With these changes, we are saying goodbye to a few of our blogs, including this one.

This blog will no longer be updated here, but that doesn’t mean we’ve stopped covering this topic. In fact, we’ll be covering it even better, just on a different platform.

To keep up with coverage, visit ocregister.com/science. If you’d like, you can also subscribe to the RSS feed for the Science page.

A change of direction is a post from: OC Science

Warm weather should continue through the week in Orange County, with some clouds wandering into the picture, the National Weather Service says.

A high-pressure air system is slowly moving to the northeast, while more monsoon moisture is injected from the southeast, once again raising the chance of thunderstorms over mountains and deserts farther inland.

By the weekend, stronger low pressure pushes in from the coast, increasing night and morning clouds.

Tuesday and Wednesday are both partly cloudy with inland highs of 89 to 94 Tuesday, 85 to 90 Wednesday. On the coast it’s 74 to 79 Tuesday, 72 to 77 Wednesday.

Thursday and Friday should see a slight retreat in temperatures, with inland highs of 84 to 89 Thursday, 83 to 88 Friday. Coastal highs should be 71 to 76 Thursday, 70 to 75 Friday. Partly cloudy skies should turn mostly sunny both days.

That pattern holds through Monday if you add patchy morning fog to the mix.

Inland highs should be 87 to 92 Saturday and Sunday, 73 to 78 on the coast.

On Monday it’s 83 to 88 inland, 71 to 76 on the coast.

NOTE TO READERS: We’ll be transitioning out of the OC Science blog this week, but please keep sending us your weather photos. We’ll continue publishing them online and in print, including running reader photos with the morning weather post in a slightly different format.

Share your weather photos:

Send your recent, Orange County weather photos to pbrennan@ocregister.com along with your name, home city, when and where the picture was taken and what it shows.

We publish many reader photos online and in print.

Text OCRQUAKE to 56654 to get free quake news alerts.
Text OCRSCIENCE to 56654 to get free science news alerts.

Latest posts:

Warmth, moisture and a few clouds for O.C. is a post from: OC Science

Blue whale raises its fluke off the Orange County coast on Thursday afternoon. Photo courtesy Zone57 and Dana Wharf Sportfishing & Whale Watching.

Giant blue whales are thick along the Orange County coast this summer, with one whale-watching outfit reporting 46 days in a row of sightings.

Dana Wharf Sportfishing & Whale Watching says the count surpasses 2o11′s record of 45 days in a row, set in November.

Dana Wharf and Capt. Dave’s Dolphin & Whale Safari also reported a visit from a humpback whale this week, a species that dwells off the coast but is rarely seen.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A blue whale, nicknamed “Hook” because of a partially missing tail fluke, also put in an appearance.

“Hook,” a blue whale with a partially missing tail fluke, was spotted off Orange County this week. Photo courtesy Capt. Dave’s Dolphin & Whale Watching Safari.

For about the past decade, blue whales, the largest animals on Earth, have been paying regular summer visits to the Southern California coast, including Orange, Los Angeles and San Diego counties.

The visits can last into fall, and scientists say the whales are most likely drawn by abundant krill, their sole food source. Humpbacks also sometimes take krill, but hunt fish as well.

The blues can reach 75 to 85 feet in length.

The whale-watch tour operators regularly post photos and videos of their encounters.

Text OCRQUAKE to 56654 to get free quake news alerts.
Text OCRSCIENCE to 56654 to get free science news alerts.

Latest posts:

Giant whale sightings set O.C. record is a post from: OC Science

Sunrise Thursday over San Clemente. Photo by Carol Custer, San Clemente.

Weather forces should combine to keep the heat on for Labor Day weekend, the National Weather Service says, with tropical moisture and high surf in part due to remnants of Hurricane Ileana.

A high surf advisory is in effect until 6 p.m. Monday, with waves reaching as high as nine feet Friday, 12 feet Saturday and 10 feet Sunday, mainly on south-facing Orange County beaches. See Laylan Connelly’s OC Beach Blog for more on the surf.

Orange County should be mostly sunny Friday after a partly cloudy morning with patchy fog and highs of 88 to 93 inland, 75 to 80 on the coast. Low-pressure air on the coast could mean slightly drier air moving in for the short term, the Weather Service says.

But subtropical moisture left over from Hurricane Ileana is expected to move into the region sometime this weekend. That will likely mean high clouds and perhaps thunderstorms over interior mountains and deserts on Sunday and Monday.

High pressure air also should move in for the weekend, keeping temperatures high.

The pattern should be fairly consistent for the three-day weekend with partly cloudy skies after patchy fog in the morning.

Inland highs should be 89 to 94 Saturday, 87 to 92 Sunday and Monday.

At the beach it’s 76 to 81 Saturday, 74 to 79 Sunday and Monday.

The pattern shifts slightly Tuesday through Thursday, with skies turning mostly sunny after partly cloudy mornings with patchy fog.

Expect inland highs of 87 to 92 Tuesday and 85 to 90 Wednesday and Thursday; on the coast, 74 to 79 Tuesday, 72 to 77 Wednesday and 73 to 78 Thursday.

Share your weather photos:

Send your recent, Orange County weather photos to pbrennan@ocregister.com along with your name, home city, when and where the picture was taken and what it shows.

We publish many reader photos online and in print.

Text OCRQUAKE to 56654 to get free quake news alerts.
Text OCRSCIENCE to 56654 to get free science news alerts.

Latest posts:

Heat, high surf this weekend is a post from: OC Science

A salp species called Thalia rhomboides, which has been seen forming chains off the Orange County coast in recent weeks. Photo by Professor Peter Bryant, UC Irvine.

Divers, boaters and scientists are seeing an infusion of oblong, transparent creatures called salps off the Southern California coast — some that wash up onshore still pulsing with life, to the astonishment of beachgoers.

One species can grow “up to nine inches long; they pulsate, and they’re purple and reddish in the center,” said marine science Professor Dennis Kelly of Orange Coast College. “Usually, when people see it, they freak out. They think it’s an alien.”

Another, smaller salp species, shown above, can form long chains as they drift through the ocean, for reasons that are not fully understood.

The salps have been seen from San Diego to Santa Monica in recent weeks, Kelly said. In Orange County, observers have reported them in Newport Harbor and Laguna Beach.

The creatures, which look a little like jellyfish, have appeared in large numbers before, though just why it happens is uncertain.

Kelly said the influx could be related to unusually warm ocean water in recent weeks.

No evidence so far links the increase in salps to long-term climate change, said biology Professor David Caron of the University of Southern California, who conducts research on marine ecology.

“It’s kind of elusive,” he said. “No one knows why they come up in abundance.”

Another ocean species that has become more noticeable lately, green algae, is associated with the late summer season, Caron said.

The strings of green algae, or “green foam,” have no toxic effects, he said.

The salps also are harmless, though they do attract attention.

Paddleboarders are coming across them, Kelly said, as well as divers. The salps can collect in kelp forests, he said.

“Blooms” of salps happen periodically, although Kelly said it’s been many years since he saw one this large.

“The last time there were this many was 25 years ago,” Kelly said. “That’s the last time I remember this many being around.”

And the drifting filter feeders have an unexpected kinship with humans, he said. They possess a notochord, an evolutionary precursor to the spinal cord.

“Believe it or not, these are the missing link between invertebrates — sea stars, things like crabs and clams — and us,” Kelly said.

Text OCRQUAKE to 56654 to get free quake news alerts.
Text OCRSCIENCE to 56654 to get free science news alerts.

Latest posts:

Odd lifeforms invade O.C. coast is a post from: OC Science

Gulls over Huntington Beach Wednesday. Photo by Rick Waldow.

Warm weather is expected to continue through the Labor Day weekend, the National Weather Service says, while moist monsoon air keeps flowing into the region from the south.

A system of high-pressure air that has been dominating the picture could weaken a bit as low pressure nudges in from the coast. But the cooling effect will be minimal; meanwhile, the high pressure is expected to rebuild by the weekend, again driving temperatures higher.

Thursday and Friday both begin with partly cloudy skies and patchy fog in Orange County before turning mostly sunny. Inland highs should be 89 to 94 Thursday, 87 to 92 Friday. Near the coast plan on 76 to 81 Thursday, 74 to 79 Friday.

Thunderstorms are possible Thursday and Friday over interior mountains and deserts.

The Weather Service also issued a high surf advisory from 3 a.m. Friday to 6 p.m. Saturday, and warned of strong rip currents. See Laylan Connelly’s OC Beach Blog for details.

Saturday through Tuesday the pattern stays about the same: patchy fog in the morning, partly cloudy skies through the day. And another injection of moist air is expected from the south, the leftovers from Hurricane Ileana.

Inland highs vary only slightly — 88 to 93 Saturday, 87 to 92 Sunday, 89 to 94 on Labor Day and 87 to 92 again Tuesday.

Near the beach it’s 74 to 79 Saturday and Sunday, 75 to 80 Monday and back to 74 to 79 Tuesday.

Wednesday will likely begin with mostly cloudy skies and patchy fog, giving way to mostly sunny skies later, with inland highs of 85 to 90, 72 to 77 on the coast.

Share your weather photos:

Send your recent, Orange County weather photos to pbrennan@ocregister.com along with your name, home city, when and where the picture was taken and what it shows.

We publish many reader photos online and in print.

Text OCRQUAKE to 56654 to get free quake news alerts.
Text OCRSCIENCE to 56654 to get free science news alerts.

Latest posts:

Warm through weekend; more monsoon moisture is a post from: OC Science

A magnitude 4.1 earthquake jolted Southern California at 1:31 p.m. Wednesday, and was centered near Yorba Linda, reports show.

The U.S. Geological Survey showed the quake occurred two miles north-northeast of Yorba Linda.

The quake was likely an aftershock of two magnitude 4.5 quakes that occurred on Aug. 7 and 8, said Bob Dollar, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey. It was less than a mile from the earlier quakes.

But while the latest quake occurred near the Whittier fault, it was not yet possible early Wednesday afternoon to determine whether it occurred on the fault or perhaps a branching structure, called a “trend,” that is nearby, he said.

“It was pretty widely felt over Orange County and southeast Los Angeles (County),” Dollar said.

There were no immediate reports of damage or injury from the quake. Small aftershocks appeared to follow in the same area within a few minutes, preliminary reports showed.

The quake was unrelated to a swarm of quakes on Sunday and in days that followed near Brawley, between the Salton Sea and the Mexican border, Dollar said.

After the earthquake, visitors were asked to exit rides so employees could do quick inspections, which is standard procedure, said Suzi Brown, a Disneyland Resort spokeswoman. No problems were reported and attractions resumed within minutes.

Scientists encourage anyone who felt the quake to report in on the agency’s “Did You Feel It?” page.

And if you felt the quake, please tell is in a comment on this blog.

More than 1,000 people reported feeling the quake on the USGS site within about 40 minutes.

In Orange County, reports came from Anaheim, Brea, Buena Park, Corona del Mar, Costa Mesa, Cypress, Foothill Ranch, Fountain Valley, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Irvine, La Habra, La Palma, Laguna Beach, Laguna Hills, Laguna Woods, Lake Forest, Mission Viejo, Newport Beach, Orange, San Clemente, Santa Ana, Tustin, Westminster and Yorba Linda.

Outside the county, reports came from Covina, Diamond Bar, Glendora, Lakewood, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Manhattan Beach, Moreno Valley, Norco, North Hollywood, Ontario, Pomona, Rancho Cucamonga, Riverside, San Bernardino, Whittier and other communities.

Register staff writer Sarah Tully contributed to this report.

Text OCRQUAKE to 56654 to get free quake news alerts.
Text OCRSCIENCE to 56654 to get free science news alerts.

Latest posts:

4.1 earthquake centered near Yorba Linda is a post from: OC Science

The heat continues in Orange County Wednesday, with clouds likely in the afternoon due to monsoon moisture, the National Weather Service says.

High pressure air over the nation’s midsection is helping to keep temperatures higher, and is also drawing in moisture from the southeast that will carry a slight chance of thunderstorms for interior mountains and deserts along with it.

The Weather Service also is cautioning Orange County coastal areas about possible flooding Friday morning through the Labor Day weekend. High surf and high tides will combine, causing powerful rip currents near shore. (Find out more about beaches and surf on Laylan Connelly’s OC Beach Blog.)

A rainbow broke out over Orange County Tuesday evening. Photo by Claudine Corr.

Though the high pressure should begin to move east Wednesday, inland highs are expected to hit the 92 to 97 range, 76 to 81 on the coast.

Things cool off Thursday and Friday as high pressure weakens, but only a little.

Inland highs should be 87 to 92 Thursday, 74 to 79 on the coast; Friday it’s 86 to 91 inland with coastal temperatures remaining about the same as Thursday.

Both days are partly cloudy, then mostly sunny, with some patchy fog thrown in on Friday.

Then high pressure should begin to build up again for the weekend, pushing temperatures higher.

Saturday through Tuesday should see partly cloudy skies in the morning with patchy fog, turning mostly sunny later.

Inland highs should be 87 to 92 Saturday, 88 to 93 Sunday, 89 to 94 Monday and 88 to 93 again on Tuesday.

Near the beach it’s 74 to 79 Saturday and Sunday, 75 to 80 Monday and back to 74 to 79 Tuesday.

Share your weather photos:

Send your recent, Orange County weather photos to pbrennan@ocregister.com along with your name, home city, when and where the picture was taken and what it shows.

We publish many reader photos online and in print.

Text OCRQUAKE to 56654 to get free quake news alerts.
Text OCRSCIENCE to 56654 to get free science news alerts.

Latest posts:

Heat goes on, clouds on the side is a post from: OC Science

MRI brain scans showing increased structural integrity of white matter connecting different regions of the brain in people with highly superior autobiographical memory. Image courtesy James McGaugh, UC Irvine.

Few can forget where they were during the horrific events of 9/11.

Now imagine that, like Louise Owen of New York, you remember nearly every day of your life with the same crystal clarity.

People like Owen, who have “highly superior autobiographical memory,” can instantly summon the day of the week, significant historical events, what they did, where they went and even provide a weather report for any date they are given — no matter if it’s decades later.

And UC Irvine scientists who pioneered the study of this rare ability say they have begun to illuminate the inner workings of superior-memory brains.

In a recent study, researcher James McGaugh and doctoral student Aurora LePort say they have found evidence that the brains of their superior-memory study subjects are, indeed, different.

All showed differences in nine brain structures, including stronger “white matter” connections between their mid and forebrains, when compared with control subjects.

And those structures have been linked to autobiographical memory by other researchers, McGaugh said — though determining just how the structures relate to memory will require further research.

UC Irvine neurobiologist James McGaugh, senior author of a recent paper on brain structure in people with highly superior autobiographical memory. Photo by Steve Zylius, UC Irvine.

“This is a correlation,” McGaugh said. “This is detective work. We have arrived on the scene of a crime. These subjects who have this ability differ in brain organization from subjects that don’t have that. Was it genetic? Was it something that developed as the subject aged? We simply don’t know. Is it causative? We don’t know.”

McGaugh’s fascination with superior memory, along with more than a decade of focused research, began when he was contacted by his very first subject, a woman given the initials “A. J.” to protect her identity.

After he published his first paper on her, in 2006, others began to contact McGaugh saying they, too, possessed the same extraordinary ability.

The first study subject was revealed as Jill Price when she published a book on her experiences, “The Woman Who Can’t Forget: The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science.”

That, plus more press exposure, caused more prospective study subjects to seek out McGaugh.

“The big change came in 2011, when I and a number of our subjects appeared on the ’60 Minutes’ TV program,” he said. “I got over 500 people who contacted me then, (saying) they had this ability or knew someone who did.”

The latest paper, published last month in a science journal called “Neurobiology of Learning and Memory,” focuses on 11 subjects shown to have the ability, out of 33 McGaugh and his team have identified so far.

Many more believe they have superior autobiographical memory, but don’t really possess it.

So scientific confirmation begins with an initial screening over the phone.

“Then the very good ones are brought to to UCI for further testing,” McGaugh said. “We give them a huge number of questionnaires.”

Their ability to instantly recall what day of the week it was is checked against calendars; if they remember a rainy day, it is checked against weather reports.

“‘When did Elvis Presley die?’” the researchers might ask, McGaugh said. “They give us the year and the day of the week, what happened on this particular day. We vary the questions to cover public events like elections, plane crashes, sporting events, movies.”

None of the test subjects achieves 100 percent accuracy on such events, he said, because it depends on what information they were exposed to at the time.

“The best people get on the order of 55 percent to 60 percent,” he said. “Control subjects (those without the ability) get between zero and 15 percent.”

They score far higher, however, on personal memories.

“For autobiographical memory, we test events at five different time points — using weather, diaries, photographs — from the past, and they’re 99 percent accurate,” LePort said.

When he evaluated Louise Owen, who worked as a violinist in New York, McGaugh zeroed in on weather.

“I asked her to tell me the days on which it rained in New York a couple of decades earlier, and she did it successfully,” he said.

By varying the kinds of questions asked, McGaugh said the researchers can rule out people who indulge in rote memory exercises to retain such information.

“That is something that’s highly unlikely — going around saying, ‘I’ve got to remember the days on which it rained in New York,’ ” he said.

In fact, the researchers found that their test subjects who showed superior autobiographical memory were actually no better than the rest of us at ordinary memorization tasks.

“In terms of standard lab tasks, like learning of nonsense material and so on, in general they did no better than our control subjects,” McGaugh said. “So they’re not outstanding learners of material. They are outstanding non-forgetters of material.”

McGaugh says they are “bad at forgetting, because their memories linger after that period of time, and ours do not.”

Another odd association cropped up during the research, he said: Obsessive-compulsiveness was far more prevalent in subjects who possessed superior autobiographical memory.

“They save a lot,” he said. “They hoard. They are germ avoidant.”

Many have collections — magazines, videos, stamps, shoes — that are meticulously catalogued. The researchers say they do not know if such behavior somehow assists their ability to remember.

The researchers also take MRI brain scans of their subjects, which is how they were able to measure statistical differences in the nine brain regions.

UC Irvine researcher Aurora LePort, first author on a paper showing structural differences in the brains of people with “highly superior autobiographical memory.” Register photo by Paul Rodriguez.

McGaugh was uncertain how prevalent such abilities might be in the population at large, although a rough initial guess — based on those who came forward and passed screening after nationwide television exposure — suggest it could be as little as a few hundred among many millions.

The researchers’ next efforts will be to better understand the mechanics of superior memory, LePort said.

“They could be better at encoding information, how they store information and how they retrieve it,” she said. “We’d like to look at that. We’d like to look at the genetics.”

One likely avenue will be functional imaging — that is, imaging the brains of test subjects in real time while they are inside a scanner, performing memory tests.

For Louise Owen, ultra-sharp memories can be tinged with emotion that is also somehow linked with a high-precision mental calendar.

“I recall most days with the exact clarity that I remember this one (9/11/01), as my memories of 9/11 are not dramatically more vivid than any other day that year,” Owen told LePort last year. “And 9/11/11 is a Sunday…which feels completely different from it being a Tuesday a la 2001.”

This year, she said, “will feel more like the significant milestone anniversary when 9/11 falls on a Tuesday once again. But that’s just me I suppose.”

Do you believe you have superior autobiographical memory? The researchers are still looking for study subjects. Call the McGaugh Lab at UCI at 949-824-5401 or email the researchers at ultramem@uci.edu.

Text OCRQUAKE to 56654 to get free quake news alerts.
Text OCRSCIENCE to 56654 to get free science news alerts.

Latest posts:

Total recall? Your brain might be different is a post from: OC Science

Fishing at the Huntington Beach Pier on Sunday. Photo by Brett Whitaker, Huntington Beach.

The week’s hot weather is expected to peak in Orange County Tuesday, flirting with triple digits but perhaps falling just short, the National Weather Service says.

Forecasts place inland Orange County highs in the 94 to 99 range, 78 to 83 on the coast under mostly sunny skies, as high pressure over Colorado and New Mexico continues expanding in our direction.

A modest increase in monsoon moisture also could bring a few afternoon clouds and a slight chance of thunderstorms over mountains and deserts farther inland.

The humidity should help curb temperatures a bit Wednesday and Thursday.

A heron rests in a tree at Anaheim Coves Recreational Area during sunrise Tuesday morning. PHOTO BY BRUCE CHAMBERS, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

And while low pressure moving in along the coast should cool things down a bit Friday and Saturday, it won’t be by much; inland highs still could push into the upper 80s.

Apart from slightly lower temperatures, Wednesday looks a lot like Thursday: 90 to 95 inland, 75 to 80 on the coast under mostly sunny skies.

Thursday it’s partly cloudy, then mostly sunny and 86 to 91 inland, 72 to 77 on the coast.

Friday stays mostly sunny and perhaps a degree warmer on the coast, a degree or so cooler inland.

Saturday starts with patchy clouds and fog in the morning, then turns mostly sunny. Inland highs should be 84 to 89, 72 to 77 at the beach.

Then a warming trend should return Sunday as the coastal low-pressure weakens.

That means inland highs of 86 to 91, 73 to 78 on the coast, with sunny skies after a partly cloudy morning.

The cloud-sun pattern is the same on Monday, Labor Day, with inland highs reaching into the 87 to 92 range while coastal highs remain around 73 to 78.

Share your weather photos:

Send your recent, Orange County weather photos to pbrennan@ocregister.com along with your name, home city, when and where the picture was taken and what it shows.

We publish many reader photos online and in print.

Text OCRQUAKE to 56654 to get free quake news alerts.
Text OCRSCIENCE to 56654 to get free science news alerts.

Latest posts:

Hot in O.C.: Today should be week’s warmest is a post from: OC Science