LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – A number of county roadways continue to be impacted by flooding due to the heavy rains, but some areas are soon due to reopen, according to county officials.

The Lake County Sheriff's Office reported that roads in Hidden Valley Lake that were closed due to flooding on Sunday morning had been reopened early Sunday evening, except for Gold Flat Road, which will remain closed due to continued flooding.

The sheriff's office said Sunday evening that, so far, only a few homes have been damaged and they have no reports of major injuries related to Sunday's weather.

However, they cautioned that the storms are far from over. There is supposed to be a brief respite on Monday, at which time local officials plan to survey the damage and prepare for more storms that are expected to arrive on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The agency thanked community members for their cooperation during Sunday's severe storm event, and asked them to continue to honor traffic control points and not to drive through them.

The sheriff's office also urged people not to try to navigate through standing water, as it may be deeper than you think and flowing water can actually sweep away a vehicle.

Elsewhere in the county, a number of road closures remained in place, according to Lake County Public Works, the California Highway Patrol, and the police departments in Clearlake and Lakeport.

The following is a list of impacted roadways as of 6:30 p.m. Sunday. Updates will be provided as they become available.

CLEARLAKE

36th Avenue: Roadway west of Phillips, between Phillips and Oaks, is closed due to heavy flooding and debris in the roadway.

HIDDEN VALLEY LAKE

Gold Flat Road: Closed due to flooding.

KELSEYVILLE

Adobe Creek crossing: Closed due to flooding.

Argonaut Road: Flooding reported in the area of Big Valley Road.

Bell Hill Road: Bell Hill Road is closed at Adobe Creek Low Water Crossing due to water over the roadway.

Bottle Rock at Pine Street: Tree and power lines down and blocking both lanes.

Clark Drive: All of Clark Drive closed due to flooding, use alternative routes.

Gaddy Lane: Flooding across the roadway at Loasa.

Marina View Drive: Downed tree – single lane from Riviera Heights Drive to Soda Bay Road.

LAKEPORT

Highland Springs Road: Flooding across the roadway at Lampson Airport.

Hill Road: Hill Road between Sutter Lakeside Hospital entrance and Lakeshore Boulevard is closed to all traffic due to continuing debris flows. There is no estimate at this time as to when the roadway will be reopened.

Lakeshore Boulevard: Flooding reported across the roadway near Park Way.

Martin Street: Flooded from S. Forbes to Polk St. Use an alternate route and do not drive through the water.

Mathews Road: Mathews Road is closed at Highway 175 due to a bridge replacement project.

McMahon Road: Tree blocking roadway in both directions.

Soda Bay Road: Closed to all traffic from Big Valley Road to Highway 175/S. Main Street due to flooding.

LOWER LAKE

Morgan Valley Road: Single lane due to downed tree into phone lines.

Seigler Canyon Road: Flooding across the roadway above Seigler Bridge. Road is closed from Highway 29 to Big Canyon Road.

Perini Road: Closed at Seigler Canyon Road due to flooding

MIDDLETOWN

Western Mine Road: Closed due to mud/debris slide.

UPPER LAKE

Elk Mountain Road: Roadway closed at MPM 29.6 due to road washout. No estimate of when road will be reopened.

Robinson Road: Two downed trees blocking the roadway.

Scotts Valley Road: Closed from Hendricks Road to Highway 20 due to flooding.

Witter Springs Road: Closed due to flooding.

NAPA COUNTY UPDATE

In addition to the road situation in Lake County, the Napa County Sheriff's Office has issued the following updates on conditions, with all closures to remain in effect through the night, as of 6:30 p.m.:

Berryessa Knoxville Road: Open but impacted in numerous locations by mud and rock slides and trees down from the 1700 block to Eastside Road. The road is open at this time, but please use extreme caution while driving in this area.

Deer Park Road: Closed between Highway 29 and Silverado Trail due to flooding.

Dry Creek Road: Impacted from the 5800 block to Oakville Grade due to water.

Highway 128: North of Calistoga into Sonoma County is closed due to flooding per Caltrans.

Oakville Cross Road: Closed at Plump Jack Winery and the Napa River due to flooding.

Yountville Cross Road: Closed due to flooding.

Constitutional amendments, flying dogs, and witches – the week of Jan. 8 to the 14 was quite a busy one in history.

Jan. 8, 1798

As school children, we were forced to memorize each constitutional amendment as part of our lessons on the founding fathers and the establishment of our country (I challenge each reader to name five of the now 27 amendments!).

Perhaps one of the least interesting – certainly least memorable – amendments was passed on this day in 1798.

The Eleventh Amendment established that excessive fines and bails were a form of cruel and unusual punishment. Yes, so unremarkable is this amendment that you did not realize until now that I just lied: the Eleventh Amendment had nothing at all to do with bail.

No, the Eleventh Amendment instead dealt with a seemingly more esoteric subject. The amendment declared that the federal government has no power to interfere in suits brought against a state by residents of another state.

However unmemorable it is to school kids today, the Eleventh Amendment was extremely important at the time.

For one thing, it was the first amendment added to the Constitution following the establishment of the first 10 as the “Bill of Rights.” That, in and of itself, is significant because up to that point the process of amending the Constitution was only theoretical – kind of like the rules of a board game, and like a board game (at least in my family) rules are sometimes “bent.”

The ratification of the amendment by the requisite number of states and its official addition to the Bill of Rights confirmed the up-to-then theoretical possibility of amending the Constitution. We haven’t looked back since.

The substance of the amendment essentially stated that states have sovereign immunity, meaning that a state cannot be sued by a private citizen without the consent of the state itself. Of course, as with anything legal, this short 43-word amendment now has four different interpretations (two of which are completely contradictory to each other).

Leave it to lawyers to complicate a single sentence.

Jan. 9, 1793

On this day in history George Washington sat among the spectators cluttering the muddy courtyard of Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Prison as a mad Frenchman rose into the air in a balloon.

Mad, at least, is certainly what many of the spectators would have thought Jean Pierre Blanchard, who had advertised in a local newspaper that he would make the aeronautical attempt at 10 a.m. that morning.

Just a few years previous Blanchard had successfully flown across the English Channel in one of his hot air balloons. So by 1793, Blanchard had at least proven himself a lucky madman. Lucky and entrepreneurial. Rather than put on the show for free, Blanchard had charged $5 a ticket to gain admittance into the prison walls and bear witness to what would become the first manned flight in the history of North America.

Blanchard’s flight became not just the first manned flight, but also the first canined one as well when a well-wisher thrust a small black dog into Blanchard’s arms as he entered the basket of the balloon.

With a handshake from President Washington and a wave of his hat, Blanchard dropped ballast from the balloon and quickly rose into the chimney-smoke-filled sky of Philadelphia.

Forty-six minutes later he and his canine stowaway alighted on a plowed field near modern-day Woodbury, N.J. after a journey of about 15 miles. 

Jan. 14, 1699
   
Early modern Europe was struck with an epidemic of witch-phobia that would eventually see tens of thousands of people executed for supposedly practicing the dark arts.

Most of these victims were women, who were thought to have made a deal with the Devil to learn these special powers.

In colonial America, the most famous case of witch hunts took place between 1692 and 1693 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony village of Salem.

Historians have since argued that the Salem Witch Trials were a result of an overly-strained community.

You see, starting in 1689 England declared war with France, a country whose colonial holdings were located in modern-day Nova Scotia, Quebec and parts of upstate New York. King William’s War, as it became known to the colonists, soon made its way to the colonies and ravaged the countryside, sending refugees to such villages as Salem, where they put a strain on the small community’s meager resources.

This strain, mixed with not a little amount of small-town intercommunal conflict, made for the perfect witch’s brew of paranoia.

By the winter of 1698-99, the community had sobered up and came to the realization that they had been overly enthusiastic in their trials.

On Jan. 14, 1699 the entire community of Salem fasted in repentance for their deeds. Too little too late for the 20 families who lost loved ones to the town’s fear and irrational hate.

Antone Pierucci is curator of the Lake County Museums in Lake County, Calif.

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COBB, Calif. – Hundreds of Cobb residents remained without power on Sunday afternoon due to an outage first reported earlier in the day.

The outage, first reported at 10:34 a.m., did not have an estimated time of restoration late Sunday afternoon, according to Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

As of 4 p.m. that the outage was impacting 582 customers, PG&E said.

PG&E on Sunday afternoon hadn't given a cause for the outage, but the storms and heavy rain had caused downed trees and lines throughout the county all day.

A number of small, limited power outages – said to only be impacting one customer each – were reported in other areas of the county on Sunday, including Clearlake, the Clear Lake Riviera, Hidden Valley Lake, Kelseyville, Lakeport, Lower Lake and Middletown.

Across the region, PG&E was reporting outages impacting thousands of customers due to the storms.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

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LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The stormy Saturday weather led to falling trees, road closures and rising water levels, with more rain beginning overnight and forecast to continue through Sunday.

All of Lake County is under a flood watch that remains in effect through 4 p.m. Wednesday, with the National Weather Service continuing to forecast a week of rain ahead.

Sunday is forecast to have especially heavy rain, with total rainfall expected to be up to 2 inches and wind gusts of more than 30 miles per hour.

For the 24-hour period ending at 2:30 a.m. Sunday, the National Weather Service reported the following rainfall totals, in inches, at observation stations around Lake County:

– Bear Canyon (Middletown): 3.30.
– Cache Creek (near Lower Lake): 1.61.
– Cobb: 1.73.
– High Glade Lookout (above Upper Lake): 1.77.
– Indian Valley Reservoir: 0.66.
– Jerusalem Grade (Middletown): 2.48.
– Kelseyville: 1.28.
– Mt. Konocti: 1.44.
– Putah Creek (Middletown): 2.28.
– Upper Lake – 1.0.

The wet conditions led to the Lake County Public Works Department closing Elk Mountain Road at mile post marker 29.6 to all traffic due to the road washing out. The agency did not have an estimate as to when the road will reopen.

The rain and winds on Saturday also were responsible for causing a tree to fall on Laurel Dell in Upper Lake, grazing a nearby house and falling a car just before 3 a.m. Saturday, according to radio reports. No one was injured.

At around 6 a.m., two trees were reported to have fallen on a home and on vehicles on Oak Drive in Kelseyville.

Clear Lake's level continued to rise, hitting 4.16 feet Rumsey early Sunday, up from 3.91 feet Rumsey on Friday morning.

In other weather-related news, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said Lake Pillsbury has reached its spill crest and water is running over the spillway. During winter, spill gates remain open for flood control. In the spring, the spill gates will be closed, allowing the reservoir to fill an additional 10 feet.

Lake Pillsbury's dam spillway empties back into the Eel River, and the company cautioned anyone going near the Upper Eel River to be aware of higher and changing flows with the coming rains. PG&E said the rain could cause flows on the river to increase several fold and will be well above the normal seasonal flows for this time of year.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – With the rain and storms set to continue, here's an update on the sand and sandbags available throughout the county.

This list, compiled by Lake County News, is being updated as new information is received. If we've missed something, email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or message us on Facebook, @LakeCoNews.

LAKE COUNTY SANDBAG REPORT

As of 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 8

CLEARLAKE

City of Clearlake Corporation Yard
(Next to Pierce Field airport, access off of Old Highway 53, between storage and Valley Glass)
Sand available, no sand bags.

Four Corners Builders Supply
14975 Olympic Drive
Telephone: 707-994-6277
Open until 4 p.m. Sunday; opens 7:30 a.m. Monday

Mendo Mill, Clearlake
5255 Old Highway 53
Telephone: 707-994-1014
Open until 5 p.m. Sunday; opens 7 a.m. Monday
60 remaining 70-pound bags, $4.99 filled
$0.89 each empty

KELSEYVILLE

Kelseyville Lumber
3555 N. Main St.
Telephone: 707-279-4297
Open until 5 p.m. Sunday; opens 7 a.m. Monday
$1.49 for a full sandbag
They have plenty of bags

LAKEPORT

Mendo Mill, Lakeport
2465 S. Main St.
Telephone: 707-263-8400
Open until 5 p.m. Sunday; opens 7 a.m. Monday
30 remaining empty bags left
$1.69 empty
30 remaining 70 pound bags, $5/bag

MIDDLETOWN

Hardesters
21088 Calistoga St.
Telephone: 707-987-2325
Out of utility sand, has approximately 40 bags of play sand left for $5.49 per 50 pound bag.
Completely out of empty sand bags.

NICE

Lake Builders Supply
3694 E. Highway 20
Telephone: 707-274-6607
Closes at 4 p.m. Sunday; opens at 8 a.m. Monday
50 or 100 pound bags filled with “play sand”
50 pound bag – $6
100 pound bag – $12.49
$0.49 empty sandbag; bags measure 14 by 26 inches

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – A mundane chore of yesteryear was made, as its name implies, easier, through the use of the Easy Vacuum Electric Washer, circa 1912.

The Easy Vacuum Electric Washer was constructed of copper, and was a work of art, as well as a work horse.

This beauty had a heater underneath the drum that could be hooked up to fuel. The Easy Washer was electric, and it was not grounded!

The washer was advertised to keep costly clothing from ruination due to the typical “tubbing and rubbing of old fashioned laundering methods.”

The washer was first filled to the indented line you can see on its tub portion, then after soap was added, along with the clothes, of course, you flipped a switch to begin the plungers.

The plungers, or vacuum cups, two or three of them, pumped up and down, and rotated slowly, as well, for effective washing of grubby clothing.

After the agitation completed its course of action, the ringer was turned on to expel excess water before the clothes were ready to hang dry.

As some advertisements of the time said, “In the Easy Vacuum Electric Washer you can trust baby's most delicate things – white dresses, flannels, blankets, afghans, caps, coats and tiny hose. How clean, sweet, soft and fluffy it makes them.”

Prior to the ease of the Easy Washing Machine, the devices used to clean clothes were many and varied.

Of course, before indoor plumbing, laundry was done by pumping water from the well, hauling the water for washing to be heated on a stove or fire, then dumped into a tub for soiled clothes-washing.

The labor-intensive process meant that water was reused for further loads of laundry several times over.

Washboards were very popular after the board was invented in 1797 by New Hampshire's Nathaniel Briggs.

Also used in the 1790s were wooden drum type devices which used a rotating technology that was patented in England in 1791, and was called a washing mill.

These enclosed devices resembled small wine barrels and utilized textured walls inside the drums to aid in the cleaning process. A washing stick was included for the person washing clothing to press the clothes into the wood drum.

Later on, in the 1850s washing machines driven by steam were used commercially, both here and in England.

Next came a plethora of washing devices including rotary washing machines, and gasoline engine driven machines.

The “Wonder Washer” of 1907 was another patented washing machine used in homes, and has been displayed in the Lower Lake Historic Schoolhouse Museum along with the “Easy Vacuum Electric Washer” of 1912.

For a demonstration on the Easy Washing Machine see the video below.

Kathleen Scavone, M.A., is a retired educator, potter, writer and author of “Anderson Marsh State Historic Park: A Walking History, Prehistory, Flora, and Fauna Tour of a California State Park” and “Native Americans of Lake County.” She also writes for NASA and JPL as one of their “Solar System Ambassadors.” She was selected “Lake County Teacher of the Year, 1998-99” by the Lake County Office of Education, and chosen as one of 10 state finalists the same year by the California Department of Education.

LAKEPORT, Calif. –  Lakeport police issued Nixles regarding downed power lines and flooded streets in Lakeport Sunday morning.

In two advisories Lakeport Police have cautioned motorists to avoid the area in the 1000 block of Second Street annex and other streets.

A large pine tree fell with power lines down in the 1000 block of Second Street annex. Lakeport police, Lakeport fire and PG&E wre all reported to be on scene.

According to an earlier Nixle the heavy rainfall has several streets experiencing flooding including the following:

Martin Street between Estep and Polk, Lange Street in front of the School District and Hartley at 16th Street.  

LPD suggests avoiding these areas and not driving through standing water on roadways if possible.

Lakeport Public Works and Police continue to be out checking affected areas and posting traffic control signs where necessary.  

NASA has selected two missions that have the potential to open new windows on one of the earliest eras in the history of our solar system – a time less than 10 million years after the birth of our sun.

The missions, known as Lucy and Psyche, were chosen from five finalists and will proceed to mission formulation, with the goal of launching in 2021 and 2023, respectively.

“Lucy will visit a target-rich environment of Jupiter’s mysterious Trojan asteroids, while Psyche will study a unique metal asteroid that’s never been visited before,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “This is what Discovery Program missions are all about – boldly going to places we’ve never been to enable groundbreaking science.”

Lucy, a robotic spacecraft, is scheduled to launch in October 2021. It’s slated to arrive at its first destination, a main belt asteroid, in 2025. From 2027 to 2033, Lucy will explore six Jupiter Trojan asteroids.

These asteroids are trapped by Jupiter’s gravity in two swarms that share the planet’s orbit, one leading and one trailing Jupiter in its 12-year circuit around the sun. The Trojans are thought to be relics of a much earlier era in the history of the solar system, and may have formed far beyond Jupiter’s current orbit.

“This is a unique opportunity,” said Harold F. Levison, principal investigator of the Lucy mission from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “Because the Trojans are remnants of the primordial material that formed the outer planets, they hold vital clues to deciphering the history of the solar system. Lucy, like the human fossil for which it is named, will revolutionize the understanding of our origins.”

Lucy will build on the success of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, using newer versions of the RALPH and LORRI science instruments that helped enable the mission’s achievements.

Several members of the Lucy mission team also are veterans of the New Horizons mission. Lucy also will build on the success of the OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu, with the OTES instrument and several members of the OSIRIS-REx team.

The Psyche mission will explore one of the most intriguing targets in the main asteroid belt – a giant metal asteroid, known as 16 Psyche, about three times farther away from the sun than is the Earth.

This asteroid measures about 130 miles in diameter and, unlike most other asteroids that are rocky or icy bodies, is thought to be comprised mostly of metallic iron and nickel, similar to Earth’s core.

Scientists wonder whether Psyche could be an exposed core of an early planet that could have been as large as Mars, but which lost its rocky outer layers due to a number of violent collisions billions of years ago.

The mission will help scientists understand how planets and other bodies separated into their layers – including cores, mantles and crusts – early in their histories.

“This is an opportunity to explore a new type of world – not one of rock or ice, but of metal,” said Psyche Principal Investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University in Tempe. “16 Psyche is the only known object of its kind in the solar system, and this is the only way humans will ever visit a core. We learn about inner space by visiting outer space.”

Psyche, also a robotic mission, is targeted to launch in October of 2023, arriving at the asteroid in 2030, following an Earth gravity assist spacecraft maneuver in 2024 and a Mars flyby in 2025.

In addition to selecting the Lucy and Psyche missions for formulation, the agency will extend funding for the Near Earth Object Camera (NEOCam) project for an additional year. The NEOCam space telescope is designed to survey regions of space closest to Earth’s orbit, where potentially hazardous asteroids may be found.

“These are true missions of discovery that integrate into NASA’s larger strategy of investigating how the solar system formed and evolved,” said NASA’s Planetary Science Director Jim Green. “We’ve explored terrestrial planets, gas giants, and a range of other bodies orbiting the sun. Lucy will observe primitive remnants from farther out in the solar system, while Psyche will directly observe the interior of a planetary body. These additional pieces of the puzzle will help us understand how the sun and its family of planets formed, changed over time, and became places where life could develop and be sustained – and what the future may hold.”

Discovery Program class missions like these are relatively low-cost, their development capped at about $450 million.

They are managed for NASA’s Planetary Science Division by the Planetary Missions Program Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The missions are designed and led by a principal investigator, who assembles a team of scientists and engineers, to address key science questions about the solar system.

The Discovery Program portfolio includes 12 prior selections such as the MESSENGER mission to study Mercury, the Dawn mission to explore asteroids Vesta and Ceres, and the InSight Mars lander, scheduled to launch in May 2018.

NASA’s other missions to asteroids began with the NEAR orbiter of asteroid Eros, which arrived in 2000, and continues with Dawn, which orbited Vesta and now is in an extended mission phase at Ceres.

The OSIRIS-REx mission, which launched on Sept. 8, 2016, is speeding toward a 2018 rendezvous with the asteroid Bennu, and will deliver a sample back to Earth in 2023. Each mission focuses on a different aspect of asteroid science to give scientists the broader picture of solar system formation and evolution.

Read more about NASA’s Discovery Program and missions at https://discovery.nasa.gov/missions.cfml .