by Calculated Risk on 6/17/2015 08:34:00 PM

Off topic: A bizarre sight in California ... crabs attack!


Click on photo for larger image.

Photo taken at China Cove in Newport Beach, CA by Steven.



From the WaPo: Why these bright, tiny crabs are blanketing Southern California beaches

They came in by the thousands: tiny little red crabs on Orange County beaches Sunday, covering a shoreline much further north than their typical home.

Also called Pleuroncodes planipes, these one- to three-inch crawfish-like crabs are usually concentrated off the Baja California coast, said Linsey Sala, collection manager at University of California San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

The crabs are likely showing up further and further north because the water is unusually warm.

The warmer water could be due to a combination of factors, Sala said, including an El Nino, a large-scale oceanic climate phenomena. A giant patch of warm water, nicknamed "The Blob" by researchers, has formed in the Gulf of Alaska and off California's coast as weather patterns have failed to suck the usual amount of heat from the ocean.

Thursday:
• At 8:30 AM ET, the initial weekly unemployment claims report will be released. The consensus is for claims to decrease to 275 thousand from 279 thousand.

• Also at 8:30 AM, the Consumer Price Index for May from the BLS. The consensus is for a 0.5% increase in prices, and a 0.2% increase in core CPI.

• At 10:00 AM, the Philly Fed manufacturing survey for May. The consensus is for a reading of 8.0, up from 6.7 last month (above zero indicates expansion).