Wednesday night (August 12th) should be the best night of the year to see shooting stars. Shooting stars happen when the Earth passes through a cloud of dust left behind by a comet’s tail. To celebrate, the amateur astronomers on La Palma and Astrotour are holding two star parties. You’ll be able to observe the sun through a telescope (safely!) in Santa Cruz de la Palma in the Plaza España…
UK USA Volume 2 of Cthulhu Unbound is now on sale, featuring my story “What’s a Few Tentacles Between Friends?” I was about ready for some good news after the fire.
Inside Las Nieves Church Today is the fiesta of the patron saint of La Palma, the Virgin of Las Nieves. It’s also a public holiday for the whole island. Las Nieves is about 2 km inland from Santa Cruz de la Palma. When I went this morning, it was impossible to park within a mile of the fiesta. Sorry, I just turned around and went home. I expect it’s much…
NASA image of the La Palma fire on Sunday I was going to have a break from blogging for a couple of days, but I couldn’t resist this photo, taken from a NASA satellite on Sunday August 2nd. The island downwind of La Palma is La Gomera, 50 km away. I think it must have been early on Sunday afternoon: the fire in the west is out, and the clouds…
Car workshop, Los Canarios, Fuencaliente The fire’s under control at long last. The La Palma blog‘s been going crazy with traffic, as people tried to find out what was happening here. So I started to feel a bit like a lighthouse-keeper — you know, responsible — and on Monday I went out for another look at the fire. The road was open and I got to Fuencaliente. It’s in better…
The island government has just announced that the fire’s under control. “Under control” isn’t quite the same as “out”. It means the mountainside is still smouldering, and they have to put out the embers before the wind gets up. But with this weather, it really ought to be ok. And apologies of you tried to access this site yesterday evening. The domain providers in the USA had a power cut…