Tweet of the Day - Museum Fire Plea

Picture of the Day - Museum Fire at Dusk

Museum Fire outside Flagstaff, AZ, after sunset tonight. *Update: 1,927 acres at 12% containment but no growth. Photo courtesy of Jeremy Perez (all rights reserved).

The Dude Fire 29th Anniversary

I still remember the Dude Fire and the epic heat wave in Arizona during the same period..... happened around the same time as the Painted Cave Fire in Santa Barbara County and the College Hills Fire in Glendale Hills started by notorious serial arsonist John Orr, a Glendale FD arson investigator. Photo by Arizona State Forestry (all rights reserved).

Graphic of the Day - Arizona MegaFire Comparison

Image courtesy of NWS Phoenix

Although there are some areal proportionality problems with this visual comparison it is nonetheless useful in comparing in very general terms the scale difference between each of these fires, all of which are the six largest in Arizona history and all have burned within the past 17 years.

Picture of the Day - Haboob Under Cumulonimbus

Twitter is starting to become my best source of interesting and/or useful photographs with this being one of the most recent such images. I was awed the moment I saw this image of a desert haboob buffeting Phoenix, AZ, as a monsoonal thunderstorm's collapse triggered a downburst on August 21, 2016. Photo by Ryan Vermillian by way of The Weather Channel via Twitter (all rights reserved).

In Memorium Of The Prescott 19

In Memorium: Granite Mountain Hotshots

This afternoon the Prescott Fire Department's Granite Mountain Hotshot Crew (a Type-1 hand crew) was defending the Arizona town of Yarnell when the Yarnell Hill Fire blew up on them forcing them to deploy their shelters but to no avail as they were nearly entirely wiped out with 18 or 19 of the crew killed. This story is in its early stages so there is much more unknown than known including precisely how many were killed and if there was one survivor as some reports indicate as well as what precisely went terribly wrong today. Initial reports have half of Yarnell leveled by the fire with approximately 250 structures destroyed. Details here will undoubtedly be revised as more becomes known.
At bottom is a television news segment about the crew and their training taken earlier this year.
HERE is a newspaper article about them just one week ago as they worked the Doce Incident near Payson, AZ.

Undated, unattributed, and unprovenanced photo of the Granite Mountain Hotshot Crew.

Undated, unattributed, and unprovenanced photo of the Granite Mountain Hotshot Crew.

Granite Mountain Hotshot Crew logo patch.

Hot Shots from Cronkite News on Vimeo.

Farewell To Tucson 2013

A flank of the Santa Catalina Mountains as viewed from the Westward Look Wyndham Hotel outside Tucson, AZ,this morning.  Note the saguaro forest at the base of the mountain.

Another view from the same location but zoomed back quite a bit.

Village Originals closing down their Tucson shop for another year.

Huge Shiva lingam stone left over at Village Originals looking much like a beached whale or a large atomic bomb.

Another view of the same lingam stone. A lot of folks don't realize these stones are phallic symbols in Hindu mythos.

All photos by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved).

Morning Tucson Window Shopping

We did rock shopping for the inventory on multiple mornings here during the TGMS show unlike in past years which was a measure of Dave's trust in his crew to pull off the show successfully even if committed to shopping during the morning before the main event opened.

This massive quartz crystal is as big as it looks and seems to be attempting to escape its box.

Massive Brazilian quartz crystals.

I neglected to check if these were iron-oxide-stained quartz or dogtooth calcite.

This individual amethyst crystals are larger than they appear!

Massive smoky quartz crystals from Minas Gerais, Brazil.

Huge Brazilian quartz crystals.

Artigas, Uruguay, amethyst rosette.

Crystal void space from naturally chemically-dissolved quartz crystal in an amethyst cluster specimen from Artigas, Uruguay.

Brazilian quartz booth open but not yet active as people sleep in at the Tucson shows much like at the Quartzsite event.

All photos by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved).

Picture of the Day - Mr. Bones Goes To Tucson

While doing a little walking around the 59th Annual Tucson Gem & Mineral Show yesterday I encountered a giant 14-foot long fish on the show floor that was passing out business cards detailing that he (or perhaps it was a she) is a skeletal Cockerellites liops extinct Eocene fish from British Columbia. The skeletal fish appeared to have devoured a man named Tim Seeber who is a well-known fossil puppeteer known as Mr. Bones. At one point during "Kid's Day" this morning the swarm of children in and around our booth suddenly disappeared when the Cockerellites liops appeared nearby. We should have payed him to hang out in the Rocks & Relics booth during that time. Photo by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved)

Rocks & Relics at 59th Annual TGMS

Today we pretty built and filled the entirety of the Rocks & Relics booth at the main grand finale Tucson Gem & Mineral Show in the Tucson Convention Center.

Some Tucson 2013 Outdoor Show Sights

Upon reaching Tucson, AZ, late today we dropped by a few of the rock shows along Interstate-10 as we came into town early this evening. Below are some of the sights I observed.

These monumental quartz slabs are probably from Minas Gerais, Brazil.

Monumental Amethyst vugs-turned-"cathedrals" from Minas Gerais, Brazil.

A tent filled with Mt. Ida, Arkansas quartz.

Large quartz sphere in the midst of a lot of other quartz in various denominations and configurations.

Giant quartz skull carving.

More quartz carvings and crystals.

Huge Serpentine table along with other Serpentine monuments.

All photos by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved).

Quartzsite 2013 - Early Bird Gets The Worm (Day Two)

My friend Dave and I lodged New Year's night at the Super 8 Motel in Quartzsite, AZ, awaking before dawn to drive down to Blythe, CA, (where we lodged last year but not this year) for a decent cup of coffee before returning for breakfast at Sweet Darlene's. After that we got to work picking up where we left off yesterday. We hit yesterday's spots again, but Desert Gardens was behind schedule filling up with vendors relative to last year so we did not do much there and near the end of our visit at that. However, that mattered little as by the time the day was over Dave's truck was full and could not take one more flat or box of anything. Near the end of the day we headed home which took surprisingly little time despite the Rose Bowl Game in Pasadena, CA, (my place of origin) letting out being directly in our path en route home.
Check out yesterday's action on Day One.

A new year dawning upon Quartzsite, AZ, on New Year's Day.

A 1955 Nash Metro in the parking lot of where we had breakfast.

Newly-unpacked Brazilian Amethyst vugs at Village Originals.

These are actually rather nice Amethyst vugs which in this configuration are called "cathedrals".

This is an exceptionally cool cathedral pair.

That's Western Wood across the way behind this rack of Amethyst cathedrals.

The view inside Village Originals as they unpacked the day before they officially open

This image does not do this particular specimen justice.

I like the ridges of crystals some of these vugs contain.

Calcite crystal cluster on Amethyst.

Detail of some Brazilian Amethyst vug kitsch... real miners hate this stuff!

While we're on the topic of rock kitsch...

...here's some more!

One of the latest methods developed for ruining a perfectly fine silicon dioxide crystal cluster.

Made in China!

Well, at least it's man-made silicon dioxide cut in a diamond configuration.

Died/dyed in China.

At least one row of these seems to feature natural color.

Ambivalent/tepid dye job.

How to ruin a perfectly nice Brazilian agate sphere...

Dyed Brazilian Ocos.

Boxed sets of dyed Brazlian ocos.

Although these are quasi-kitschy I actually like them.

At least their color is natural and they have been shaped by means of utilizing their natural cleavage plane.

Although from a desert climate they evoke thoughts of ice castles.

Anybody else think of Superman's ice castle while looking at these images?

Genuine mosasaur skull with genuine teeth in original plaster casing from Morocco.

Genuine mosasaur jaw with genuine teeth.

Faux Moroccan mosasaur jaws with genuine teeth.

Faux Moroccan trilobites.

These trilobites were accurately labeled "reproductions" but other wholesalers and retailers more often than not do not.

I'm not sure these starfish are genuine fossils.

I'm fairly certain these crinoids are genuine.

Lots of genuine Moroccan fossils in these flats.

This design and configuration for Moroccan fossilized marble is new to me and I like it.

This is the show sleeper... in future years these will be hard to come by (and thus much more expensive) given what they are: Homo erectus tools known as Acheulean choppers.

Prospector's Panarama seemed more dead today, New Year's Day, than it was yesterday or even a year ago today.

Even Beer Belly's was pretty dead... no television and thus no bowl game watching to be had there.

The best mineral deals to be had in Quartzsite, AZ, are at this place which shall remain unnamed.

This is when and where I acquired my two Orpiment specimens.

This guy was selling larger Campo del Cielo meteorites which most people do not realize are forbidden to be collected by the government of Argentina.

This struck me as funny as the label refers to the source, NOT the name of the material itself but not initially knowing that caused me to do a double-take upon first glance.

Sunset over the Inland Empire on the way home to the Central Coast as seen from Interstate-10.