Lucille's Scrapbook

Spokane is situated in the Columbia Basin. There are many hills and mountains around us. We also have many lakes and the Spokane River runs through our town. We have four seasons. It gets hot during the summer and cold and snowy in the winter.

The students in our class live in a mixture of a suburban and rural area. Our school is at the base of foothills. It is a mostly white community, but we do have a few  black and  hispanic people. The freeway Interstate 90 is being expanded right now through Spokane.

Our physical environment  gives us trees for logging, water for fishing and electricity, fertile soil for farming..... We do not have many natural hazards, except for when the wind blows, trees sometimes fall down. Also we sometimes have wild fires when it is very dry and hot.

Mrs. Milks Class
Rainbow, CA
Vallecitos School
                                Our guess                    GPS
Location

Latitude             33 degrees                    33 degrees N 24.771

Longitude           117 degrees                    117 degrees W 08.960

Physical Features:
    We have learned the physical features of our San Diego County area. One huge feature of importance is the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific Ocean lies about 20 miles west of Rainbow.  In our area, we also have mountains and lowlands.  Rainbow is a sort of valley nestled between mountains and the Pacific Ocean.  To the east of the mountains, lies the desert.  Have you heard of Palm Springs?  It is in the desert about 1
1/2 hours drive from here.
      We get little rain, about 10-12 inches a year.  If it were not for imported water, it would be very dry.    Our habitats are very diverse. The most common habitat is "Chaparral".  It consists mostly of grasses and shrubs with trees.  The limiting factors for growth of trees in San Diego County are water and elevation.  Lower level trees have to be drought resistent.  Mountain trees get more water.

    Hazards:
    Our main hazards are fire and earthquake.  Fires are much more common.  Each fall is fire season.  There are always fires in the fall. Earthquakes are common, but they are usually so small no one notices. We will occasionally have a larger earthquake, usually centered more north than Rainbow.  We can count on at least 1 per decade.  San Diego
county does not seem to be as active as Los Angeles or further north, as far as earthquakes go.  Earthquakes are scary.  We have disaster/earthquake drills in school.  We hope we never have a big earthquake

    Climate:
    Many people move to San Diego County due to the mild climate.  Along the coast, it stays pleasant all summer and winter.  Temperatures will range from 80 degrees in the summer to 57 degrees or so in the winter. You will see people in shorts and thongs year around.  People surf and swim in the ocean year around, but they wear wetsuits in the winter. Inland gets hotter in the summer and cooler in the winter.  It is not very humid here.  One of the benefits of this is we have few bugs to bug us.  It is not buggy at all compared to other places in the U.S.A.

Physical Geography Affects Citizens:
Ý ÝÝÝ Rainbow is a lowland and is rural, though we live near the large city of San Diego.ÝÝ There are three nurseries in Rainbow. The nurseries supply trees, flowers , and plants to the area. Many people have groves of avocadoes and oranges.
ÝÝÝ Many of the parents of our students are Hispanic and work in the local nursuries.Ý This provides a job for these parents.

Here are some of our pictures we drew to show you what it's like in California where we live.
 
 

Place
St. Paul, Minnesota is 44 degrees 57 minutes North latitude and 93 degrees 6 minutes west longitude. It is north of Iowa, south of Canada, East of North and South Dakota and west of Wisconsin.

Physical Characteristics
Minnesota is a long state, 406 miles from north to south.  It is the crossroad for three types of terrain; grassland plains and prairies, coniferous forests and hardwood forests.  We are known for the state with 10,000 lakes.  The best known body of water is the Mississippi which starts in Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota.  Temperatures can often be in the 90ís in the summer and be an average of 2 degrees in January.  The average snowfall in northern Minnesota is 70 inches.

Human Characteristics
We live in Oakdale, a suburb of the Twin Cities, St. Paul (our capital) and Minneapolis.  We have many ethic groups in our area which include white, Hispanic, Asian and African American.  We have many things to make life easier like grocery stores and hair salons, bridges, trains and a bus transit system

How the Physical Place Affects People
In our community we have lots of lakes.  We can enjoy fishing, boating, swimming, and ice skating.  We also have lots of trees so we have nature parks, cleaner air and firewood.
In winter some people make their living plowing snow.  In fall some people hunt animals like ducks, geese or white-tailed deer.

Natural Hazards
A natural hazard that occurs in Minnesota is a tornado.  When a tornado comes, we need to take shelter away from windows.  A siren goes off to warn us that a tornado is coming. A tornado is a powerful wind.  It is so powerful that it can pick up cars.   There has also been some floods in Minnesota which can cause lots of damage.
 
 

      Port Jefferson Station, Long Island

     Long Island is in SE New York.  It is 118 miles long and from 12-20 miles wide.  Long Island is shaped like a fish.  Port Jefferson Station is centrally located on the north shore of the island.  Long Island was formed by a huge glacier.  Because of the glacier
the north shore of the island is rocky and hilly and the south shore is flat and sandy.  Many people prefer the beaches on the south shore because they have lots
of sand while the beaches on the north shore are rocky.
     Port Jefferson Station is approximately 73 degrees West longitude and 41 degrees North latitude.  The Long Island Sound and Connecticut are north of us and the Atlantic Ocean is south of us.  Long Island is surrounded by the Atlantic ocean, East River, the Long Island Sound and hundreds of miles of beaches.
     We have four seasons here on the island, winter, spring, summer, and fall.  Our winters are cold and it sometimes snows.  Our past winters have been pretty mild.  In spring it rains and temperatures begin to rise.  In summer it's hot and people go swimming.  In the fall the leaves begin to change colors and fall off the trees as the temperatures begin to fall.  This fall the temperatures were higher than normal.
     For the past few years one of our main hazards has been fires.  Because of the dry weather we have lost a lot of trees in the Pine Barrens to fire, but they have started to grow back.
     Port Jefferson Station is a suburb where many ethnic groups live.  Port Jefferson Station is in an area that was first known as Comsewogue, which in the language of the Setalcott Indians means a place where several paths come together.  We like to think of it as a place where several different ethnic groups come together.  Our school district is called Comsewogue.
     Port Jefferson Station was a farming community until the 1950's.  In 1873 there was a growth in development when the Long Island Railroad extended service to Port Jefferson.  When Nesconset Highway was built in the middle 1950's the area quickly began to develop.  In 1872 ferry service was started between Port Jefferson, the town north of us, and Bridgeport, Connecticut.  The ferries and boats that travel across
the Long Island Sound make travel to the states north of us easy to get to.  Recently our public library was expanded to make life easier for the residents of Port Jefferson Station.

Remsen, New York
Remsen is a rural area about 20 miles from Utica and Rome NY.  Our  latitude os 43:19N and our longitude is 75:15W.  New York is North of  Pennsylvania; south of Canada; East of Lake Ontario and West of Vermont.
 

Hello,

 We would like to share some information with you about Phillipsbur, NJ.  We are located at approximately 40 degrees and 40 minutes North latitude, and 75 degrees and 15 minutes West longitude.  Phillipsburg is in the Mid Atlantic region in the state of New Jersey.  New York is to the north of New Jersey, to our east is the Atlantic Ocean, Pennsylvania is to our west and the Delaware River makes up our western border.  To the south of us is the Delaware Bay.  Phillipsburg is right on the Pennsylvania border.  Many of us cross over the bridge to Pennsylvania often.  We enjoy the scenery around our town so much that many of us spend time outdoors bike riding, walking, fishing and playing in the parks.  Phillipsburg also has a very strong youth sports program which many of our students are involved in.

 Phillipsburg New Jersey is in the Delaware River basin in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.  The Delaware River forms the Western border of our town.  It is very useful and beautiful, but its currents can be very dangerous.  The Merrill Creek Reservoir  is another beautiful scenic spot.   At the reservoir there is an organization that is breeding Bald Eagles in an attempt to increase their numbers in the wild.  The Continental climate here includes hot, wet summers and cold, snowy winters.  Our snowfall this winter was average.  Last summer we had a drought, then in September we were hit with Hurrican Floyd which closed our schools for two days because of the flooding.

 We live in a suburban area.  Some of our students live in town and some of them live in a more rural area.  Phillipsburg is a mostly an Anglo-American community with some African-American and Hispanic people.  Our population is between 18,000 and 19,000.  In our community we have a hospital and two major bridges crossing over the Delaware River to connect us to Pennsylvania.  A major highway, Rte. 22, runs through Phillipsburg.  We also have three parks, Walters Park, Delaware River Park, and Shapell Park, which has several monuments to Civil War heroes.

 Our physical environment gives us a river, small mountains, trees and reservoirs.  Route 22 allows some people to commute to other towns to work.  The many trees, flowers and weeds irritate many peopleís allergies.  There is an annual Duck Derby on the Delaware River that raises money for charities.  Just outside our town, people make their living by farming.  Most of our studentís parents work in service oriented jobs.  Natural hazards in our area include floods, blizzards and hurricanes.  There was a major flood of the Delaware River in 1955.  In 1993 we had a blizzard that closed our schools for about 2 weeks.  We get hit indirectly by hurricanes as they come up the coast of New Jersey, we get the rain and winds at a lower level than the coast does.

 We hope youíve learned a little about the geography of Phillipsburg from this.  Itís a nice place to visit, hope to see you sometime.