The day · Santa Barbara, California
Afternoon · 114 min left
Sun 32.7° up, in the west · Mediterranean California
The kind of day it is
High overcast
A lid of cloud over everything. Light is flat and diffuse, shadows are gone, and the whole day behaves like an extended dawn — fish roam shallow, and greens that would bolt in sun hold on.
The whole day is usable. This is the day to cover water and to transplant.
The day, phase by phase
Happening now · 14:39–18:13
3h 34m long
Afternoon
Where the sun is this minute. Its highest today: 58.4°.
The angle falls away again, but the ground is still releasing the morning's heat. Air temperature peaks well after the sun does — usually two to four hours late.
Where the light lands · Mediterranean California
The hottest hours. Inland can be forty degrees while the coast is at eighteen — one of the steepest temperature gradients over distance anywhere.
Up close
The chaparral's oils volatilise in the heat and you can smell the hillside from a distance. Those same oils are why it burns the way it does.
The whole landscape
That inland heat draws the marine air through every gap in the coast ranges. The Golden Gate is the biggest of those gaps, and the fog pouring through it is the valley inhaling.
In the water now
Bluegillbest now
On the beds and the shallow flats, in water warm enough to see the bottom.
Cruising the weed edges, pads and shallow flats, ambushing anything that moves across the top.
Working the seams and feeding lanes where current delivers food, rising freely to a hatch.
Flat light spreads fish out and holds them shallow through the middle of the day.
In the garden now
Hoverflybest now
Hanging motionless in a sunbeam, then darting — hoverflies use warm still air and are strongest in the middle of the day.
Praying mantisbest now
Motionless on a flower head or stem, waiting. A mantis hunts by sight and needs the light.
Aphidsbest now
On the newest growth and the undersides of leaves, reproducing steadily through warm daylight.
Spider mitesbest now
On leaf undersides. They explode in hot dry weather and collapse in humidity, which is the whole control strategy.
The kindest day for transplanting there is, and the safest for sowing.
Sitting this one out
Striped bass · Green lacewing · Ground beetle · Earthworm · Slugs · Earwig
The full guide
Everything for Santa Barbara this week in one place.
Mediterranean California
The region this day belongs to, and what lives in it.
The almanac
The year's arc: day length, the moon and the water behind the air.
The week ahead for Santa Barbara
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