LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The wildland fire burning on Cow Mountain northwest of Lakeport nearly doubled in size by the end of Saturday.

The Scotts Fire, located west of Scott Valley Road and east of Ukiah, had scorched a total of 3,000 acres by Saturday night, with containment remaining at 5 percent, according to Cal Fire.

The fire, first reported just after 1 p.m. Friday, led to temporary evacuations near Blue Lakes on Friday evening as it raced toward the community through steep, rugged terrain.

Nearly 300 additional fire personnel were assigned to the fire by nightfall on Saturday, with total personnel rising to 822, Cal Fire said.

Also on scene were 51 engines, 28 fire crews, eight helicopters, 17 bulldozers and nine water tenders, according to the Cal Fire evening report.

Cal Fire said 300 residences and 40 outbuildings remained threatened, with the fire’s cause still under investigation.

Officials said traffic controls are in effect for Scotts Valley Road.

A Cal Fire Type 1 Incident Management Team took command of the fire at 6 p.m. Saturday, officials reported. Cal Fire Division Chief Eric Hoffman, who was incident commander on the Wye Fire, is leading the team.

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LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – With continued firing operations on the 16 Complex and the outbreak of the Scotts Fire on Friday, Lake County residents saw another influx of smoke and haze in the air basin.

Lake County Air Quality Management reported that air quality conditions were good much of Friday, with several hours of significant smoke intrusion midday.

The Clearlake and Northshore areas experienced more significant degradation of air quality on Friday. The district reported that levels of ozone and particulate were elevated, but did not exceed state health-based air quality standards, though some areas may have experienced significantly higher levels.

Air Pollution Control Officer Doug Gearhart said the prediction for the weekend is for “moderate “ to “unhealthy” air quality in Lake County. All areas of the County may be significantly impacted should
meteorological conditions worsen.

Wind forecasts for the weekend include periods of North and Northwest winds which would result in
potentially significant air quality degradation from the Scotts Fire, Gearhart said.

Smoke impacts are most likely to occur overnight, Saturday afternoon through Sunday, depending on the progress of the firefighting efforts, Gearhart reported.

At times this weekend, areas of the county could experience “hazardous” air quality levels as smoke settles into the basin, he said.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Evacuations have been lifted for residents near a wildland fire burning northwest of Lakeport.

Shortly before 8:30 p.m. fire officials lifted the evacuations they had called for about three and a half hours earlier due to the Scotts Fire, which began burning earlier in the day Friday.

Lake County officials said the evacuations took place in the Blue Lakes area and down Highway 20 to Scotts Valley Road.

The fire had burned an estimated 1,600 acres with no containment by Friday night, county officials reported.

Red Cross and Lake County Social Services had set up an evacuation center at Upper Lake High School.

District 3 Supervisor Denise Rushing said the Habematolel Pomo brought sandwiches and pizza to the shelter Friday evening.

Lake County Animal Care and Control and its Lake Evacuation & Animal Protection (LEAP) volunteers had been activated to evacuate animals. Animal Care and Control and LEAP had assisted with evacuating animals from the Spring Valley area during the Wye Fire last month.

Incident command was ordering resources for Saturday, and was having three air tankers loaded in Sonoma County since the Ukiah airbase was low on retardant, according to radio reports.

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LAKEPORT, Calif. – In response to a wildland fire burning northwest of Lakeport, a Lake County official said Saturday evening that the county is issuing a temporary closure order for Lampson Field.

Lake County Department of Public Works Director Scott De Leon said the Notice to Airmen – or NOTAM – goes into effect at 7 a.m. Sunday, and will close Lampson Field to all general aviation traffic.

De Leon said Cal Fire will be using Lampson Field as its base of aerial operations on the Scotts Fire, burning since Friday afternoon at the northern end of Cow Mountain, west of Scotts Valley Road and east of Ukiah.

The closure will be in effect for five days, unless modified, De Leon said.

He said the closure order does not affect REACH Air Ambulance, which will continue to operate out of Lampson Field.

On Saturday evening Cal Fire said the Scotts Fire had grown to 3,000 acres, with 5 percent containment.

No date for full containment has yet been reported.

Earlier in the day, county officials issued a temporary closure order for Mt. Konocti County Park and suspended hunting in the Highland Springs area due to concerns about fire danger, as Lake County News has reported.

The county’s action to temporary close the park and halt hunting at Highland Springs also was in response to the already stretched state and local fire resources, which are being used not just on the Scotts Fire but also on the North Pass Fire in Mendocino County and the 16 Complex in Colusa and Yolo counties.

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NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – Although it again showed significant growth on Friday, a wildland fire complex burning in Colusa and Yolo counties is expected to be fully contained by Monday.

The two-fire 16 Complex, burning since Tuesday in the Rumsey Canyon off of Highway 16, burned more than 4,200 acres on Friday, rising to approximately 16,719 acres burned, according to Cal Fire. The incident was 35 percent contained.

Approximately 1,467 personnel, 71 fire engines, 52 fire crews, 21 bulldozers, 10 helicopters and three airtankers were assigned to the incident on Friday, according to Cal Fire.

Six structures have been damaged by the fire, but none destroyed, Cal Fire reported.

Firing operations to get fuel out of the fires’ path continued on Friday, which led to more smoke in some areas of Lake County. Cal Fire said if the firing operations succeed, additional fire spread will be minimal.

Highway 16 from Highway 20 to the town of Rumsey remained closed, with Cal Fire reporting the possibility of a closure or restricted traffic on Highway 20 if the fire reached it.

An advisory evacuation remained in effect for the Cortina Rancheria area, Cal Fire said.

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THIS STORY HAS BEEN UPDATED.

UPPER LAKE, Calif. – An evacuation shelter is being set up for Lake County residents forced to leave their homes due to a wildland fire burning northwest of Lakeport.

Late Friday afternoon local officials ordered mandatory evacuations for the Blue Lakes area along Highway 20 to Scotts Valley Road as a result of the Scotts Fire, which was first reported shortly after 1 p.m.

By 7 p.m. the fire had burned an estimated 1,600 acres, with no containment, according to Lake County Deputy Administrative Officer Debra Sommerfield.

Sommerfield told Lake County News that Red Cross and Lake County Social Services were setting up a shelter for evacuees at Upper Lake High School, 675 Clover Valley Road.

Local officials had been briefly staging at the nearby county park while the shelter location was being decided, she said.

Sommerfield said the shelter was expected to be open by 7:15 p.m.

California Highway Patrol officers from Mendocino and Lake County, along with the Lake County Sheriff’s Office and California State Parks were assisting with the evacuations, Sommerfield said.

Sommerfield said an estimate of how many people had been evacuated was not immediately available from the sheriff’s office.

CHP reported that a security detail had been placed on Scotts Valley Road in the wake of the evacuations.

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LAKEPORT, Calif. – On Saturday firefighters continued working on the ground and from the air to contain a wildland fire burning northwest of Lakeport.

The Scotts Fire, located on Cow Mountain west of Scotts Valley Road, was first reported shortly after 1 p.m. Friday.

By Friday night it had burned 1,600 acres in steep and inaccessible terrain, and resulted in the evacuation of the Blue Lakes area.

That evacuation order was lifted later Friday night, as Lake County News has reported. However, the Cal Fire Mendocino Unit said Saturday that 300 residences and 40 outbuildings remain threatened by the fire.  

On Saturday firefighters held the fire’s acreage from advancing, and managed to get an estimated 5 percent containment on the incident, Cal Fire said. No date for full containment has yet been given.

There were 541 personnel assigned to the fire on Saturday – 491 of them from Cal Fire – along with 68 engines, 15 fire crews, three airtankers, three helicopters, eight bulldozers and one water tender, Cal Fire said.

Cal Fire said the fire’s cause remains under investigation.

Lake County Air Quality Management issued an alert on Friday that forecast “moderate “ to “unhealthy” – with the possibility of “hazardous” – air quality conditions in Lake County over the weekend because of the fire.

Smoke from the fire resulted in a football game at Upper Lake High School being rescheduled from Saturday afternoon to Monday.

Cooperating agencies on the incident include Cal Fire; local fire agencies from Lake, Mendocino and Sonoma counties; the Bureau of Land Management; the Lake County Sheriff’s Office; the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office; the Air National Guard; and Red Cross.  

Major wildland fires continued burning in Lake’s neighboring counties on Saturday, with the North Pass Fire in Mendocino County remaining at 41,983 acres, with containment rising to 81 percent, according to the unified command of Cal Fire and the US Forest Service.

In Colusa and Yolo counties, Cal Fire said the 16 Complex in the Rumsey Canyon area had scorched a total of 16,837 acres, with containment at 35 percent.

Both the North Pass Fire and the 16 Complex are expected to be contained by Monday, officials said.

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NORTH COAST, Calif. – A two-fire complex burning for the last three weeks in northern Mendocino County are nearing full containment.

The North Pass Fire, caused by lightning in the Williams Valley 10 miles northeast of Covelo on Saturday, Aug. 18, remained at a total of 41,983 acres on Friday, with containment at 76 percent.

Based on updated damage assessments, eight residences and 18 outbuildings have been destroyed to date, according to a report from the unified command of Cal Fire and the US Forest Service. Nine injuries also have occurred.

Assigned personnel were reduced to 685 on Friday, with 11 engines, 11 fire crews, one airtanker, six helicopters, five bulldozers and 24 water tenders also remaining on scene.

Officials said fire suppression repair has been ongoing for several days and will continue after full containment, which is expected on Monday, Sept. 10.

The repair work includes water bars within constructed fire line to prevent soil erosion, chipping of brush piles, repair of drainages and roads, and removal of hazardous trees.

The Forest Service said new fire starts have occurred on state land south of the main incident and smoke is still settling in the Covelo area.

Closures still remain in effect for areas of Indian Dick Road (Forest Road M-1) and Mendocino Pass Road (Forest Highway 7), with roads in the area to remain closed until hazards are removed and fire crews leave, officials reported.

The US Forest Service said the Covelo Ranger District north of Mendocino Pass Road to the Six Rivers and Shasta-Trinity National Forest boundaries also remains under a closure order.

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THIS STORY HAS BEEN UPDATED.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Officials are calling for evacuations in the Blue Lakes area, which is in the path of a wildland fire that began Friday afternoon.

The Scotts Fire, located west of Scotts Valley Road on Cow Mountain, was first reported just after 1 p.m., and had burned 450 acres by 5:30 p.m., according to Cal Fire.

Early Friday evening the fire’s incident command called for mandatory evacuations from Scotts Valley Road to Blue Lakes, Cal Fire reported.

Red Cross, in conjunction with Lake County Social Services, was setting up an evacuation shelter at Upper Lake High School, 675 Clover Valley Road, according to Lake County Deputy Administrative Officer Debra Sommerfield.

Immediate need strike teams also were being requested to respond to the area to assist with the fire, according to reports from the scene.

Additional information on the evacuation order will be posted as it becomes available.

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LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Trying to evaluate a football team on the basis of its first couple of games can be tricky business – even when you’re coaching that team.

That’s why a lot of coaches wait two or three weeks before venturing an educated guess about how good – or not so good – their football team is. Or is likely to become.

Clear Lake High assistant coach Mike Hansen believes it might even take a little longer.  

“When we get into league play, we’ll get more of a sense of how good the teams are, and how we’ll match up with them,” Hansen said following Clear Lake’s 48-0 victory over Stellar Prep of Hayward in the Cards’ home opener Friday night.

Two games into the season, it appears safe to say a couple of things about the 2012 Cardinals, who’ll take a 1-1 record into next week’s game at home against South Fork: They seem to be progressing nicely, which is what inexperienced teams like the Cards are  expected to do to be successful.

Also, they’re obviously capable of surprising people – opponents, prognosticators, maybe some of their fans. Who knows? Maybe a couple of their own coaches.

After a tough loss to what looked like a solid Div. III team, Durham, 27-20, in last week’s opener, the Div. IV Cards bounced back Friday and did what good teams do – dominate inferior opponents.

Clear Lake’s offense rolled methodically and efficiently for 260 yards, including 209 on the ground.

The defense, meanwhile, held The Thunder to a net 53 yards (when you include the minus 36 yards from five quarterback sacks).

“We took control early and we stayed in control,” said Hansen, the longtime Milo Meyer assistant who coaches the running backs and linebackers.

The Cards built a 14-0 first-quarter lead and extended it to 27-0 at the half as Luke Punzalan rushed for two touchdowns and quarterback Kenny Henninger threw for two (9 yards to David Mansell and 12 yards to Rone O’Rourke). The defense also scored on a safety.

“We really had good field position in the first half,” Hansen said. “They fumbled a couple of times, we kept the pressure on, and we got a good punt return from Mansell.”

Vince Rave, who joined the team this week, assumed most of the running duties in the second half and ended up leading Cardinal rushers wth 82 yards in 14 carries and a touchdown.

Andre Buendia added 48 yards as well as returning a kick 58 yards to set up an early Punzalan score.
 
A lot of different players contributed. Henninger, who tossed a couple of interceptions last week, was much more efficient in his second varsity start, completing 4 of 6 passes for 60 yards and three touchdowns. He also rushed for 35 yards in seven carries.

Mansell caught two passes for 27 yards, gained some good  yards on a couple of punt returns, and had a strong performance at his defensive back position.

Lineman Josh Larsen was solid again and had a sack.  Julian Lewis had two sacks and Cory Banfil had one.

“We really didn’t know how good they were,” Hansen said of the Hayward team that will compete in the NCL II/Bay Football League. “We knew they were a bunch of sophomores and we knew they were bigger than us, and probably had more team speed.  And we knew they scored a lot of points (in a 52-26 win)  against Stone Ridge Christian.”

On paper, and according to the MaxPreps computer, it looked like a decent matchup.

The Cardinal coaches hadn’t seen any video of the team, so they had to rely on what other coaches had told them, ones who had played against them or at least had seen them play.

But what kind of team is Stone Ridge Christian? Or how about Mendota, which defeated The Thunder, 48-14, in their season opener.

As it turned out,  “I think we matched up with them with our quickness better than we thought we would,” Hansen said.

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Small patches of ice could make up at most five to ten percent of material in walls of Shackleton crater. Scientists using the Mini-RF radar on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) have estimated the maximum amount of ice likely to be found inside a permanently shadowed lunar crater located near the moon’s South Pole.

As much as five to ten percent of material, by weight, could be patchy ice, according to the team of researchers led by Bradley Thomson at Boston University’s Center for Remote Sensing, in Mass.

“These terrific results from the Mini-RF team contribute to the evolving story of water on the moon,” said LRO’s deputy project scientist, John Keller of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “Several of the instruments on LRO have made unique contributions to this story, but only the radar penetrates beneath the surface to look for signatures of blocky ice deposits.”

These are the first orbital radar measurements of Shackleton crater, a high-priority target for future exploration.

The observations indicate an enhanced radar polarization signature, which is consistent with the presence of small amounts of ice in the rough inner wall slopes of the crater.

Thomson and his colleagues reported the findings in a paper recently published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

“The interior of this crater lies in permanent shadow and is a ‘cold trap’ – a place cold enough to permit ice to accumulate,” said Mini-RF’s principal investigator, Ben Bussey of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. “The radar results are consistent with the interior of Shackleton containing a few percent ice mixed into the dry lunar soil.”

These findings support the long-recognized possibility that areas of permanent shadow inside polar impact craters are sites of the potential accumulation of water.

Numerous lines of evidence from recent spacecraft observations have revised the view that the lunar surface is a completely dry, inhospitable landscape.

Thin films of water and hydroxyl have been detected across the lunar surface using several space-borne near-infrared spectrometers.

Additionally, orbital neutron measurements indicate elevated levels of near‐surface hydrogen in the polar regions; if in the form of water, this hydrogen would represent an average ice concentration of about 1.5 percent by weight in the polar regions.

The Shackleton findings are also consistent with those of the recent LCROSS spacecraft’s controlled collision with a nearby permanently shadowed polar region near the lunar South Pole, which revealed evidence for water in the plume kicked up by its impact.

A radar instrument flown on India’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft in 2009 found evidence for ice deposits in craters at the lunar North Pole. Measurements of the albedo (surface reflectance) inside Shackleton crater using LRO’s laser altimeter and far‐ultraviolet detector are also consistent with the presence of a small amount of ice.

“Inside the crater, we don’t see evidence for glaciers like on Earth,” said Thomson. “Glacial ice has a whopping radar signal, and these measurements reveal a much weaker signal consistent with rugged terrain and limited ice.”

The radar measurements of Shackleton crater were made during three separate observations between December 2009 and June 2010.

Radar illuminates shadowed regions and can detect deposits of water or ice, which have a distinctive radar polarization signature compared to the surrounding material.

In addition, radar penetrates the terrain to depths of a meter or two and can measure water or ice buried beneath the surface.

Radar measurements of Shackleton crater place an upper bound on the ice content of the uppermost meter of loose material of the crater’s walls at between five and ten percent ice by weight.

“We are following up these tantalizing results with additional observations,” said Bussey. “Mini-RF is currently acquiring new bistatic radar images of the moon using a signal transmitted by the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. These bistatic images will help us distinguish between surface roughness and ice, providing further unique insights into the locations of volatile deposits.”

The Mini-RF instrument, operated at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., is one of seven instruments on board NASA’s LRO spacecraft.

NASA Goddard developed and manages the LRO mission. LRO’s current Science Mission is implemented for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate sponsored LRO’s initial one-year Exploration Mission that concluded in September 2010.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – A fire that began early Friday afternoon in the Cow Mountain area had scorched several hundred acres within just a few hours.

The Scotts Fire was reported at about 1:10 p.m. west of Scotts Valley Road on Cow Mountain, east of Ukiah.

The incident initially was believed by Cal Fire to be in Mendocino County. Later in the afternoon, however, Cal Fire said the incident was located in Lake County, which Lakeport Fire Chief Ken Wells, who was monitoring the fire, confirmed.

At about 4 p.m. Wells said the fire was estimated to have burned 450 acres. Within the hour the size was believed to have gone as high as 500 acres, based on reports from the air.

The fire is located in a remote area west of Lakeport, where it was reported to be was running up drainages and ridgetops, and spotting frequently.

Firefighters were accessing the fire up through the Hendricks Ranch, Wells said.

Wells said a local strike team hadn’t been called, with the fire located in the State Responsibility Area covered by Cal Fire.

Radio traffic indicated the US Forest Service also had send firefighters to the incident.

Wells said there were no structures threatened at that point, adding, “They’re making pretty good progress on it.
 
Air resources worked the fire aggressively throughout the afternoon, with five tankers and a helicopter assigned, and more resources ordered, according to radio reports.

Visibility had been an issue for pilots, and radio reports also indicated that the Ukiah airbase was down to 5,000 gallons of retardant.

The green arrow on the map below shows the coordinates for the head of the Scotts Fire.

Additional details will be posted as they become available.

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