How Two Location Geeks Get Mentions in the Rochester, Minnesota Press!

This is just so cool!:

“There’s a small group of people from around the country who really get involved with filming locations for television,” said Marc Valdez, who blogs and writes about location filming for the show.

Valdez, who lives in Sacramento, Calif., grew up in Albuquerque, N.M., where most of the events in “Better Call Saul” take place. Much of the show, along with its predecessor “Breaking Bad,” is shot on location in Albuquerque.

That’s what roped Valdez, an author, a semi-retired PhD atmospheric researcher, and former California Gubernatorial candidate, into sleuthing where episodes of both shows are shot.

Valdez recalled the moment he went from a casual first-time viewer to a post-broadcast location scout. He was watching a first-season episode of “Breaking Bad.”

“I’m looking at it and Walter White (played by Bryan Cranston) is handing Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) his life savings in order to buy an RV,” Valdez said. In the background was a hill Valdez enjoyed hiking when he was growing up in Albuquerque.

“For me, it became very personal,” he added.

...Valdez gives credit to his fellow location detectives for spotting Rochester in “Better Call Saul.”

“Our group of people recognized pretty quickly it wasn’t the Albuquerque area,” Valdez said. “My thought is okay, maybe it’s the Omaha/Council Bluffs area.”

People affiliated with the show don’t publicly share that kind of information. Sometimes that’s because location sites are negotiated with private property owners and people affiliated with the show are trying to protect privacy. Other times, directors, production staff and location scouts don’t like to share their secrets of good spots.

However, Valdez and the group have a particular set of skills.

“We all have our super powers,” he said. “Working together, we know we can do this.”

James Gelet, a professional photographer, has an eagle eye for spotting locations based on road markings and signs, Valdez said. 

Valdez said it was likely Gelet who figured out the scene was shot in Minnesota.

“Hats off to him, he’s a miracle worker,” Valdez said.

...Could that 30-second scene inspire a would-be location scout in Rochester the same way “Breaking Bad” inspired Valdez?

“It might,” Valdez said. “It’s like a point of pride that you didn’t even know was there.” 

Valdez has published two books listing and interpreting location shots for “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul.” Now that “Better Call Saul” is concluded, Valdez plans to travel to some of those locations later this month and finish revisions of both books for publication in September.

I have two very minor corrections to the newspaper article. 

Even though James Gelet determined that the film sequence came from Rochester, it's still unclear to me how he did it. James consulted with another friend of his who is an authority on roadmarks, and that fellow informed him that the film sequence came from Minnesota. (Who knew there were experts who can tell what state they are in based only on roadmarks?) Still, Minnesota is a big state, so how James narrowed the location down to Broadway in Rochester, I don't know. A wizard doesn't reveal his secrets! 

Second, the extra who "bragged online about being part of a 'Better Call Saul' courtroom scene but isn’t saying where it was shot" eventually clarified his Facebook comments and identified the courtroom as actually being at the real Bernalillo County Courthouse.

Well, This is a Persistent Circulation

Last week, a tropical circulation started along the Texas coast. It never reached Tropical Depression status, and weakened as it came inland. So, story over, right? No, it seems. The circulation continued slowly spinning and spinning, as it made its way west across Texas and scraped the southern boundary of New Mexico. Currently it's southwest of El Paso, and looks likely to park itself over northern Chihuahua for a little bit. Then it will move again - picking up strength as it moves northeast across New Mexico on Saturday, and reaching Oklahoma on Sunday, where it looks like it will cause real havoc. Because that's what weather systems do when they reach Oklahoma - cause real havoc. Beware tropical circulations, even if they never become hurricanes!

The Feds Facing Gotterdamerung on the Colorado River

What happens when options regarding water use dwindle away. "Cadillac Desert" indeed:

Federal officials have given the states until Aug. 16 to come up with a plan to swiftly conserve as much as a third of the river’s flows, the amount they believe is necessary to keep Lake Powell — a key reservoir along the Arizona-Utah border — from reaching disastrous levels next year. But the pain of the potential solutions is so huge that the states are struggling to reach a deal, according to eight people familiar with the discussions. 

...The solutions could include politically incendiary steps that previous administrations have only threatened: making steep cuts to water deliveries that would hit tribes and cities first, telling farmers how they can use water that they legally own, or cutting water deliveries across the board, which could get tied up in court. But inaction could lead to worse consequences: hydropower turbines crucial to the stability of the Western electrical grid grinding to a halt, cities from Phoenix to Los Angeles losing a major source of water, large swaths of highly productive farmland drying up and a Grand Canyon with no water flowing through it. 

“It’s all risks,” said John Fleck, a water policy professor at the University of New Mexico. “I don’t see anything that’s not a risk. It’s all bad options at this point.”

NM Monsoon, So Far

John sends this:

I'm most-impressed by the high rainfall in the broad area between Socorro and Gallup. High plateaus and some mountains there, and not extreme in elevation either, but still, lots of rain. I've been disappointed that it hasn't rained much in Albuquerque, but that's how it goes sometimes. Plus flooding in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains where the fires recently were. Right now, the monsoon has shifted west to Arizona. We'll see what happens there. Flooding in Las Vegas and Death Valley!

Grim Reaper Down the Alley

Coroner’s van idling in the alley last night about a block away from my house. As long as they don’t come over here....

Outlook So Far For The 2022 Atlantic Hurricane Season

The Pacific hurricane season this year seems normal, but the Atlantic hurricane season so far has been mighty weak. There are at least two reasons for that. Several storms nearly reached tropical storm status in the southern Caribbean in early July, but were shredded to pieces against the land masses of Central America. The Madden-Julian oscillation along the equator, which is good for igniting hurricanes, has all-but-vanished for the last two months. It's weird, all this inactivity, but it's good. 

Nevertheless, the very-long-range forecasts suggest tropical storm activity will increase in early September. So, we'll snooze for now, and reconvene later when the Atlantic gets a pulse.