Currently in San Francisco — September 13, 2023: Sunny, windy Wednesday

The weather, currently.

It’s been a dissonant experience to live in Northern California this year as the southern half of the state has endured such strange and at times unnerving weather patterns. As SoCal residents tolerate unusually high humidity this week due to Tropical Storm Jova, the Bay Area continues to luxuriate in a period of relative calm.

Wednesday will be another mild day in San Francisco with daytime temps eventually hitting the high 60s, the sun showing up strong in the afternoon and the winds gusting up to 18mph. At times this week, the fog has been more persistent than forecast, and it will roll back in Wednesday evening as the temperature drops to the mid-50s.

— Britta Shoot

What you need to know, currently.

Britta Shoot is our new San Francisco writer, who has written for publications as varied as Bay Nature and the Economist. As we head into this El Niño winter, we’ll also be experimenting with hyperlocal daily weather newsletter across the Bay Area — waitlists open now!

The Kīlauea volcano on the big island of Hawai’i began erupting on Sunday afternoon — its fifth eruption in the past four years.

Kīlauea is one of the most active volcanoes on Earth, so this really isn’t a surprise, but it’s still a literally awesome reminder that we all live on a planet that is continually in motion at all space and time scales.

The Hawaiian islands were formed over the past 50 million years by the same plume of upwelling undersea magma in the middle of the Pacific. The island of Hawai’i is the largest and youngest island of the chain — Kīlauea emerged from under the ocean just 100,000 years ago. In 2018, the volcano’s summit collapsed and released a lava flow up to 500m (1600ft) thick that destroyed hundreds of homes and marked a shift into its current eruptive phase. In contrast, this week’s eruption is extremely minor — but still impressive.

The US Geological Survey has set up a live view of the eruption in Kīlauea’s Halemaʻumaʻu crater:

— Eric Holthaus

What you can do, currently.

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