-sized volcano. Welcome to the Ring of Fire!
And I thought California was going to hell. Well, I guess it’s actually becoming hell instead.
Interesting. Thanks for posting.
This could be very series! Look "here"
May end up with another Centralia, Pa.
Centralia, PA was the site of an underground coal fire that was started in the erly 60s, I think. It’s still burning. The state bought out most of the residents, and the Postal Service revoked the town’s Zipcode.
It’s kind of a tourist attraction, and people drive through what’s left of the town, and take pictures of the smoke rising up through the ground. SPOOKY!
LC
OMG! What happened to western Europe and west Africa? What is that huge hole and how did it happen?
Maybe it’s a revival of the LaBrea tar pits...
...who brought the ‘shmellos?
Has anyone told Pelosi yet..surely this comes into her “save the world” area of expertise?
What are they waiting for? Start drilling!
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