RADIO CALL — TAPE #787 EXCERPT
Q: Mark Russell Bell
S: “Coast to Coast AM” screener
G: George Noory, host of “Coast to Coast AM”
R: Ross Mitchell, taped announcements for “Coast to Coast AM”
D: Deepak Chopra, guest
C: unidentified caller
(TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: I CALLED “COAST TO COAST AM” AROUND MIDNIGHT ON THE MORNING OF NOVEMBER 13, 2003. DEEPAK CHOPRA WAS THE GUEST. I LISTENED TO SHOW PROMOS AND THE USA NETWORK RADIO NEWS UNTIL TOM, THE SCREENER, WAS HEARD.)
S: “Coast to Coast.” What’s your name?
Q: Hi. My name is Mark.
S: Hi Mark. Where are you calling from?
Q: The San Fernando Valley.
S: And Mark, how old are you sir?
Q: I’m 47.
S: What city are you in?
Q: Canoga Park.
S: Okay and what did you want to say to our guest?
Q: Mr. Chopra mentioned advertising as brainwashing.
S: Uh-huh?
Q: So I’m hoping that he’ll share an interesting metaphor. How does he help people see beyond a culture that promotes materialistic accumulation over —
S: Great question. Hold on, Mark (“OKAY”) and make sure your radio’s off, okay?
Q: Okay.
(TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: THE NEWS CONTINUED WITH INTERLUDES FOR A COMMERCIAL AND SHOW NEWSLETTER PROMO. AFTER THE NEWS THERE WAS ANOTHER NEWSLETTER PROMO.)
I dream of rain I dream of gardens in the desert sand I wake in vain I dream of love as time runs through my head I dream of fire Dreams are tied to a heart that will never die And in the flames Shadows play in the shape of a man’s desire Desert rose . . .
(“Desert Rose” performed by Sting)
R: To talk with George Noory, call the wild card line at area code (gives number), the first-time caller line is area code (gives number). To talk with George Noory toll-free from east of the Rockies, call (gives number); west of the Rockies, toll-free (gives number). International callers may reach George Noory by calling the AT&T international operator and dialing toll-free (gives number). From coast to coast and worldwide on the Internet, this is “Coast to Coast AM” with George Noory.
G: Oh it’s really going to go by quickly now. The next couple hours, we’ll open up the phone lines, give you an opportunity to talk with our guest tonight, Deepak Chopra. (commercials) And welcome back to “Coast to Coast.” I’m George Noory with my guest Deepak Chopra and we are talking about his brand new book The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence. A couple websites — they are linked up right now at coasttocoastam.com: of course, his which is chopra.com — C — H — O — P — R — A dot com; and the other one is anhglobal.org. They are both there right now for you (“AT”) any time. And, of course, your phone calls as well. Dr., people I think resonate. They have this frequency about them. If they are able to harmonize or — or somehow get this frequency in balance with nature, will that help them do some of the things we’ve been talking about tonight?
D: Absolutely. By the way, since you mentioned — since you mentioned the website, people can also come to the chopra.com website and ask me questions and I will answer them. I do that regularly.
G: Excellent.
D: They can also post their experiences for others to read. And that’s one of the ways to accelerate the process. When we share our experiences. So we have discussion boards where people can come and share their experiences. And, in fact, we read the stories of synchronicity and coincidences that people have and then periodically invite them to our center — the winners — to participate in a course together. So I encourage anybody who either reads the book or not reads the book to at least participate in the discussion boards because we want to accelerate this process. Now to answer your question, you know of course if we harmonize with nature we are expressions of nature in our body rhythms are the symphony of the cosmos. Our biological rhythms are related to the rotation of the Earth and the movement of the Earth around the Sun. The seasons affect us. The cycles of night and day affect us. The tidal rhythms affect us. And in the book, again, I go into how can you harmonize your biological rhythms with the rhythms of the cosmos — you know, there’s an ancient saying in the wisdom tradition of ayurveda: “As is the atom, so is the universe. As is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm. As is the human body, so is the cosmic body. As is the human mind, so is the cosmic mind.” When your intent is introduced in that field of harmony between microcosm and macrocosm, then the symphony of the macrocosm, of the universe orchestrates the fulfillment of your intent. First, through coincidences but when as those coincidences accelerate in what we call miracles — because miracle — the word miracle comes from the Latin word mirare which means to be filled with wonder. And the reason you’re filled with wonder is that you feel that your intentions are being orchestrated by the cosmic mind or the Mind of the universe, of God, (“NO”) Spirit, or the Infinite Being — it doesn’t matter what we call it. In the book, I go through seven steps to go from your constricted awareness into your expanded awareness. We can discuss those steps but the true — true experience of synchronicity has the following characteristics. It seems to be a conspiracy of improbabilities in that many —
S: Mark?
Q: Yeah?
S: When George goes to you, jump in, get straight to the point, okay?
Q: Will do.
S: Thanks, bud.
D: — (improbable events happen simultaneously. By the way, the) word conspiracy means the coming together of spirit or to go in fire.
G: Um-huh.
D: The — the events are related to each other in that the people involved in the events share some karmic bond, share some bond of spirituality. They share some bond of past experience. The events are orchestrated in a domain which is beyond space and time. The events move you to a higher level of consciousness where you don’t just think in terms of waking consciousness or dream consciousness or sleep consciousness, there are other states of consciousness that we have access to. Like cosmic consciousness, God consciousness, unity consciousness. The events make us very aware of the fact that intention is a force in nature just like gravity is a force of nature. The events make — start to bring about an inner transformation in us and there is no going back. And the events make it very clear that our inner world of thoughts, feelings, emotions, dreams is no different from the outer world. They’re both part of a continuum of consciousness or intelligence or Spirit or what scientists call quantum non-locality.
G: What has the greatest chance of occurring? That which you — you — you — you will: ‘I — I — I want this good job. I want this relationship with this person.’ Or do you merely sit back and let fate decide and maybe you don’t get with the person you think you care about. Maybe it was never meant to be.
D: Yeah well you don’t let fate decide though. You must participate. The universe remains unmanifested unless you participate. It’s a principle in physics that — you know, that a wave will remain a probability amplitude — a mathematical probability unless an observer is there to observe it. As soon as the observer is there to observe it, then it’s no longer a wave. It becomes a particle. It is no longer a probability. It becomes a space/time event. So you must participate with your intention and with your choices. But you must always ask yourself, “Is this choice of benefit only to me or is this choice of benefit to everybody that’s affected by me?”
G: Well said. Yes. (“SO”)
D: If you have that choice which is of benefit to those around you and those who are affected by you, then that choice is more likely to be a choice that synchronizes with the harmony that exists.
G: Let’s go the phones. Let’s go to our wild card line first. Welcome to (BEEP) (“Coast to Coast”), you’re on the air with us. Hi there.
Q: Hi, this is Mark.
G: Hi, Mark.
Q: Mr. Chopra mentioned advertising as brainwashing. So how do you help people see beyond a culture that promotes materialistic accumulation over spiritual responsibility? Maybe an interesting metaphor would be good. I could give a quick one as a coincidence —
G: Well I’d rather — I’d rather hear his than yours.
D: No, actually maybe — he’s got a very good point in how do we go beyond the hypnosis of social conditioning? And that is how do we change the media itself to be more responsible? Why are we as a nation so obsessed with Kobe Bryant’s trial or Winona Ryder’s —
G: Um-huh.
D: — shoplifting habits when 40,000 children are dying of hunger every day? That’s one of the objects of our (line disconnected) humanity — the Alliance for the New Humanity, the anhglobal.org — to actually get responsible media to participate in social responsibility and spiritual responsibility. That’s part of what we are doing. In fact, the Puerto Rico conference is focused on how we can have more responsibility as a culture through educational institutions, through entertainment, through music, through media, through news networks, through the Internet. Just by actually for — for you, George — just by putting anhglobal.org as a link to you, you’re already participating in that.
G: Hmm, you know it — it is really to me so incredibly amazing how, for example, in schools children have to have the best shoes, the best clothes, and they compete with each other. If they could only understand what it’s really all about.
D: Um-huh. Yeah, what it’s really all about is our creativity, our intuition, our inspiration, our love, our compassion, our connectivity, and our ability to manifest for everybody.
G: Alright. Thanks for that phone call, by the way. East of the Rockies . . .
(TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: LATER IN THE SHOW, CHOPRA AGAIN ADDRESSED THESE ISSUES.)
G: . . . What are your feelings about the state of this planet with everything that’s going on right now?
D: Well first of all, it’s not a good state. There’s a state of chaos: 40,000 children die every day of hunger. That’s less than four percent of our military budget would take care of that. There is terrorism in the world. You have all these suicide bombings occurring. You have ecological devastation, social injustice, economic disparities. More than 50 percent of the world lives on less than $2 a day. So — and we have a war on terrorism, a war on drugs, a war on cancer, a war on AIDS, a war on poverty. Our metaphor is wrong. We have to go beyond this kind of thinking and we have to say that they have to be creative solutions where we tackle these big problems as a collective humanity. That’s why we have the Alliance for the New Humanity. There are enough resources in the world today to feed every hungry child. There are enough creative resources in the world to tackle and restore even scientific breakthroughs to restore the ecological balance of nature. We have enough brilliant people in the world who can tell us that we can go beyond our ideology and dogma and belief systems and recognize the universality of all people and all faiths. So we have a responsibility right now to our children and to our children’s children to give them a legacy for a better world. It’s — it’s something we must do. I personally consider myself now to be in the autumn of my life and this is what I’m dedicating the rest of my life for.
Q: (speaking into tape recorder) So the next show later Thursday there was an hour of open lines. I was too tired to really listen to it so I recorded it and there was a very telling EVP, considering my own experience and I’ll share it with you. First of all, I should say that when I listen to a lot of the guests on the radio show I hear an awful lot of EVP “NO” and other EVP so Spirit is helping the guests and the listeners. And I just wonder how many of them are aware of the phenomenon. So here was the EVP later that Thursday.
G: . . . East of the Rockies, you’re on “Coast to Coast.” Hi there.
C: Hi, George.
G: Yes? Hi.
C: Hi. How are you doing?
G: Good.
C: Great. I — I was calling about your — your guest that you had on. That David Icke.
G: David Icke last week, yep.
C: Yeah. Before when the (“SHIT”) — when the show started . . .
Q: So I was just listening to the show and that’s what I heard. I guess I really don’t need to share the metaphor I was going to share. I guess I wanted to communicate something in the area of what I had discussed when I had called Shirley MacLaine. How many — when was that? A couple years ago? Two or three years ago. And I realized now — because I tried to look up that call on my website and I couldn’t find it. So somehow I overlooked adding that to my website. So I guess I’ll add that here. Mistakes do happen after all.
(TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: SEE BELOW.)
Q: Now there were some things that Deepak said during the interview that I disagree with. And I did add a message to his bulletin board. And I guess I should clarify that sometimes in trying to make sense of evil — well you have karma but them you have the inexplicable aspects of ‘bad.’ When bad things happen. Now when I have made the mistake of trying to determine or consider that perhaps God was somehow involved with bad things happening as a test or to see — I don’t know. It was really more of an emotional feeling. And some of the things that Deepak said made me shake my head, thinking, “Oh that would earn me a quarter at least.” Or I would be listening to the radio and I would hear, “If you don’t know me by now . . .” Anyway, I’ll have to listen to Deepak’s interview again because I was sort of tired when I heard it. Coincidentally — being the theme of Deepak’s 40th book — today on the front page of the L.A. Times, which is always stacked at the main office, there’s a photo of snow and it says: “This Is L.A.?” The caption is:
S: “Coast to Coast.” What’s your name?
Q: Hi. My name is Mark.
S: Hi Mark. Where are you calling from?
Q: The San Fernando Valley.
S: And Mark, how old are you sir?
Q: I’m 47.
S: What city are you in?
Q: Canoga Park.
S: Okay and what did you want to say to our guest?
Q: Mr. Chopra mentioned advertising as brainwashing.
S: Uh-huh?
Q: So I’m hoping that he’ll share an interesting metaphor. How does he help people see beyond a culture that promotes materialistic accumulation over —
S: Great question. Hold on, Mark (“OKAY”) and make sure your radio’s off, okay?
Q: Okay.
(TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: THE NEWS CONTINUED WITH INTERLUDES FOR A COMMERCIAL AND SHOW NEWSLETTER PROMO. AFTER THE NEWS THERE WAS ANOTHER NEWSLETTER PROMO.)
I dream of rain I dream of gardens in the desert sand I wake in vain I dream of love as time runs through my head I dream of fire Dreams are tied to a heart that will never die And in the flames Shadows play in the shape of a man’s desire Desert rose . . .
(“Desert Rose” performed by Sting)
R: To talk with George Noory, call the wild card line at area code (gives number), the first-time caller line is area code (gives number). To talk with George Noory toll-free from east of the Rockies, call (gives number); west of the Rockies, toll-free (gives number). International callers may reach George Noory by calling the AT&T international operator and dialing toll-free (gives number). From coast to coast and worldwide on the Internet, this is “Coast to Coast AM” with George Noory.
G: Oh it’s really going to go by quickly now. The next couple hours, we’ll open up the phone lines, give you an opportunity to talk with our guest tonight, Deepak Chopra. (commercials) And welcome back to “Coast to Coast.” I’m George Noory with my guest Deepak Chopra and we are talking about his brand new book The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence. A couple websites — they are linked up right now at coasttocoastam.com: of course, his which is chopra.com — C — H — O — P — R — A dot com; and the other one is anhglobal.org. They are both there right now for you (“AT”) any time. And, of course, your phone calls as well. Dr., people I think resonate. They have this frequency about them. If they are able to harmonize or — or somehow get this frequency in balance with nature, will that help them do some of the things we’ve been talking about tonight?
D: Absolutely. By the way, since you mentioned — since you mentioned the website, people can also come to the chopra.com website and ask me questions and I will answer them. I do that regularly.
G: Excellent.
D: They can also post their experiences for others to read. And that’s one of the ways to accelerate the process. When we share our experiences. So we have discussion boards where people can come and share their experiences. And, in fact, we read the stories of synchronicity and coincidences that people have and then periodically invite them to our center — the winners — to participate in a course together. So I encourage anybody who either reads the book or not reads the book to at least participate in the discussion boards because we want to accelerate this process. Now to answer your question, you know of course if we harmonize with nature we are expressions of nature in our body rhythms are the symphony of the cosmos. Our biological rhythms are related to the rotation of the Earth and the movement of the Earth around the Sun. The seasons affect us. The cycles of night and day affect us. The tidal rhythms affect us. And in the book, again, I go into how can you harmonize your biological rhythms with the rhythms of the cosmos — you know, there’s an ancient saying in the wisdom tradition of ayurveda: “As is the atom, so is the universe. As is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm. As is the human body, so is the cosmic body. As is the human mind, so is the cosmic mind.” When your intent is introduced in that field of harmony between microcosm and macrocosm, then the symphony of the macrocosm, of the universe orchestrates the fulfillment of your intent. First, through coincidences but when as those coincidences accelerate in what we call miracles — because miracle — the word miracle comes from the Latin word mirare which means to be filled with wonder. And the reason you’re filled with wonder is that you feel that your intentions are being orchestrated by the cosmic mind or the Mind of the universe, of God, (“NO”) Spirit, or the Infinite Being — it doesn’t matter what we call it. In the book, I go through seven steps to go from your constricted awareness into your expanded awareness. We can discuss those steps but the true — true experience of synchronicity has the following characteristics. It seems to be a conspiracy of improbabilities in that many —
S: Mark?
Q: Yeah?
S: When George goes to you, jump in, get straight to the point, okay?
Q: Will do.
S: Thanks, bud.
D: — (improbable events happen simultaneously. By the way, the) word conspiracy means the coming together of spirit or to go in fire.
G: Um-huh.
D: The — the events are related to each other in that the people involved in the events share some karmic bond, share some bond of spirituality. They share some bond of past experience. The events are orchestrated in a domain which is beyond space and time. The events move you to a higher level of consciousness where you don’t just think in terms of waking consciousness or dream consciousness or sleep consciousness, there are other states of consciousness that we have access to. Like cosmic consciousness, God consciousness, unity consciousness. The events make us very aware of the fact that intention is a force in nature just like gravity is a force of nature. The events make — start to bring about an inner transformation in us and there is no going back. And the events make it very clear that our inner world of thoughts, feelings, emotions, dreams is no different from the outer world. They’re both part of a continuum of consciousness or intelligence or Spirit or what scientists call quantum non-locality.
G: What has the greatest chance of occurring? That which you — you — you — you will: ‘I — I — I want this good job. I want this relationship with this person.’ Or do you merely sit back and let fate decide and maybe you don’t get with the person you think you care about. Maybe it was never meant to be.
D: Yeah well you don’t let fate decide though. You must participate. The universe remains unmanifested unless you participate. It’s a principle in physics that — you know, that a wave will remain a probability amplitude — a mathematical probability unless an observer is there to observe it. As soon as the observer is there to observe it, then it’s no longer a wave. It becomes a particle. It is no longer a probability. It becomes a space/time event. So you must participate with your intention and with your choices. But you must always ask yourself, “Is this choice of benefit only to me or is this choice of benefit to everybody that’s affected by me?”
G: Well said. Yes. (“SO”)
D: If you have that choice which is of benefit to those around you and those who are affected by you, then that choice is more likely to be a choice that synchronizes with the harmony that exists.
G: Let’s go the phones. Let’s go to our wild card line first. Welcome to (BEEP) (“Coast to Coast”), you’re on the air with us. Hi there.
Q: Hi, this is Mark.
G: Hi, Mark.
Q: Mr. Chopra mentioned advertising as brainwashing. So how do you help people see beyond a culture that promotes materialistic accumulation over spiritual responsibility? Maybe an interesting metaphor would be good. I could give a quick one as a coincidence —
G: Well I’d rather — I’d rather hear his than yours.
D: No, actually maybe — he’s got a very good point in how do we go beyond the hypnosis of social conditioning? And that is how do we change the media itself to be more responsible? Why are we as a nation so obsessed with Kobe Bryant’s trial or Winona Ryder’s —
G: Um-huh.
D: — shoplifting habits when 40,000 children are dying of hunger every day? That’s one of the objects of our (line disconnected) humanity — the Alliance for the New Humanity, the anhglobal.org — to actually get responsible media to participate in social responsibility and spiritual responsibility. That’s part of what we are doing. In fact, the Puerto Rico conference is focused on how we can have more responsibility as a culture through educational institutions, through entertainment, through music, through media, through news networks, through the Internet. Just by actually for — for you, George — just by putting anhglobal.org as a link to you, you’re already participating in that.
G: Hmm, you know it — it is really to me so incredibly amazing how, for example, in schools children have to have the best shoes, the best clothes, and they compete with each other. If they could only understand what it’s really all about.
D: Um-huh. Yeah, what it’s really all about is our creativity, our intuition, our inspiration, our love, our compassion, our connectivity, and our ability to manifest for everybody.
G: Alright. Thanks for that phone call, by the way. East of the Rockies . . .
(TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: LATER IN THE SHOW, CHOPRA AGAIN ADDRESSED THESE ISSUES.)
G: . . . What are your feelings about the state of this planet with everything that’s going on right now?
D: Well first of all, it’s not a good state. There’s a state of chaos: 40,000 children die every day of hunger. That’s less than four percent of our military budget would take care of that. There is terrorism in the world. You have all these suicide bombings occurring. You have ecological devastation, social injustice, economic disparities. More than 50 percent of the world lives on less than $2 a day. So — and we have a war on terrorism, a war on drugs, a war on cancer, a war on AIDS, a war on poverty. Our metaphor is wrong. We have to go beyond this kind of thinking and we have to say that they have to be creative solutions where we tackle these big problems as a collective humanity. That’s why we have the Alliance for the New Humanity. There are enough resources in the world today to feed every hungry child. There are enough creative resources in the world to tackle and restore even scientific breakthroughs to restore the ecological balance of nature. We have enough brilliant people in the world who can tell us that we can go beyond our ideology and dogma and belief systems and recognize the universality of all people and all faiths. So we have a responsibility right now to our children and to our children’s children to give them a legacy for a better world. It’s — it’s something we must do. I personally consider myself now to be in the autumn of my life and this is what I’m dedicating the rest of my life for.
Q: (speaking into tape recorder) So the next show later Thursday there was an hour of open lines. I was too tired to really listen to it so I recorded it and there was a very telling EVP, considering my own experience and I’ll share it with you. First of all, I should say that when I listen to a lot of the guests on the radio show I hear an awful lot of EVP “NO” and other EVP so Spirit is helping the guests and the listeners. And I just wonder how many of them are aware of the phenomenon. So here was the EVP later that Thursday.
G: . . . East of the Rockies, you’re on “Coast to Coast.” Hi there.
C: Hi, George.
G: Yes? Hi.
C: Hi. How are you doing?
G: Good.
C: Great. I — I was calling about your — your guest that you had on. That David Icke.
G: David Icke last week, yep.
C: Yeah. Before when the (“SHIT”) — when the show started . . .
Q: So I was just listening to the show and that’s what I heard. I guess I really don’t need to share the metaphor I was going to share. I guess I wanted to communicate something in the area of what I had discussed when I had called Shirley MacLaine. How many — when was that? A couple years ago? Two or three years ago. And I realized now — because I tried to look up that call on my website and I couldn’t find it. So somehow I overlooked adding that to my website. So I guess I’ll add that here. Mistakes do happen after all.
(TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: SEE BELOW.)
Q: Now there were some things that Deepak said during the interview that I disagree with. And I did add a message to his bulletin board. And I guess I should clarify that sometimes in trying to make sense of evil — well you have karma but them you have the inexplicable aspects of ‘bad.’ When bad things happen. Now when I have made the mistake of trying to determine or consider that perhaps God was somehow involved with bad things happening as a test or to see — I don’t know. It was really more of an emotional feeling. And some of the things that Deepak said made me shake my head, thinking, “Oh that would earn me a quarter at least.” Or I would be listening to the radio and I would hear, “If you don’t know me by now . . .” Anyway, I’ll have to listen to Deepak’s interview again because I was sort of tired when I heard it. Coincidentally — being the theme of Deepak’s 40th book — today on the front page of the L.A. Times, which is always stacked at the main office, there’s a photo of snow and it says: “This Is L.A.?” The caption is:
Residents on Belhaven Street in South L.A. dig out Thursday after a storm that dumped a blanket of hail and 5 inches of rain on the area. B1 Unusual weather forces, including temperature differentials of more than 100 degrees, generated the powerful storm.
Q: Well this just reminds me — listening to Deepak and reading these articles in the paper remind me never to be a know-it-all/explainer-awayer of something. As an example, I’ll read you part of this article that I found in the times that explains the snow falling on Belhaven Street. It says:
After The Deluge Rare Conditions Fed Fury of Downpour By Eric Malnic Times Staff Writer
The immense power of the thunderstorm that pounded Los Angeles on Wednesday was generated by temperature differentials of more than 100 degrees and meteorological circumstances that left the system stalled directly over the city, a veteran weather expert said Thursday.
“The result was the kind of rain and hail that probably fall only once every 100 years on Los Angeles,” said Tim McClung, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Oxnard.
About 5.3 inches of rain and hail fell on the central part of the city, most of it in less than three hours. Homes, businesses, schools and a hospital flooded, Los Angeles International Airport diverted flights, and evening commuter traffic drowned in runoff water up to 4 feet deep.
McClung said the storm started as a fairly ordinary low-pressure system, riding along on high-altitude jet stream winds that move generally from west to east north of the equator.
Low-pressure systems generate winds of their own that circulate counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, and somewhere over the Pacific Ocean those circulating winds proved strong enough to pull the system free of the jet stream.
“It was kind of like the jet stream laying an egg,” McClung said.
The egg, a classic “cut-off low,” hovered off the coast of Southern California for three days, gathering strength as it absorbed the warm, moist subtropical air on the surface of the ocean. The counterclockwise circulation of the low-pressure system tossed storm cells into Northern Mexico, and a few of them circled back into the deserts of southeastern California and western Arizona, but Los Angeles stayed dry.
Residual drift finally nudged the system ashore over Los Angeles on Wednesday afternoon. The temperature on the ground was about 70 degrees, pretty warm for November, and the temperature at the top of the system, about 40,000 feet, was near 30 below zero, pretty cold for November.
Warm air rises toward colder air, carrying with it the moisture of the storm. “And with a temperature differential like that, everything that was lifted kept on rising,” McClung said. “There was nothing to stabilize it. The air rose feverishly.”
The moisture carried up through the center of the storm condensed into water droplets in the much cooler temperatures at the top. Some fell as rain and some fell as hail.
Hail forms when the rising column of air is so powerful that it catches the falling droplets and pushes them further aloft, to temperatures where they freeze. Falling pellets of hail can be carried aloft again and again, adding layers of ice each time that make them bigger and bigger. Eventually, they weigh too much for the rising air to support, and fall to the ground.
Normally, thunderstorms move across the ground, propelled by ambient winds. But on Wednesday, McClung said, there were no onshore sea breezes or offshore winds like Santa Anas to move the storm, and for the better part of three hours it just sat there, generating millions of gallons of rainfall and thousands of tons of hail.
“You’re wringing out nearly all the moisture that was in the system,” McClung said. “That storm was really efficient.”
Efficient and compact, he said. A few miles to the north and south, only about an inch of rain fell.
Eventually, as the temperature differentials equalized, the uplift lessened, the rain slackened and the storm dissipated.
Meteorologists said they probably won’t see another event like it in Los Angeles in their lifetimes.
“It all came together just right,” McClung said.
The weather service predicted partly to mostly cloudy weather for the next seven days, with a slight chance of rain Saturday night and again toward the end of the week.
The immense power of the thunderstorm that pounded Los Angeles on Wednesday was generated by temperature differentials of more than 100 degrees and meteorological circumstances that left the system stalled directly over the city, a veteran weather expert said Thursday.
“The result was the kind of rain and hail that probably fall only once every 100 years on Los Angeles,” said Tim McClung, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Oxnard.
About 5.3 inches of rain and hail fell on the central part of the city, most of it in less than three hours. Homes, businesses, schools and a hospital flooded, Los Angeles International Airport diverted flights, and evening commuter traffic drowned in runoff water up to 4 feet deep.
McClung said the storm started as a fairly ordinary low-pressure system, riding along on high-altitude jet stream winds that move generally from west to east north of the equator.
Low-pressure systems generate winds of their own that circulate counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, and somewhere over the Pacific Ocean those circulating winds proved strong enough to pull the system free of the jet stream.
“It was kind of like the jet stream laying an egg,” McClung said.
The egg, a classic “cut-off low,” hovered off the coast of Southern California for three days, gathering strength as it absorbed the warm, moist subtropical air on the surface of the ocean. The counterclockwise circulation of the low-pressure system tossed storm cells into Northern Mexico, and a few of them circled back into the deserts of southeastern California and western Arizona, but Los Angeles stayed dry.
Residual drift finally nudged the system ashore over Los Angeles on Wednesday afternoon. The temperature on the ground was about 70 degrees, pretty warm for November, and the temperature at the top of the system, about 40,000 feet, was near 30 below zero, pretty cold for November.
Warm air rises toward colder air, carrying with it the moisture of the storm. “And with a temperature differential like that, everything that was lifted kept on rising,” McClung said. “There was nothing to stabilize it. The air rose feverishly.”
The moisture carried up through the center of the storm condensed into water droplets in the much cooler temperatures at the top. Some fell as rain and some fell as hail.
Hail forms when the rising column of air is so powerful that it catches the falling droplets and pushes them further aloft, to temperatures where they freeze. Falling pellets of hail can be carried aloft again and again, adding layers of ice each time that make them bigger and bigger. Eventually, they weigh too much for the rising air to support, and fall to the ground.
Normally, thunderstorms move across the ground, propelled by ambient winds. But on Wednesday, McClung said, there were no onshore sea breezes or offshore winds like Santa Anas to move the storm, and for the better part of three hours it just sat there, generating millions of gallons of rainfall and thousands of tons of hail.
“You’re wringing out nearly all the moisture that was in the system,” McClung said. “That storm was really efficient.”
Efficient and compact, he said. A few miles to the north and south, only about an inch of rain fell.
Eventually, as the temperature differentials equalized, the uplift lessened, the rain slackened and the storm dissipated.
Meteorologists said they probably won’t see another event like it in Los Angeles in their lifetimes.
“It all came together just right,” McClung said.
The weather service predicted partly to mostly cloudy weather for the next seven days, with a slight chance of rain Saturday night and again toward the end of the week.
Q: When people are explaining something, they’re not really explaining it entirely. They’re just explaining a very superficial aspect of something. And this is done in so many ways everyday and I hope not to fall into that trap. I’m going to try to concentrate on talking about my experiences and let people make their own conclusions. Also in today’s L.A. Times, there’s an obituary for one of the agency clients: Penny Singleton. I never knew her real name was Dorothy McNulty. So even then I had received an early ‘penny,’ so to speak.
RADIO CALL TRANSCRIPT — TAPE #651 EXCERPT
Q: Mark Russell BellM: Mike Siegel, host of “Coast to Coast AM”L: Shirley MacLaine, guest
M: . . . Wild card line, you’re on “Coast to Coast AM” Hello.
Q: Hi, Michael, Shirley.
M: Hi.
L: Hi.
Q: This is Mark in the San Fernando Valley.
L: Hi, Mark.
Q: And I wanted to ask you — with so much exposure to the world of the rich and famous, maybe you can tell us what you believe is the solution to the biggest mystery and that’s how the wealthy can imagine that God wants them to amass great wealth when so many people in the world are starving to death and the environment is being destroyed? (“L”)
L: Well it’s not — I don’t think it’s a question of manifesting great wealth, I think it’s a question of what do you do with it after you manifest it? And also that this country is — (“I”) what is the figure? I think that one-eighth of the world, which we represent, is using — what? Three-quarters of the natural resources?
M: It’s about that. Yeah, it’s — it’s an — 17 percent goes to the bottom three and a half or four billion people. Something like that.
L: Again, we’ve lost our reason for being, I’m afraid.
Q: I think if we each set — try to set a personal example for others (“HEL”) that that can really help.
L: Yep, we do. The poor always set the example. The poor are the ones who will give you the shirt off their back.
M: Well, of course, the other irony is that if — even in terms of nutrition, if you look at the peasants’ diet in China or some of the other diets, the healthiest diets are often times the impoverished diets.
L: The third world countries because they eat an equal amount of carbohydrates and protein and vegetables.
M: And they don’t have freezers to — to — to have this frozen food that isn’t really as good for you anyway so they eat fresh.
L: Fast food’s killing us.
M: Well — and we’ve brought it to the . . . we’ve brought it to Japan. We’ve brought it elsewhere where these used to be healthy — healthy people.
L: Um-huh.
M: And when I say we — the Western World. Shirley, you are absolutely wonderful. It was a delight to talk to you and it was great to have you on this program. I hope we can do it again and — and talk more about you being more a part of the program . . .
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