LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Saturday's stormy conditions have led to a number of downed trees, road hazards and power outages around Lake County.
Throughout the afternoon and into the early evening several power outages were reported by Pacific Gas and Electric.
The company's online outage center reported outages of 49 customers or less in Whispering Pines, Pine Grove and Lower Lake, and several small outages across Kelseyville and Lakeport.
In Kelseyville, the California Highway Patrol reported a large tree was down at Finley Road and Stone Drive, with another down at Fritch and Highland Springs roads, limbs and debris in the roadway on Highway 175 at Loch Lomond Road.
A large tree – the size of a power pole – was down at Seigler Springs and Red Hills road, blocking lanes, the CHP said.
PG&E said it had crews out working to restore power to customers.
The National Weather Service is predicting heavy rains into Saturday evening across Northern California.
In Lake County, forecasters have issued a wind advisory until 10 p.m. Saturday.
A flash flood watch for Lake County went into effect at 4 p.m. Saturday and will remain active until 6 a.m. Sunday, according to the National Weather Service.
Rain is forecast to continue through Sunday night, with chances of showers also on Monday.
Rainfall amounts the National Weather Service posted for Lake County for the 24-hour period ending at 5:30 p.m. Saturday showed totals ranging from nearly an inch in Lakeport and Upper Lake, to more than an inch in Kelseyville and Lower Lake, and more than 1.7 inches in the Cobb and Middletown areas.
Shortly before 6 p.m. Saturday, Clear Lake's level was up to 5.19 feet Rumsey, the highest lake level reported since May 2013, according to US Geological Survey records.
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.
The switch to Daylight Saving Time, on March 13, often means losing an hour of sleep for many people.
The California Highway Patrol joins the National Sleep Foundation in observing National Sleep Awareness Week, March 6 to 12, to highlight the importance of drivers being aware of the potential dangers of the time shift.
“Many people have a hard time adjusting to the time change, and it can affect their driving,” CHP Commissioner Joe Farrow said. “Even the most careful drivers become confused and use poor judgment when they are sleepy.”
Last year in California, sleepy or fatigued drivers were involved in 5,447 collisions, in which 40 people died.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration conservatively estimates that 100,000 police-reported crashes are the direct result of driver fatigue each year, resulting in an estimated 1,500 deaths, 71,000 injuries and $12.5 billion in monetary losses.
Cognitive impairment after approximately 18 hours awake is similar to having a blood alcohol content of 0.05 percent, research by the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) has found.
The NSF studies also show that after 24 hours awake, cognitive impairment is similar to a blood alcohol content of 0.10 percent – higher than the legal limit in the U.S.
Two out of every five drivers admit to having fallen asleep at the wheel at some point, research by the American Automobile Foundation shows, with one in ten drivers saying they have done so in the past year.
More than a quarter of those surveyed said they continued to drive even though they had difficulty keeping their eyes open.
“The only safe driver is an alert driver,” Commissioner Farrow said. “We ask all California drivers to be alert, awake, and prevent crashes.”
The NSF recommends that individuals aged 18 to 64 get seven to nine hours of sleep a night. Stimulants like coffee, energy drinks, and lights from electronic devices all may interfere with natural sleep/wake cycles.
Lake County Animal Care and Control is located at 4949 Helbush in Lakeport, next to the Hill Road Correctional Facility.
Office hours are Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday. The shelter is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
For more information call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278.
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.
NICE, Calif. – A Lucerne man suffered minor injuries early Friday when he was hit on his moped by a vehicle that fled the scene.
Nicholas Arthur Ferretti, 44, was injured in the crash, which occurred shortly after 2 a.m. Friday on Highway 20 in Nice, according to the California Highway Patrol.
The CHP said Ferretti was riding a 1977 Tomo Sport moped eastbound on Highway 20 west of Lakeshore Boulevard Extension at approximately 35 miles per hour.
Traveling behind him was a 1990 Mercury Topaz whose driver has not been identified, according to the CHP.
For unknown reasons, the Mercury hit the back of the moped, with the force of the impact throwing Ferretti from the moped, the CHP said.
Following the crash, the Mercury stopped then fled the scene, heading westbound on Highway 20, the CHP reported.
The CHP said the Mercury later was found abandoned on Carson Street in Nice. An area search was conducted by the driver was not found.
Ferretti, who was wearing a helmet that was not Department of Transportation-approved, had a complaint of back pain and was transported by Northshore Fire ambulance to Sutter Lakeside Hospital, the CHP said.
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.
By pushing NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to its limits, an international team of astronomers has shattered the cosmic distance record by measuring the farthest galaxy ever seen in the universe.
This surprisingly bright infant galaxy, named GN-z11, is seen as it was 13.4 billion years in the past, just 400 million years after the Big Bang. GN-z11 is located in the direction of the constellation of Ursa Major.
“We've taken a major step back in time, beyond what we'd ever expected to be able to do with Hubble. We see GN-z11 at a time when the universe was only three percent of its current age,” explained principal investigator Pascal Oesch of Yale University.
The team includes scientists from Yale University, the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), and the University of California.
Astronomers are closing in on the first galaxies that formed in the universe. The new Hubble observations take astronomers into a realm that was once thought to be only reachable with NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.
This measurement provides strong evidence that some unusual and unexpectedly bright galaxies found earlier in Hubble images are really at extraordinary distances.
Previously, the team had estimated GN-z11's distance by determining its color through imaging with Hubble and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
Now, for the first time for a galaxy at such an extreme distance, the team used Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 to precisely measure the distance to GN-z11 spectroscopically by splitting the light into its component colors.
Astronomers measure large distances by determining the “redshift” of a galaxy. This phenomenon is a result of the expansion of the universe; every distant object in the universe appears to be receding from us because its light is stretched to longer, redder wavelengths as it travels through expanding space to reach our telescopes. The greater the redshift, the farther the galaxy.
“Our spectroscopic observations reveal the galaxy to be even farther away than we had originally thought, right at the distance limit of what Hubble can observe,” said Gabriel Brammer of STScI, second author of the study.
Before astronomers determined the distance for GN-z11, the most distant galaxy measured spectroscopically had a redshift of 8.68 (13.2 billion years in the past). Now, the team has confirmed GN-z11 to be at a redshift of 11.1, nearly 200 million years closer to the Big Bang.
“This is an extraordinary accomplishment for Hubble. It managed to beat all the previous distance records held for years by much larger ground-based telescopes,” said investigator Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University. “This new record will likely stand until the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope.”
The combination of Hubble's and Spitzer's imaging reveals that GN-z11 is 25 times smaller than the Milky Way and has just one percent of our galaxy's mass in stars.
However, the newborn GN-z11 is growing fast, forming stars at a rate about 20 times greater than our galaxy does today. This makes an extremely remote galaxy bright enough for astronomers to find and perform detailed observations with both Hubble and Spitzer.
The results reveal surprising new clues about the nature of the very early universe. “It's amazing that a galaxy so massive existed only 200 million to 300 million years after the very first stars started to form. It takes really fast growth, producing stars at a huge rate, to have formed a galaxy that is a billion solar masses so soon,” explained investigator Garth Illingworth of the University of California, Santa Cruz.
These findings provide a tantalizing preview of the observations that the James Webb Space Telescope will perform after it is launched into space in 2018. “Hubble and Spitzer are already reaching into Webb territory,” Oesch said.
“This new discovery shows that the Webb telescope will surely find many such young galaxies reaching back to when the first galaxies were forming,” added Illingworth.
This discovery also has important consequences for NASA's planned Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), which will have the ability to find thousands of such bright, very distant galaxies.
The team's findings have been accepted for publication in an upcoming edition of the Astrophysical Journal.
“The children are listening,” Congressman John Garamendi (D-CA-3) told his fellow Representatives during a special order hour on Tuesday about the issue of bullying in our schools and in our politics.
“Today, I rise to shed light on the epidemic of bullying in our schools, and the harmful effects it has on our nation’s children. Bullying is the reason that 160,000 American children do not go to school each day because they cannot endure another day of verbal and physical attacks from their peers. All too often horrific shootings on our school campuses are done by students who have been bullied,” he said.
Last year, 70 percent of students admitted they witnessed bullying in their school and more than 20 percent of teenagers report that they have been bullied or victimized by their peers.
What’s more, more than 80 percent of LGBTQ youth were bullied last year because of their sexual orientation and more than half of Muslim students have experienced religion-based bullying at school.
“Unfortunately the presidential campaign has descended into political discourse that is vulgar and demeaning personal attacks. What we are seeing and hearing from people who want to be our leader is schoolyard bullying. Unfortunately this political discourse is legitimizing this sort of behavior. The children are listening and they are going to copy it,” said Garamendi.
“Bullying harms people. Their lives are disrupted. They can become fearful and depressed. Individuals who are bullied sometimes strike out in acts of violence, both self-inflicted and against others. We need to take actions that help our children understand the result of bullying, and teach our students to express their feelings constructively and communicate with each other in the spirit of caring and compassion,” he added.
Congressman Garamendi is a founding director of Operation Respect, a national movement against bullying dedicated to creating respectful, safe, and compassionate climates of learning that are free of bullying and prejudice.
Operation Respect is currently active in 22,000 schools across the United States.
Part of Operation Respect’s efforts include disseminating its “Don’t Laugh At Me Program,” which includes a series of interactive videos and songs that help teachers and elementary students alike address the issue of bullying in their classrooms.
LUCERNE, Calif. – Close to 100 people gathered on Thursday night to hear a review of 20,000 years of Lake County history.
Archaeologist Dr. John Parker presented a program titled, “Cultural and Environmental Changes over 20,000 Years” at Marymount California University's Lakeside Campus in Lucerne.
Parker's talk can be seen in its entirety in the video above.
The presentation was the second of three being presented as part of the “Distinguished Speakers Series,” and co-sponsored by the Friends of Marymount California University Lakeside and the Lake County Land Trust.
The last in the series on April 7 will feature Catherine Koehler, an ecologist with a special interest in native grasslands of our region, who will present a program titled, “Native Grasslands of Lake County.” Koehler is director of the University of California’s McLaughlin Reserve in eastern Lake County and the executive director for the Lake County Land Trust.
For information call 888-991-5253 or 707-262-0707, leave a message and someone will return your call.
LAKEPORT, Calif. – A late Friday afternoon crash outside of Lakeport resulted in minor injuries and caused major traffic delays.
The two-vehicle occurred at around 4:30 p.m. Friday on Highway 29 near Ackley Road, south of the intersection with Highway 175, according to the California Highway Patrol.
The CHP said a vehicle was on fire with a person trapped.
One person was transported to Sutter Lakeside Hospital with minor injuries, the CHP said.
The crash caused serious delays on Highway 29 and Highway 175, according to reports from the scene.
Authorities had to divert traffic around the scene and onto Soda Bay Road, the CHP said.
Additionally, witnesses said traffic coming off of the Hopland Grade was being sent onto Main Street in Lakeport.
The CHP said that the roadway was reopened shortly before 5:30 p.m., which was just after Lakeport Fire units cleared the scene.
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.
LAKEPORT, Calif. – An Upper Lake man has been arrested for robbery, theft and other charges after he threatened a Northshore couple and took boats and tools from their home.
Cory Lynn Bush, 41, was taken into custody Thursday morning, according to Lt. Steve Brooks of the Lake County Sheriff's Office.
Shortly after 7 a.m. Thursday, Lake County Sheriff’s deputies responded to a residence located in the 4000 block of E. State Highway 20 in Nice for a report of a prowler, Brooks said.
He said Central Dispatch advised that the subject could be seen by the homeowner going back and forth from the backyard to their boat.
While the deputies were still responding, the homeowner told Central Dispatch she thought the subject was now inside the house attacking her husband. She said the subject had threatened both her and her husband with a screwdriver, according to Brooks' report.
Upon arrival, the deputies contacted the homeowners, who said they had confronted the subject, later identified as Bush, Brooks said.
Brooks said the husband found and confronted Bush, who was inside his garage. When he yelled at Bush, he said Bush turned towards him with his arm raised and appeared to be holding a screwdriver or a knife.
The homeowner tried to step away from Bush and fell to the ground. Brooks said Bush then ran out the side door of the residence toward the pier.
Brooks said the homeowner said he watched as Bush got into their 22-foot Crownline boat, started it and took off across the lake towards Lakeport.
After Bush stole the boat the homeowner discovered that he was also missing a kayak, multiple power tools, an outboard motor and additional items from the garage, Brooks said.
At 8 a.m. Thursday Bush was located with the boat and stolen property in a canal behind Sears, which is located at 2570 S. Main St. in Lakeport, according to Brooks.
Brooks said Bush admitted to stealing the boat, the kayak, outboard motor and multiple tools. Central Dispatch advised that Bush was currently on probation out of Mendocino County for grand theft.
Bush was arrested for robbery, burglary, possession of stolen property, grand theft and for violating his probation, and transported to the Hill Road Correctional Facility and booked on the charges, Brooks said.
LAKEPORT, Calif. – This sweet little girl has had a tough story so far.
Shelter staff said she came from a home where she was found tied to a shed, with puppies and no food or water in sight.
She and two of her pups subsequently were taken in at Lake County Animal Care and Control.
She's a little girl, under 40 pounds, with a dark mottled coat.
Initially, she didn't understand English, but shelter staff said she is quickly learning, loves to play in the play yard and enjoys a game of fetch, walks well on a leash and responds readily to her handler and to treats.
With her mellow personality, she is happy to lie down next to a human companion and hang out, and gets along with dogs of both sexes.
Additionally, the shelter evaluator found that she has no interest in cats, and she shows no signs of resource guarding with humans or other animals.
If you're looking for a fine friend to join your family, pay her a visit at the shelter. She's in kennel No. 4, ID No. 4428.
Lake County Animal Care and Control is located at 4949 Helbush in Lakeport, next to the Hill Road Correctional Facility.
Office hours are Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday. The shelter is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
For more information call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278.
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. – Forecasters are calling for heavy storms this weekend and into next week, and have issued a flash flood watch for Lake County and other parts of the North Coast as a result.
The National Weather Service issued a special weather statement and a flash flood watch for areas including Lake County on Thursday.
The agency said a major pattern change – toward much wetter weather – is about to arrive.
The forecast predicts a “parade of storms” for the next week and beyond that could lead to rock slides, small stream flooding, downed trees and power outages, as well as chances of hail and thunderstorms in some areas.
A weaker storm system is anticipated to pass over the region on Friday, bringing with it as much as three-quarters of an inch of rain, according to the Lake County specific forecast.
A much stronger system is expected on Saturday, when between 1 and 2 inches of rain may fall in Lake County, the forecast said.
That prompted the National Weather Service to issue a flash flood watch that will be in effect from 4 p.m. Saturday to 6 a.m. Sunday for the Valley, Rocky and Jerusalem fire areas.
Gusty winds also are forecast on Saturday, ranging into the high 20s, with gusts into the high 30s.
Forecasters predict light to moderate precipitation continuing Sunday, Monday and through next week.
Temperatures in Lake County over the coming week are expected to range into the low 40s at night and into the low 60s during the day, according to the forecast.
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.
MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – Despite the continuing impacts of the Valley fire on both the south county's people and landscape, the EcoArts: Lake County Sculpture Walk exhibition will go on in 2016 and take up the challenge of using art to tell new and poignant stories.
EcoArts will open in the Middletown County Trailside Park on June 5 with a reception beginning at 10 a.m.
The 107-acre park which has, for many years, been the exhibit's annual home burned in the Valley fire last year.
Despite the damage, the park will again play host to the sculpture walk.
Organizers said that this year's exhibit will be “exceptionally challenging but also an immense opportunity.”
The park is located off Dry Creek Cutoff on Highway 175 approximately a mile north of Middletown.
The Sculpture Walk exhibit itself is located along the center trail of the park and runs along approximately one third of a mile of trail once dotted with trees, shrubs and meadows.
There are two parts to the Sculpture Walk this year. Firstly, with the annual exhibit, organizers have decided to go “back to our roots” and focus on stewardship and a more disciplined approach to the Ecological and environmental part of our annual sculpture walk art.
Organizers hope there will be works that help address the devastation of the park through creative, thought provoking problem solving.
The second part of the Sculpture Walk has to do with the fires. The community has lived through and understands the tragedies of the past year. A special “tribute to our resiliency” section will acknowledge the collective experiences the community went through during the fires.
Community members are invited to join in providing artwork for this special section. Whether a professional artist or someone who has never made a work before, if you have been impacted by the fires and created an artwork that speaks to you, EcoArts would like to consider your work for the “tribute to resiliency” section of the Sculpture Walk.
Nine of 10 directors of EcoArts and Middletown Art Center lost their homes. The park venue is burned. But, part of processing and healing can be through creation.
EcoArts encourages you to create and to view creations.
