This week on the central coast
This week was all over the place! A meteor shower, COVID vaccine, heater shortages, and a small earthquake.
The Leonid meteor shower will peak at the beginning of the week.
The actual peak will be overnight from November 16 to November 17. The best time to start looking at the sky is around 3AM. The forecast is cloudy with a chance of rain, however, the article says you should still have a good chance of seeing shooting stars. The Leonid showers happen when Earth passes through a particular comet’s orbital path. The debris from the comet vaporizes as it enters our atmosphere, which causes the falling stars. NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke says “The Leonid meteor shower reliably produces about 10 or 15 shooting stars an hour.” If you plan on viewing the meteor shower, get as far away from city lights as possible and expect to spend a couple of hours outside. Bring a few layers because it will probably be cold.
Santa Cruz County expects to receive one of the first batches of the COVID vaccine.
The vaccine would be available to health care workers and first responders. It could take up to a year for the vaccine to be available to the public. Santa Cruz County Health Officer Gail Newel explained that the vaccine requires subzero temperatures for storage and UC Santa Cruz has plenty, making them a key partner for this plan. She also said the county is actually closer to purple tier than orange tier (the county has moved back into red tier, see article above). Newel hopes people will keep that in mind as we approach the holiday season.
Restaurants are experiencing a heater shortage as temperatures drop.
Monterey’s higher virus positivity percentage has restricted restaurants to outdoor dining and take-out options. As the weather turns cooler, restaurants are depending more on propane heaters to keep their guests warm. Hardware stores, like Home Depot and Ace Hardware, are running out of the heaters, similar to toilet paper and sanitizer products at the beginning of lock-down. A local Salinas restaurant talks about how employees are helping by bringing in their personal heaters.
A small earthquake hit near San Juan Batista on Wednesday, November 11.
The earthquake was a small 3.4 magnitude. However, the epicenter was shallow, which means it could be felt more strongly. The quake could be felt as far as Santa Cruz, though it would be very weak by then. There should not have been much damage beyond items falling from shelves and possible broken windows.
For more information on Monterey County’s COVID-19 numbers, check out this Reddit user’s graphs on Imgur. They update every week and cover a variety of statistics, including case counts by city. Here is the original Reddit post, which gives greater detail of their sources, including the state of California and CHOMP.