Sunnydale photo
The satellite photo of Sunnydale below the cut was inspired by the discussion in my post about Willow's eye colour... I've made the following assumptions:
1) The aerial view of Sunnydale crater in episode 8.01 shows four tiny vehicles/tents at the edge of the crater.
2) I zoomed out Google Maps until the aerial view of a highway showed cars at roughly the same size, and assumed that the scale of that map would equal the scale of the Sunnydale picture.
3) Combining the two, I estimated the crater in the drawing to be 2.2 kilometers (1.4 miles) in diameter.
4) Sunnydale in the photo looks remarkably like Santa Barbara in the real world...
5) ...Except that Sunnydale County is much less built-up and urbanised than Santa Barbara County is. I blame the Hellmouth.
6) Also, The First's evil power leached the very life from the soil in the countryside around Sunnydale, especially once its protector - Mayor Wilkins - was dead.
7) The picture in Episode 1 was taken from a helicopter flying over Kingman's Bluff due south of Sunnydale, looking north towards the distant mountains.
What does this prove? That we can indeed reconcile Sunnydale being both in the desert and at the coast... :)
Edit: The photo has been changed so it now extends westward, showing Sunnydale Airport and UCSD - both of which look to have survived the destruction of the Hellmouth, since they're so far out of town.
