As the North American monsoon continues over the southwestern United States this week, AccuWeather meteorologists say that shifting moisture may allow the concentration of drenching storms to ease up in New Mexico and Arizona.

But storms, some with downpours, some with no rain, are forecast to ramp up in portions of Nevada, California, Oregon and Idaho in the coming days.

Prior to Sunday night, with a couple of exceptions this summer, thunderstorms associated with the monsoon have largely been absent thus far. There have been a couple of incidents of spotty showers and thunderstorms.

During June 17-18, and more recently on July 13, showers and storms dotted Southern California. The storms on July 13, managed to bring 0.10 of an inch of rain to Downtown Los Angeles.

The spotty, little rain that has occurred thus far west of Arizona has done nothing to impact the exceptional drought ongoing in California, Nevada and Oregon.

In California alone, 33% of the state was considered to be in exceptional drought, which is the worst category of drought level, according to data from the United States Drought Monitor.

A drought emergency remained in effect for 50 of the 58 counties or 42% of the population in California. Major reservoirs have plummeted to historically low levels in many cases for this point in the season.

While the overall amount and extent of rain, the newest surge of moisture remains questionable from Southern California and southern Nevada, as well as point farther to the north, there is a concern amongst AccuWeather meteorologists of what mainly dry thunderstorms might bring.

"We often see thunderstorms with little rain and a significant amount of lightning strikes on the leading edge of monsoon moisture and this may be one of those situations," AccuWeather Meteorologist Matt Benz said.

Locally gusty winds often accompany the thunderstorms in the West. The winds may not only kick up dust in the vicinity, but can fan the sparks and flames produced by lightning strikes. With little or no rain to extinguish these flames, multiple wildfires can quickly spread through the dry brush that has been baking in the sun all summer long.

In Las Vegas on early Monday morning, over 13,000 were without power due to thunderstorms.

Any non-flooding rainfall without lightning would be welcomed.

A small number of the storms will manage to bring enough rain to wet the ground and result in a temporary soaking, while a smaller number still can bring so much rain as to lead to isolated flash flooding and debris flows.

"The pattern is pulling a significant amount of atmospheric moisture westward, so it is possible that some communities in Southern California and Nevada get thoroughly soaked with a risk of flash flooding as well," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Brian Thomson said.

During Monday morning, showers and thunderstorms managed to unload 0.44 of an inch of rain on Palm Springs, California.



Flash flood watches and warnings were issued across Southern California, southern Nevada and southern Utah on Monday morning. Within 30 minutes after 9 a.m., local time, 0.71 inches of rain was measured in Primm, Nevada, near the state border with California.

As the deluge continued, areas like Pahrump, Nevada, about 60 miles east of Death Valley, saw flash flooding along Highway 160. An estimated .5 to 1 inch of rainfall reportedly fell around the area, with the highest observations pushing 2 inches, according to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alan Reppert.

"These seem to be slow moving storms too, so they can dump a lot of rain in a quick time," Reppert said.

For these reasons, hikers are strongly urged to monitor the changing weather not only at their location, but in the distance as well. Lightning can extend outward a dozen miles or more in extreme cases. A downpour miles upstream can produce a torrent of water through canyons and dry stream beds with a mainly clear sky overhead.

At the very least, most residents will notice an uptick in humidity levels during the first part of this week in the West.

"The westward push of monsoon moisture is moving along with the progression of a storm in the middle levels of the atmosphere," Benz explained.

This moisture will then be drawn northward around a large area of high pressure that remains anchored over the central Rockies and Plains this week.

"This circulation will tend to spread the thunderstorm risk into areas that have already been hammered by wildfires so far this summer in Northern California, northern Nevada, Oregon and Idaho as the week progresses," Benz said.

While some increase in moisture in the air may raise humidity levels slightly over the Northwest by midweek, it probably will not be enough to make a big difference in lowering the potential combustion of natural fuels in the region.

As of Monday night, there were 85 large, non-contained wildfires burning in the United States, mostly in the West, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

In Northern California, the Dixie Fire, which is only 22% contained, had consumed 198,021 acres and destroyed 36 structures as of Monday night. The cause of the Dixie Fire remains under investigation.

In southern Oregon, the Bootleg Fire, which started from lightning strikes, was 53% contained, had burned 409,611 acres and destroyed 184 structures.

Farther southwest, rain from the monsoon has brought some drought relief in portions of New Mexico and Arizona, but at a price.

The combination of torrential downpours, that have repeated or lingered in some cases, on top of rugged and arid terrain has led to incidents of flash flooding.

On Friday, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Arizona shared a video on Twitter of the department's aviation unit saving a stranded driver that drove through a flooded street and got stuck.

Last Tuesday, drenching rainfall centered on Albuquerque, New Mexico, where 1 inch of rain poured down in just 15 minutes near Indian School and Tramway, according to the Albuquerque Journal. The rising waters of the Embudo Arroyo caused three people to be swept away in the flooding. All three bodies have been recovered. Nolan Bennett, a field engineer for Albuquerque Metropolitan Arroyo Flood Control, told local station KOB, there was about 10 to 12 feet of water rushing down the arroyo.

The National Weather Service office in Flagstaff, Arizona, told the Associated Press that more rain fell in some places in northern Arizona than in the whole monsoon season last year. At least one fatality was attributed to the heavy rain in the Flagstaff area after a woman was swept away in floodwaters.

A fresh 1.80 inches of rain was measured in Flagstaff on Saturday, compared to an average of 2.61 inches for all of July. An additional 0.55 of an inch fell on Flagstaff on Sunday and brought the July 2021 total to 5.41 inches.

Phoenix has received nearly two times its normal rainfall for all of July, while Tucson, Arizona, has received 3.4 times the average for the month so far with a whopping 3.7 times the normal rainfall for El Paso, Texas, through July 25.

Other cities at an elevated risk for flash flooding this week include Yuma, Arizona; Las Vegas and Palm Springs.

"There is likely to be a lull or decrease in the amount of drenching thunderstorm activity in portions of New Mexico and Arizona as this mid-level storm hovers off the coast of Southern California for a time this week," Benz added.

Still a lull does not mean that storms will be completely absent and there is still a risk of isolated incidents of flash flooding through this week over the interior Southwest.

Alex Sosnowski is an AccuWeather senior meteorologist.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The California Highway Patrol said a major injury crash involving four vehicles on Highway 20 in Clearlake Oaks on Saturday sent several people to the hospital and led to one man being arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence.

Stephen Williams, 37, of Pacifica was arrested following the crash, which took place at 4:10 p.m. Saturday on Highway 20 east of Sulphur Bank Drive, according to a Monday report from the CHP’s Clear Lake Area office.

The CHP said Williams was driving a blue 2004 Toyota Highlander westbound on Highway 20, approaching Sulphur Bank Drive at a high rate of speed.

Randall Wilk, 61, of Oakland was driving a blue 2015 Toyota Prius westbound, directly in front of Williams' Toyota Highlander, while Kristi Crume, 34, of Grass Valley, was driving a silver 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee eastbound, followed by 70-year-old Kenneth Tomatis of Modesto, who was driving a white 2009 Hyundai Santa Fe, the CHP said.

For reasons that the CHP said are still under investigation, Williams' Toyota Highlander collided with the rear of Wilk’s Toyota Prius, causing Wilk to lose control of the Prius.

Williams’ Toyota Highlander continued in a westerly direction and collided head-on with Crume’s Jeep Grand Cherokee, with the Toyota then continuing in a westerly direction and colliding head-on with Tomatis’ Hyundai Santa Fe, the CHP said.

The CHP said Williams suffered major injuries as a result of the collision and was subsequently arrested by Clear Lake CHP officers, who observed signs and symptoms of alcohol intoxication.

Williams was flown by air ambulance to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, the CHP said.

Crume had major injuries and was flown to UC Davis Medical Center for treatment, along with two young children, girls ages 1 and 2, who were with her and who had minor injuries, the CHP said.

Wilk had minor injuries and Tomatis was not reported to be injured, with neither transported, the CHP said.

All six of the individuals in the four vehicles were using their safety equipment, 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.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Worsening drought conditions are leading this week to the Board of Supervisors considering new reporting requirements for planning projects, while at the same time they will consider a temporary moratorium on early activation permits for projects to give county staff a chance to catch up on a significant backlog.

The‌ ‌board will meet beginning ‌at‌ ‌9‌ ‌a.m. ‌Tuesday, July 27, in the board chambers on the first floor of the Lake County Courthouse, 255 N. Forbes St., Lakeport.

The‌ ‌meeting‌ ‌can‌ ‌be‌ ‌watched‌ ‌live‌ ‌on‌ ‌Channel‌ ‌8, ‌online‌ ‌at‌ ‌https://countyoflake.legistar.com/Calendar.aspx‌‌ and‌ ‌on‌ ‌the‌ ‌county’s‌ ‌Facebook‌ ‌page. ‌Accompanying‌ ‌board‌ ‌documents, ‌the‌ ‌agenda‌ ‌and‌ ‌archived‌ ‌board‌ ‌meeting‌ ‌videos‌ ‌also‌ ‌are‌ ‌available‌ ‌at‌ ‌that‌ ‌link. ‌ ‌

To‌ ‌participate‌ ‌in‌ ‌real-time, ‌join‌ ‌the‌ ‌Zoom‌ ‌meeting‌ ‌by‌ ‌clicking‌ ‌this‌ ‌link‌. ‌ ‌

The‌ ‌meeting‌ ‌ID‌ ‌is‌ 930 3219 4127, ‌pass code 555254.‌ ‌The meeting also can be accessed via one tap mobile at +16699006833,,93032194127#,,,,*555254#.

All interested members of the public that do not have internet access or a Mediacom cable subscription are encouraged to call 669-900-6833, and enter the Zoom meeting ID and pass code information above.

To‌ ‌submit‌ ‌a‌ ‌written‌ ‌comment‌ ‌on‌ ‌any‌ ‌agenda‌ ‌item‌ ‌visit‌ ‌https://countyoflake.legistar.com/Calendar.aspx‌‌ and‌ ‌click‌ ‌on‌ ‌the‌ ‌eComment‌ ‌feature‌ ‌linked‌ ‌to‌ ‌the‌ ‌meeting‌ ‌date. ‌If‌ ‌a‌ ‌comment‌ ‌is‌ ‌submitted‌ ‌after‌ ‌the‌ ‌meeting‌ ‌begins, ‌‌it‌ ‌may‌ ‌not‌ ‌be‌ ‌read‌ ‌during‌ ‌the‌ ‌meeting‌ ‌but‌ ‌will‌ ‌become‌ ‌a‌ ‌part‌ ‌of‌ ‌the‌ ‌record. ‌

At 10:30 a.m., representatives from the Lake County Water Resources Department, Office of Emergency Services, Environmental Health and the Lake County Drought Task Force, a workgroup organized by the California Department of Water Resources, will provide an update on the 2021 declared drought and its relationship with Clear Lake and its watershed.

On May 11, the board passed a resolution declaring a drought emergency that directed reports be made to the board so it can determine whether emergency conditions continue to exist.

That will be followed by a discussion timed for 11 a.m. in which the board will consider an urgency ordinance requiring land use applicants to provide enhanced water analysis during a declared drought emergency.

The Lake County Planning Commission has asked the board for additional guidance on projects with regard to water, as Lake County News has reported.

“The Planning Commission is given a difficult task to deal with many applications that have been working their way through a rigorous process to be considered eventually in their meetings,” said Board Chair Bruno Sabatier in his memo on the item. “During these meetings, water has become, rightfully so, a more sensitive subject matter due to our drought conditions. The Planning Commission has requested the board's assistance verbally multiple times on direction and guidance during these hard and difficult times where economic development and the urgent need to conserve water seem to be clashing.”

Sabatier notes that in the many Planning Commission meetings that he’s observed, including the appeals that the Board of Supervisors has heard, “often times only well reports are provided. Well reports do not provide any scientific review on the impacts that the project may have and offer little to no information to allow our staff to analyze the cumulative impact these projects may have on the surrounding area.”

He’s offering an urgency ordinance that provides guidance to Community Development staff that a hydrology report is required for all projects during the duration of our drought emergency declaration “and that the applicants draft a drought management plan on how to take part in our community in conserving water in comparison to pursue the full potential of their projects. This would impact all projects as water is part of all projects currently being reviewed.”

At 11:30 a.m., the board will consider a proposal from Supervisor Jessica Pyska and Supervisor Moke Simon for an interim urgency ordinance imposing a temporary prohibition — or moratorium — on the issuance of early activation permits for land use projects within the county’s unincorporated area.

Pyska and Simon’s memo to the board explains that the Community Development Department Ad-Hoc Committee has determined that the temporary moratorium is necessary in order to address a significant backlog of applications for early activation permits “and to ensure that such permits are not issued without a thorough consideration of the narrowly-prescribed circumstances pursuant to which such permits may be issued.”

The interim urgency ordinance also is needed to allow Community Development “sufficient time to study and assess various approaches to the land use permitting process to ensure that zoning regulations are developed whereby permittees are not delayed by an early activation process when a streamlined use permit process is more advantageous to effective land use planning, offers certainty to permittees, and fosters critical environmental review and public comment,” the memo explains.

If passed by a four-fifths vote, the urgency ordinance would be in effect for 45 days, Pyska and Simon’s memo said.

They said all early activation applications submitted before the effective date of the urgency ordinance and deemed acceptable by the Community Development Department will be allowed to proceed in the review process.

In other drought-related matters, in an untimed item Sabatier and Supervisor EJ Crandell will ask their colleagues to consider code enforcement priorities during the drought emergency as well as the creation of a code enforcement ad hoc committee.

During the drought emergency, Crandell and Sabatier suggest that code enforcement activities should align with drought-related priorities including illegal cannabis grows, illegal water trucks and hazardous vegetation.

“We feel that with the administrative penalties, an urgency water truck ordinance, and an action plan for attacking these new priorities that a Code Enforcement Ad Hoc Committee should be created to work efficiently and collaboratively to move these action items along,” Crandell and Sabatier wrote in their memo.

They suggest that the ad hoc committee should include themselves along with the interim Community Development director, county counsel, code enforcement manager, sheriff, water district director or their designees.

Also on Tuesday, the board is scheduled to get an update on COVID-19 at 9:06 a.m., present a proclamation recognizing Lake County AmeriCorps CivicSpark Fellows at 9:30 a.m. and hear a CivicSpark presentation on fire mapping at 9:35 a.m.

At noon, the board is set to get a presentation from the Lake Area Planning Council on the regional transportation plan and active transportation plan.

The full agenda follows.

CONSENT AGENDA

5.1: Allocation of cannabis taxes to the Middle Creek Restoration Project design cost.

5.2: Adopt Proclamation Recognizing Lake County AmeriCorps CivicSpark Fellows.

5.3: Approve addition of a special meeting date to the board’s annual meeting calendar for 2021.

5.4: Approve leave of absence request for Social Services employee Bonnie Ceja from Dec. 16, 2021, through June 1, 2022, and authorize the chair to sign.

5.5: Approve revision to the applicant interview travel expense reimbursement policy.

5.6: Approve minutes of the Board of Supervisors Meetings June 8, 2021, June 15, 2021, and June 22, 2021.

5.7: Approve second reading of an ordinance amending Section 21-3.7 of Chapter 21 of the Ordinance Code of the County of Lake by Adopting a Sectional District Zoning Map No. 3.7(b) 1.403.

5.8: Approve second reading of an ordinance amending Section 21-3.7 of Chapter 21 of the Ordinance Code of the County of Lake by Adopting a Sectional District Zoning Map No. 3.7(b) 1.404.

5.9: Adopt resolution to continue participation in the Abandoned Vehicle Abatement Service Authority and extend the vehicle registration fee/service fee for the Abandoned Vehicle Abatement Program and authorize the chair to sign.

5.10: Approve the creation of an extra help museum assistant and extra help museum technician.

5.11: Approve a purchase order for the purchase of a John Deere excavator for county road maintenance, and authorize the Public Works director/assistant purchasing agent to sign the purchase order.

5.12: Approve contract between county of Lake and The Regents of the University of California for training services in the amount of $225,292.50, from July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022, and authorize the chair to sign.

TIMED ITEMS

6.2, 9:06 a.m.: Consideration of update on COVID-19.

6.3, 9:30 a.m.: Presentation of proclamation recognizing Lake County AmeriCorps CivicSpark Fellows.

6.4, 9:35 a.m.: CivicSpark presentation on fire mapping.

6.5, 10:30 a.m.: Presentation of 2021 drought, Clear Lake.

6.6, 11 a.m.: Consideration of an urgency ordinance requiring land use applicants to provide enhanced water analysis during a declared drought emergency.

6.7, 11:30 a.m.: Consideration of an interim urgency ordinance imposing a temporary prohibition (moratorium) on the issuance of early activation permits for land use projects within the unincorporated area of the county of Lake.

6.8, 12 p.m.: Consideration of presentation by the Lake Area Planning Council on the regional transportation plan and active transportation plan.

UNTIMED ITEMS

7.2: a) Discussion and consideration of code enforcement priorities during the drought emergency; and b) consideration of a code enforcement ad hoc committee.

7.3: CivicSpark Fellow presentation: Amendments to Chapter 23 — Clear Lake Shoreline Ordinance for the Lake County Water Resources Department.

7.4: (a) Consideration to waive the formal bidding process, pursuant to Lake County Code Section 38.2, as it is not in the public interest due to the unique nature of goods or services; and (b) consideration of tenth amendment to the agreement between the county of Lake and Cerner Corp. for Anasazi Software and Support Services for fiscal years 2020-21 and 2021-22 for a sum of $95,000.00 and authorize the board chair to sign the amendment.

CLOSED SESSION

8.1: Conference with legal counsel: Significant exposure to litigation pursuant to Government Code section 54956.9 (d)2)(e)1) — one potential case.

8.2: Sitting as the board of directors of the Lake County IHSS Public Authority: Conference with (a) Chief Negotiator M. Long and County Negotiator C. Markytan; and (b) Employee Organization: California United Homecare Workers Union Local 4034.

8.3: Conference with legal counsel: Existing litigation pursuant to Gov. Code section 54956.9(d)(1): Settling States v. McKesson, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen (“Distributors”), and manufacturer Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Johnson & Johnson, et al.

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.

BERKELEY — California's fire season is in full swing and could well be worse than in 2020, but new tools are on the way to help responders more rapidly locate wildfires once they break out and, ideally, quickly extinguish them before they get out of control.

With the help of a $1.5 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, a University of California, Berkeley, physicist and a firefighter-turned-scientist plan to outfit spotter planes with improved infrared detectors to learn more about how fires spread. And within four years, they hope to send similar systems into space for 24/7 fire discovery and monitoring.

Real-time airborne infrared data, combined with machine learning algorithms that can map hot spots in thermal images within milliseconds, will help them create “fire behavior” maps for firefighters within 20 minutes of an outbreak.

The detectors can also provide information on flame length and geometry that, combined with wind speed and humidity data, could be modeled to predict where and how fast a fire will spread.

The airborne detectors will provide a proof-of-concept toward achieving the team’s ultimate goal, which is to design an instrument package that would sit on geostationary satellites and continuously look for fire outbreaks over the Western U.S. or other fire-prone areas around the world.

“We plan to build a system that really delivers a better, more detailed spatial characterization of fires to firefighters in real time,” said Tim Ball, a former professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, and founder and president of Fireball Information Technologies LLC, a Reno-based fire assessment and mapping company with operations throughout the Western U.S. “This will also improve our predictive models to a degree that improves firefighter safety and the tactical and strategic decision making on the ground.”

“One study estimated that if you can just discover and get to a fire earlier, you would save $8 billion dollars over a decade,” said Carl Pennypacker, a physicist at UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory, or SSL, and co-principal investigator with Ball on the grant. “If firefighters could be alerted to a fire within 10 minutes — if they knew where it was and could get to it, even without any heroic measures, like airborne tankers on constant alert — that saves a lot of money and lives.”

Pennypacker first proposed such a satellite-borne fire spotter more than seven years ago, to be called the Fire Urgency Estimator on Geosynchronous Orbit, or FUEGO.

Since then, he has lowered his sights a bit, he said, looking also at airborne surveillance and hooking up with the ALERTWildfire group at UC San Diego that maintains a network of near-infrared cameras around the state for early confirmation and potential suppression of incipient wildfires.

In the past few years, Pennypacker also connected with Ball, who started Fireball 20 years ago in an attempt to better predict how fires will spread and has connections with Cal Fire, California’s firefighting unit; the National Forest Service, which flies its own fire-spotting planes; and firefighting teams on several continents.

The two teamed up with engineers at SSL — a laboratory that has built more than 100 instrument packages for satellite missions over the past 60 years — to design and build the detector systems.

Pennypacker’s expertise is in analysis software: He was a co-founder of the 2011 Nobel Prize-winning team that in 1998 analyzed light from supernovas to discover dark energy. He and Ball now work with UC San Diego’s ALERTWildfire and High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network, or HPWREN, pioneers in early fire-camera technology and the Internet provider that connects the the so-called pan, tilt, zoom near-infrared cameras, to analyze the images to confirm fires between 1 and 5 minutes after ignition.

Pennypacker said that he and Ball's experience with firefighters leads them to believe “that the information is changing the culture of fire agencies. Because they can understand the challenge of particular fires faster and more thoroughly, they can respond in more effective ways.”

Changing fire regime

“It is not unusual for wildfires to burn for 20 minutes or more before being reported, by which time they can be beyond easy control,” Ball said. The 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed the community of Paradise in Northern California was beyond control before any fire crews could reach the point of ignition. It ultimately burned 340 square miles, took 85 lives and cost more than $24 billion in losses and fire suppression costs. In 2018 alone, California wildfires caused economic losses of nearly $150 billion, according to a UC Irvine study.

“The actual number of fires is down from the 20-year average, but the intensity is up, the size is way up,” Ball said. “Although we have fewer fires, they burn a lot more acres.”

Climate change caused by burning of fossil fuels, Pennypacker said, is one of the major culprits.

“There are many ways in which climate change is impacting fires now: The number of drought years has been high in the last three decades. Warmer temperatures and drought extend the fire season. Higher temperatures reduce the relative humidity, causing especially fine fuels to be drier and more easily ignited. This is especially pronounced at night — fires used to die at night, but now they keep roaring. There are more strong wind events, which both fan flames to higher intensity and carry the resulting embers farther. When the fire-thrown embers land in the drier fine fuels, spot fires erupt carrying fires forward at a much faster speed than just a normal flame front — sometimes up to tens of miles an hour,” he said.

While the tools for fighting fire have improved a great deal — bigger, better aircraft; more agile fire engines; better firefighter training — Ball said it is evident that we are falling behind the increase in fire destructiveness.

Areas that have lagged significantly are persistent, real-time intelligence and predictive understanding of fire spread. These would help firefighters stay a step ahead, rather trying to catch up with the way that fires are changing, he said.

While a handful of companies in the Western U.S., including Fireball, offer assistance — fire-spotting planes, helicopters and drones, as well as modeling software to predict a fire’s movement — Cal Fire, for the most, part relies on planes flown once daily by the U.S. Forest Service and flown only at night, because the standard detectors are unable to handle the enormous dynamic range of infrared radiation required to characterize active fires.

“That is what is different about what we are doing,” Ball said. “We can measure tiny spot fires and huge flame fronts, then deliver maps depicting flame size, intensity — energy release — and rates of spread to firefighters on the ground just minutes later. These fire characteristics are, at the same time, what firefighters need to know for tactical and strategic decision-making and what predictive models need to project future fire conditions.”

Similarly, the UC Berkeley Fuego Group’s geosynchronous satellite payload will fill an unmet need on the basis of solid, cross-disciplinary understanding. Pennypacker says:

“Our satellite design benefits not only from recent advances in infrared imaging, but also from careful study of signal background and considering how best to recognize small fire signals in that background, as well as optimizing the trade-off between spatial resolution and time to detect/report a fire,” Pennypacker said. “The result is that we can scan the entire fire-prone Western U.S. many times per minute and process the sequence to detect fires of about the same footprint as two semi-trailers. This is a breakthrough in fire detection capability.”

Pennypacker and Ball emphasized that the airborne system will play the important role of cross-checking the calculations of small signal detectability and other aspects of calibration for the geostationary instruments.

“The airplane system can measure signal strengths and backgrounds and test data flows and analysis software,” Pennypacker said. “Thus, when we launch the satellite in a few years, we will be flying a well-tested and proven system.”

Robert Sanders writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The National Weather Service said there are chances of thunderstorms in parts of northwest California on Monday and Tuesday.

Forecasters said a surge on “monsoonal moisture” will bring shower chances and a few isolated thunderstorms to the region.

Exact details on shower and isolated thunderstorm coverage and timing remain highly uncertain, the agency said late Sunday.

The potential for lightning raises concerns about the potential for fire starts considering how dry vegetation is across Northern California.

Any isolated thunderstorms this week are expected to also carry some small amounts of rainfall, the National Weather Service reported.

The specific Lake County forecast anticipates chances of showers and thunderstorms late Monday night, with light winds.

Temperatures this week also are expected to climb into the high 90s during the day, with nighttime temperatures in the high 60s.

Visit www.weather.gov/eka for more specific forecast information.

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. — Lake County Animal Care and Control continues to have a large selection of cats and kittens for adoption during kitten season.

The following cats at the shelter have been cleared for adoption.

Call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278 or visit the shelter online at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control.htm for information on visiting or adopting.

Domestic short hair kittens

This litter of domestic short hair kittens includes one male and five females.

They are in cat room kennel No. A1, ID Nos. LCAC-A-1172, 1173, 1174, 1175, 1176 and 1178.

Male domestic shorthair kitten

This male domestic short hair kitten has a gray tabby coat.

He is in cat room kennel No. 11c, ID No. LCAC-A-1144.

Female domestic shorthair kitten

This female domestic short hair kitten has a black coat.

She is in cat room kennel No. 11d, ID No. LCAC-A-1145.

Domestic medium hair cat

This 3-year-old female domestic medium hair cat has a brown tabby coat.

She is in cat room kennel No. 58, ID No. LCAC-A-1029.

‘Furball’

“Furball” is a 6-year-old female domestic longhair cat with a brown tabby coat.

She is in cat room kennel No. 84, ID No. LCAC-A-969.

Male domestic shorthair

This male domestic shorthair has a gray and white coat.

He is 1-year-old and weighs nearly 6 pounds.

He is in cat room kennel No. 120, ID No. LCAC-A-874.

Female domestic shorthair

This 2-year-old female domestic shorthair cat has a white coat and blue eyes.

She is in cat room kennel No. C123, ID No. LCAC-A-1152.

Male domestic shorthair kitten

This male domestic shorthair kitten has a black coat.

He is in cat room kennel No. 150, ID No. LCAC-A-1165.

Male domestic shorthair kitten

This male domestic shorthair kitten has a gray tabby coat.

He is in cat room kennel No. 172, ID No. LCAC-A-1345.

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.

Dear Lady of the Lake,

We are in a drought and I am worried about the impact of this drought on the Lake County economy and the ecosystems of Clear Lake. What should we expect with the current drought when it comes to boating, fishing, and drinking water from Clear Lake? Is there really anything we can do?

— Distressed about drought in Nice


Dear Distressed,

Well I am glad you are paying attention and acknowledging that things in the lake are interconnected. That really is step one. I also am guessing, because you are worried about the drought situation, that you are doing everything you can to conserve as much water as possible, especially living in Nice where residents are reliant on drinking water from Clear Lake. I am also very happy that you acknowledged some of the immediate problems we are facing.

Yes, we are in a drought that will extend into the fall of this year and we have to consider that it might extend into next year too. While we don’t know the future, we can prepare for it, both logistically and mentally.

While other reservoirs around the state are already getting too low for boater access, Clear Lake has several accessible ramps that will probably stay open in some capacity for about another month into the summer.

This has been good news for our local economy because we have and are able to accommodate boaters, fishers and water enthusiasts that have not been able to get access to other lake locations around the northern part of that state.

Boating access

There are ideas about extending city or county ramps if the water gets too low to launch a boat. While that concept is simple in theory, the practicalities of executing projects like that are very complex, especially within the designated “lakebed” zone of the lake.

Ramp work that will include grading, concrete or gravel placement, is fairly large-scale construction that requires surveying, engineering designs, environmental plans, permitting, contracting and materials.

The environmental impact plans are most essential as these projects could negatively impact lake health. This is especially true for sensitive fish species like our endemic Clear Lake Hitch (Lavinia exilicauda chi) and other sensitive fish species.

For any lake grading and construction project to move forward, it has to satisfy requirements from both the County of Lake Water Resources Department (Shoreline Ordinance Ch. 23) and the California Department Fish and Wildlife.

Most of these rules outline the type of work allowed and the time of year when work within the lake would have minimal impact on aquatic wildlife.

For lake projects, the project planning and permitting process is lengthy and the review and approval process takes time to complete.

When you think about it, we wouldn’t want it any other way because these restrictions are really the only safeguards put in place to protect fish and wildlife habitat and shoreline properties on the lake. It’s also one of the controls in place for improving Clear Lake water quality — which I think we all agree is important and worthy of protection.

It’s unclear if drought ramp work would be allowed even if the lakebed at the end of the ramp is dry, but it’s safe to say that the ramps might go dry before work could actually begin, especially because no public ramp project permits have yet submitted to the county’s Lakebed Management (at the time of this article going to press).

It’s also important to consider the cost and effort to construct these projects when they might be underwater in a mere three to five months. It’s a hard decision and decision makers have to decide if it’s the best use of taxpayer money.

There are many pros and cons to consider. Meanwhile, people can access the lake with kayaks, canoes, hand launch with trolling motors, and folks can enjoy shore fishing or wading, which is easier of course in rocky areas like Nice then muddy areas like the southern shore in the Upper Arm.

Drinking water

Drinking water is a little more difficult to both describe and address when it comes to drought, mostly because the eventual severity of this current drought is very uncertain at this time.

One thing to realize is that recent declarations of emergency and a top-down focus both at the state and local level provide for resources and emergency measures should a drinking water emergency occur due to water shortages.

Basically, the state has allocated funds and resources to help prepare and plan for impacts from drought in preparation, much like is done for wildfires both in planning and response.

Public and private treatment operators can — and have — extended their intake lines to get better access to cooler water as the shoreline recedes.

Clear Lake is a very large lake and while the quantity issue is important to consider, the more likely scenario is that accumulation of algae and cyanobacteria during low lake levels will have the most concerning impact on drinking water treatment consistency, capability and cost.

Think of Clear Lake like a very old aquarium that hasn’t had a water change or refill in 15 months and is now sitting in a sunny window all summer. The pumps get clogged with algae and the glass sides will get green. This is the same thing that is happening to our drinking water infrastructure like the pipes and screens that run along the bottom of the lake.

The best thing we can do, if we get our water from Clear Lake, is to fully utilize and preserve every single drop that comes out of our tap. We all need to maximize what we have and help to ease the burden on the treatment process. We might not run out of water, but the more water that is used, the more that needs to be treated and that will coincide with an increase in effort and cost.

The treatment process makes drinking water safe and clean, the majority of Clear Lake systems are in the top treatment tiers when it comes to the category or grade of systems available for treating drinking water.

Another thing to consider and be aware of, is that starting this year, the public and private drinking water purveyors on the lake are required, by state order, to monitor their finished water at the tap for microcystin cyanotoxins concentrations (I know that is a mouthful!).

Microcystins are the specific toxins produced by the most common cyanobacteria or blue green algae found in Clear Lake called microcystis. Any toxin triggers above an established threshold (0.3 ug/L) require continued monitoring and immediate response action.

Response actions can include switching to an intertie (alternate source or intake) if available, using reserve tanks or backup, or incorporating additional filtering and treatment methods.

In previous years, drinking water purveyors and companies could monitor the cyanotoxins at the finished tap water end on a volunteer basis and as far as I know from communications with Kennedy Environmental LLC (the locally-owned company that has done the testing at the taps for many years) there were never any finished tap water samples that resulted in an exceedance of the health hazard trigger for toxins in the drinking water.

This year, under state-mandated monitoring, there have also been no exceedances at the tap water end for the public and private purveyors on the lake who are monitoring.

To me, this indicates that the treatment systems are dependable and are working exactly the way they are supposed to, even during the extreme bloom conditions that have been occurring in the lake so far this year.

The end result is most important. We do have safe and clean drinking water, which is pretty miraculous when you look at the water in the lake right now and compare that to the finished, treated product that comes out of your tap.

It must be noted that some smells and colors are normal, as the physical and chemical process for treatment can sometimes leave residues. Water treatment operators and staff work very hard and most of them live in their own service area, and their family, just like yours, also relies on safe and clean water.

You can access your public or private system monitoring data, as well as other system information at the CA Drinking Water Watch website.

The cyanobacteria monitoring results are not yet available on this site, as that order is fairly new. However, this website also includes information like the system details, facilities, monitoring results and schedules, violations or enforcement actions, and copies of consumer confidence reports.

This resource is provided by the Drinking Water Division of California and provides information for all state-regulated systems, not just those with intakes on Clear Lake.

Since you live in Nice, you can go to the site and search for “Nice Mutual Water Co.” in Lake County. I can see that they serve a population of 2,731 and have about 1,000 service connections. I can also see from the “monitoring” menu that they monitor the water at their intake site, in the lake, and the finished water once treated.

The homepage also has a map feature, in case you don’t know what system you are a part of or you are interested in drinking water in another county or city.

This is a great resource to have access to if you wish to be more informed about your drinking water — wherever it comes from.

While so far things seem relatively stable right now, we should prepare for a point in the season when we will see an interaction of quantity (low lake levels) and quality (extremely severe blooms of algae and cyanobacteria) impacting drinking water systems. We as consumers and water users might have to significantly increase our water conservation efforts.

The dedicated staff operating these systems around the lake are learning more about their systems and how to improve their treatment and delivery every day. They are watching that Rumsey gauge, monitoring the lake level, planning and installing extended lines and double checking filters, sampling and analyzing pH and other indicators, calibrating fluorometers, and testing equipment. And they are sharing data and information with each other.

In a 2018 article in the Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, J. Lund referred to one of the lessons learned from the previous 2012-2016 drought, in that it “... brought innovations and improvements in water management, some of which will better prepare California for future droughts.”

I believe that this lesson still applies, but unlike wildfires that occur every year, droughts appear on more variable and patchy time lines, allowing us to “forget” what it was like during the last drought and “forgive” what we need to do to cope and survive during the next one.

Unlike wildfires, we have more scientific “premonition” that a drought is coming, from reduced winter precipitation, low snowpack, low moisture snowpack, and increases in air temperatures.

For this year, while we can predict best and worst case scenarios for lake levels (Calculated predictions by County Water Resources Department can be found at their website and Facebook page @lakecountywater) which range from -1.98 to -4.0, respectively, by Nov 1, 2021, on the Rumsey stage, we just don’t know if enough rain will fall this coming winter.

And that uncertainty, and what we can do to plan and prepare should that scenario come to pass, is really, a completely different and new discussion — one I am hoping we don’t need to have come winter.

Sincerely,
Lady of the Lake

If you want more information about the impact of Drought on California Aquatic ecosystems, I suggest you follow the California Water Blog https://californiawaterblog.com/ and sign up for new posts to be sent directly to your email.

Please note that I referred to “public and private” drinking water systems on Clear Lake. This does not apply to small systems (private small systems with less than 14 connections). These types of small systems are not regulated by the State or the County. Safe operation, maintenance, and monitoring of these small systems is provided by the homeowner. An informational brochure for small systems is available here in English and Spanish. If you have questions about your small drinking water system or your single intake system you can reach out to Big Valley EPA and Cal-WATCH as they currently have some monitoring and guidance resources that might be helpful. Check out that project page here.

Angela De Palma-Dow is a limnologist (limnology = study of fresh inland waters) who lives and works in Lake County. She has a Masters of Science from Michigan State University. She is a Certified Lake Manager from the North American Lake Management Society, or NALMS, and she is the current president/chair of the California chapter of the Society for Freshwater Science. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

 

How do you get to the Olympics? Practice, practice, practice … but also know what to concentrate on during the heat of competition.

How fast someone runs, swims or rows; how high or long they jump; how accurately they hit a target; how well they balance; or how much weight they can lift depends to a significant extent on where they focus their attention.

I’m a sport scientist who for decades has studied how people learn motor skills. In the late 1990s I began examining how a performer’s focus of attention influences learning.

Research suggests that what an athlete concentrates on can be the difference between winning the gold and not even making the team. What might be surprising is that shifting your focus from within yourself – what’s going on in your body – to what’s out there – what you’re trying to accomplish – is a winning strategy.

An athlete’s brain is busy

Consider what the brain needs to do to organize complex movements.

It must coordinate the contractions of the necessary muscles – ensuring that they happen at the right time, for the proper duration, and with the required intensity. It also must inhibit other muscles, basically telling those not involved in the movement to stay on the sidelines for the moment.

Temporary task-specific connections among relevant brain networks are a precondition for smooth, efficient and precise movements. The functional connectivity of certain brain areas and the suppression of other areas enable an athlete to produce elegant jump shots, tennis strokes, golf swings or tumbling routines.

Learning to produce effective brain activation patterns is a long-term process, of course. Achieving a skill level at which performance is consistently accurate, automatic, fluent and economical requires considerable practice. Athletes hone their skills over many years or even decades.

Nevertheless, at the moment they perform, their focus of attention plays a critical role. If athletes have the wrong focus, their performance will suffer.

Where to target your focus

Based on the findings of numerous studies, it’s clear athletes should never concentrate on their own movements – what movement scientists call an internal focus of attention.

This might seem contradictory to the way many people learn a new sport. After all, those who instruct others in the process of acquiring movement skills typically refer to body movements. Think of a coach telling a young basketball player to flick her wrist while shooting the ball, or a golf coach telling a player to focus on his hip rotation. Consequently, athletes think about how to move their body parts, particularly in the early stages of learning.

But surveys have found that even experienced athletes often focus internally. Especially when they’re under pressure – as they would be during competition – they tend to concentrate on their movements. Often, the result is that they “choke.”

Instead, for optimal performance, the focus should be on the movement goal. This is called an external focus of attention.

It can mean concentrating on a target to be hit, such as the corner of a goal, a golf hole, a bull’s-eye or a catcher’s mitt. It can also be the intended motion or trajectory of an implement such as a javelin, discus or barbell; the desired spin of a ball; the force exerted against an apparatus or piece of equipment, the floor or an opponent; the water being pushed back in swimming or rowing; or the finish line in a race.

What it is not is the hand releasing the object or pulling the water back, the muscles producing the force, or the speed of leg movements.

More efficient to focus on what than how

Focusing on the intended outcome of your actions, rather than your body movements, reveals the body’s remarkable capability to produce effective and efficient movements. Even movement form or technique often improves immediately when a person switches from an internal to an external focus of attention. The body does what it has to do to complete the action – unless you interfere via conscious attempts to control your movements.

Researchers have noted the effects of an external focus on many aspects of performance: improved movement accuracy, enhanced balance, greater maximum forces, higher speed and better endurance.

With an external focus, movements are more efficient. Because brain and muscle activity are optimized, the resulting movements are produced with less energy. This is seen, for example, in reduced oxygen uptake or lower heart rates for the same physical work when performers adopt an external focus.

Researchers have quantified just how much of an edge this focus shift can provide to athletes. With an external focus:

• The same swimmers swam 1.4% faster over the length of a 25-yard pool.
• Resistance-trained individuals produced 9% greater maximal forces, or were able to complete 11.4% more repetitions with the same weight.
• Boxers punched 4% faster and 5% more forcefully.
• Runners needed 9.5% less oxygen for the same running speed and distance.
• Kayakers completed a 100-meter wildwater sprint 4.3% (or 1.3 seconds) faster.

Considering that races are often won or lost by very small margins, sometimes in the range of hundredths of a second, an athlete’s focus of attention can determine whether or not they win a medal.

Plenty of benefits beyond Olympic stadium

While most people will never be Olympians, an external focus provides benefits regardless of the performer’s level of expertise, age or (dis)ability, or the type of skill.

[Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world. Sign up today.]

Whether you are learning to play a musical instrument or are an experienced musician, an external focus will result in better performance. Whether you are an older adult with Parkinson’s disease or a young healthy adult, your balance will be enhanced by an external focus. Whether you are unimpaired or had a stroke, you will perform activities of daily living more effectively with an external focus.

It turns out your body can more masterfully execute the actions you desire if you’re able to move your conscious focus from what your body is doing and instead think about what you want to accomplish.

Gabriele Wulf, Distinguished Professor, Department of Kinesiology and Nutrition Sciences, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Lake County Animal Care and Control has several new dogs it’s seeking to rehome.

Dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of basset, boxer, bulldog, Chihuahua, husky, pit bull, Rhodesian Ridgeback, Rottweiler, shepherd and terrier.

Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.

The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption (additional dogs on the animal control website not listed are still “on hold”).

Call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278 or visit the shelter online at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control.htm for information on visiting or adopting.

The newest dogs are listed at the top.

‘Dash’

“Dash” is a 2-year-old female Rhodesian Ridgeback mix with a short tan coat.

She is in kennel No. 15, ID No. LCAC-A-1183.

Male pit bull

This young male American pit bull has a short brown coat.

He is in kennel No. 18, ID No. LCAC-A-1028.

‘Happy’

“Happy” is a 3-year-old female pit bull mix with a short tan coat.

She is in kennel No. 19, ID No. LCAC-A-562.

Basset-husky-hound mix

This 2-year-old female basset-husky-hound has a short black and tan coat.

She is in kennel No. 21, ID No. LCAC-A-1331.

‘Dusty’

“Dusty” is a 2-year-old female pit bull terrier mix with a short gray coat.

She is in kennel No. 22, ID No. LCAC-A-611.

‘Jim’

“Jim” is a 2-year-old pit bull terrier mix with a short black and white coat.

He is in kennel No. 23, ID No. LCAC-A-810.

Male terrier

This 6-year-old male terrier has a short black coat.

He is in kennel No. 24, ID No. LCAC-A-1149.

‘Luna’

“Luna” is a 3-year-old female pit bull terrier mix with a short red coat.

She is in kennel No. 25, ID No. LCAC-A-1078.

‘Tinker’

“Tinker” is a 4-year-old Chihuahua with a short tan coat.

She is in kennel No. 26a, ID No. 1074.

Rottweiler-pit bull mix

This 1-year-old female Rottweiler-pit bull mix has a short black coat.

She has been spayed.

She is in kennel No. 27, ID No. LCAC-A-731.

‘Brutus’

“Brutus” is a 5-year-old male pit bull terrier with a short gray and white coat.

He is in kennel No. 28, ID No. LCAC-A-670.

Female pit bull terrier

This 4-year-old female pit bull terrier mix has a short white coat.

She is in kennel No. 29, ID No. LCAC-A-812.

‘Bubba’

“Bubba” is a male pit bull terrier mix with a short black coat.

He is in kennel No. 30, ID No. LCAC-A-1306.

‘Apollo’

“Apollo” is a 2-year-old male husky mix with a medium-length red and white coat and blue eyes.

He is in kennel No. 31, ID No. LCAC-A-783.

Male husky

This 2-year-old male husky has a medium-length red and white coat.

He is in kennel No. 32, ID No. LCAC-A-1024.

‘Dee’

“Dee” is a 1-year-old male shepherd mix with a black coat.

He’s in kennel No. 33, ID No. LCAC-A-1347.

‘Ghost’

“Ghost” is a 2-year-old female husky with an all-white coat and blue eyes.

She is in kennel No. 34, ID No. LCAC-A-1167.

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.

As a solar system forms, the young disk is initially bright and thick with dust. Within the first 10 million years or so, gaps appear within the disk as planets form and clear out paths. In time, this debris disk thins out as gravitational interactions with planets slowly sweep away the dust. Steady pressure from the starlight and stellar winds also blow out the dust. After approximately 10 million years, only a thin ring remains in the outermost reaches of the system, which is known as a debris disk. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC/Caltech).



Researchers will use NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope to study Beta Pictoris, an intriguing young planetary system that sports at least two planets, a jumble of smaller, rocky bodies, and a dusty disk.

Their goals include gaining a better understanding of the structures and properties of the dust to better interpret what is happening in the system.

Since it’s only about 63 light-years away and chock full of dust, it appears bright in infrared light — and that means there is a lot of information for Webb to gather.

Beta Pictoris is the target of several planned Webb observing programs, including one led by Chris Stark of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and two led by Christine Chen of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

Stark’s program will directly image the system after blocking the light of the star to gather a slew of new details about its dust. Chen’s programs will gather spectra, which spread light out like a rainbow to reveal which elements are present. All three observing programs will add critical details to what’s known about this nearby system.

First, a review of what we know

Beta Pictoris has been regularly studied in radio, infrared, and visible light since the 1980s. The star itself is twice as massive as our Sun and quite a bit hotter, but also significantly younger. (The Sun is 4.6 billion years old, but Beta Pictoris is approximately 20 million years old.)

At this stage, the star is stable and hosts at least two planets, which are both far more massive than Jupiter. But this planetary system is remarkable because it is where the first exocomets (comets in other systems) were discovered. There are quite a lot of bodies zipping around this system!

Like our own solar system, Beta Pictoris has a debris disk, which includes comets, asteroids, rocks of various sizes, and plenty of dust in all shapes that orbit the star. (A debris disk is far younger and can be more massive than our solar system’s Kuiper Belt, which begins near Neptune’s orbit and is where many short-period comets originate.)

This outside ring of dust and debris is also where a lot of activity is happening. Pebbles and boulders could be colliding and breaking into far smaller pieces — sending out plenty of dust.

Scrutinizing this planetary system

Stark’s team will use Webb’s coronagraphs, which block the light of the star, to observe the faint portions of the debris disk that surround the entire system.

“We know there are two massive planets around Beta Pictoris, and farther out there is a belt of small bodies that are colliding and fragmenting,” Stark explained. “But what’s in between? How similar is this system to our solar system? Can dust and water ice from the outer belt eventually make its way into the inner region of the system? Those are details we can help tease out with Webb.”

Webb’s imagery will allow the researchers to study how the small dust grains interact with planets that are present in that system.

Plus, Webb will detail all the fine dust that streams off these objects, permitting the researchers to infer the presence of larger rocky bodies and what their distribution is in the system.

They’ll also carefully assess how the dust scatters light and reabsorbs and reemits light when it’s warm, allowing them to constrain what the dust is made of.

By cataloging the specifics of Beta Pictoris, the researchers will also assess how similar this system is to our solar system, helping us understand if the contents of our solar system are unique.

Isabel Rebollido, a team member and postdoctoral researcher at STScI, is already building complex models of Beta Pictoris. The first model combines existing data about the system, including radio, near-infrared, far-infrared, and visible light from both space- and ground-based observatories. In time, she will add Webb’s imagery to run a fuller analysis.

The second model will feature only Webb’s data — and will be the first they explore. “Is the light Webb will observe symmetrical?” Rebollido asked. “Or are there ‘bumps’ of light here and there because there is an accumulation of dust? Webb is far more sensitive than any other space telescope and gives us a chance to look for this evidence, as well as water vapor where we know there’s gas.”

Dust as a decoder ring

Think of the debris disk of Beta Pictoris as a very busy, elliptical highway — except one where there aren’t many traffic rules. Collisions between comets and larger rocks can produce fine dust particles that subsequently scatter throughout the system.

“After planets, most of the mass in the Beta Pictoris system is thought to be in smaller planetesimals that we can’t directly observe,” Chen explained. “Fortunately, we can observe the dust left behind when planetesimals collide.”

This dust is where Chen’s team will focus its research. What do the smallest dust grains look like? Are they compact or fluffy? What are they made of?

“We’ll analyze Webb’s spectra to map the locations of dust and gas – and figure out what their detailed compositions are,” Chen explained. “Dust grains are ‘fingerprints’ of planetesimals we can’t see directly and can tell us about what these planetesimals are made of and how they formed.”

For example, are the planetesimals ice-rich like comets in our solar system? Are there signs of high-speed collisions between rocky planetesimals? Clearly analyzing if grains in one region are more solid or fluffy than another will help the researchers understand what is happening to the dust, and map out the subtle differences in the dust in each region.

“I’m looking forward to analyzing Webb’s data since it will provide exquisite detail,” added Cicero X. Lu, a team member and a fourth-year Ph.D. student at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “Webb will allow us to identify more elements and pinpoint their precise structures.”

In particular, there’s a cloud of carbon monoxide at the edge of the disk that greatly interests these researchers. It’s asymmetric and has an irregular, blobby side.

One theory is that collisions released dust and gas from larger, icy bodies to form this cloud. Webb’s spectra will help them build scenarios that explain its origin.

The reach of infrared

These research programs are only possible because Webb has been designed to provide crisp, high-resolution detail in infrared light.

The observatory specializes in collecting infrared light — which travels through gas and dust — both with images and spectra.

Webb also has another advantage — its position in space. Webb will not be hindered by Earth’s atmosphere, which filters out some types of light, including several infrared wavelength bands.

This observatory will allow researchers to gather a more complete range of infrared light and data about Beta Pictoris for the first time.

These studies will be conducted as part of Webb Guaranteed Time Observations, or GTO, and General Observers, or GO, programs.

The GTO programs are led by scientists who helped develop the key hardware and software components or technical and inter-disciplinary knowledge for the observatory.

GO programs are competitively selected using a dual-anonymous review system, the same system that is used to allocate time on the Hubble Space Telescope.

The James Webb Space Telescope will be the world's premier space science observatory when it launches in 2021. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

Claire Blome works for the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

LAKEPORT, Calif. — A local tribe and members of partner organizations will be surveying Lake County residents and visitors this weekend as part of a larger effort to reliably track and prevent the health impacts of harmful algal blooms and communicate with the public about them.

Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians is partnering with Tracking California — a program of the Oakland-based Public Health Institute — along with the state agencies to carry out the California Water: Assessment of Toxins for Community Health Project, or Cal-WATCH.

The group sought funding for a five-year project through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Environmental Health Capacity program.

The project summary explains that it’s working to increase the ability to reliably track and prevent harmful algal bloom illness statewide, with a special emphasis on Clear Lake, where those blooms, or HABs, have increased substantially since 2009.

Staff with the Public Health Institute and its Tracking California program, partners in Cal-WATCH, arrived in Lake County on Friday.

The team includes Susan Paulukonis, is a rare disease epidemiologist for the Public Health Institute and program manager for Cal-WATCH; Dr. Gina Solomon, MD, of the Public Health Institute and principal investigator of the Cal-WATCH project; Alexa Wilkie, program manager for Tracking California; David Chang, project coordinator for Tracking California; and Isadora Nogueira, research association with Tracking California.

Following a tour around the lake led by Karola Kennedy, water resources manager for Robinson Rancheria, the group gathered with Big Valley environmental staff, including Environmental Director Sarah Ryan, in Lakeport on Friday to plan a weekend of work.

Ryan said the group is “treading in new territory” in terms of public health.

The focus this weekend is on-the-ground outreach, one of the key purposes of which is to find out how people get their information about the lake and how informed they are, with a view to doing better public outreach, said Solomon.

The group is planning to do outreach on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Lakeport at Library Park and at the farmers market at the Lake County Fairgrounds, and also will be stopping at locations throughout Clearlake and Clearlake Oaks.

The survey can also be taken online for those who don’t meet up with the group this weekend.

For those who participate, there is a raffle in which they can win $25 gift cards.

Solomon said they’re hoping that in the coming years they can improve the system used to alert people when there are toxic blooms on Clear Lake, especially in circumstances where the HABs don’t appear as evident.

“The aim of this weekend is to collect as many survey responses as we can,” Paulukonis added.

Ryan said they also will have the paper surveys available around Lake County, with signs in English and Spanish that also feature scan codes to go to the online version.

Based on early returns, “We’re going to get a lot,” said Ryan, and that’s what the group wants.

Paulukonis said they will stop collecting survey data around Labor Day weekend and will put together a presentation of the results that will target local health agencies, tribes and anyone doing health education outreach. She said there also will be a community component.

Tracking illness reports

Ryan said the tribe has been involved in lake monitoring since 1999.

She said a state blue green algae committee began in 2006 in response to issues the Klamath tribes were encountering, with more efforts to ramp up monitoring beginning around 2010.

The California State Water Resources Control Board began tracking blooms on public water bodies in 2016, according to the Tracking California website.

Solomon said the issues with HABs is a relatively new issue that’s been getting worse in recent years.

The Tracking California website shows that in 2016, there were 91 blooms reported across California and no illness reports, followed by 181 blooms with no illness reports in 2017. By 2018, blooms had increased to 190 with 19 illness reports, and rose again in 2019 to 241 blooms and 22 connected reports of illness.

“It screams for attention,” said Solomon.

She added, “Not all of what’s out there is toxic. And not all that’s toxic is noticeable, so it can be a little tricky.”

Paulukonis said the state started working with partner agencies in 2018 to report illness impacts. Since then, they’ve been collecting data on humans, animals and wildlife.

Tracking California works with entities like Big Valley, the State Water Resources Control Board, the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, California Department of Fish and Wildlife and California Department of Public Health, she said.

“We investigate the reports that come in collectively and then report those that do seem to have some association with the bloom exposure up to the CDC’s reporting system,” which is called One Health, Paulukonis said.

She said part of the grant is to support Big Valley and Ryan’s team in responding to illness reports that come out of Clear Lake and the creeks feeding into it.

Of the reports received statewide of illness connected to HABs, 15% of the cases are coming from Clear Lake and its associated water bodies, Paulukonis said.

Paulukonis said when they get a report of a sick dog, human or wildlife in Lake County, Ryan and her team can be on the scene the same day to investigate. That rapid response is a huge advantage.

In one recent case, Ryan said they followed up with the owner of a dog that got sick after going into Kelsey Creek at the end of June. The dog, she added, survived.

Separately, Big Valley’s Clear Lake Water Quality Facebook page posts regular updates on testing results involving cyanotoxins on Clear Lake.

Water monitoring project looks at wells, intakes

While illness caused by HABs for humans, pets and wildlife is a chief area of focus for the project, it’s not the only one.

Another area of study is the safety of drinking water from the lake. Sixty percent of Lake County residents get their drinking water from Clear Lake, and so one facet of the project is to test drinking water from small water systems — as small as one to four connections — and from intakes and wells within 150 feet of the shoreline.

Ryan said the free testing project began in the fall, with water testing beginning earlier this year. She said those who are serviced by public water systems are not eligible.

So far, Ryan said they’ve identified some serious issues affecting private homeowners in terms of their private treatment systems, and the vulnerability they have to any Clear Lake water quality issues.

“They’re not regulated by anybody, these private systems,” she said, noting they are mostly in rentals, including vacation rentals, and they don’t have to meet Safe Drinking Water Act requirements, like the public water systems with certified managers do.

There are 430 parcels on Clear Lake that aren’t hooked up to a local water system, Ryan said.

Ryan said they mailed out packets, did door hangers and social media posts to alert property owners to the testing project. Sixty responses came in.

The first participants signed up around the end of February. So far they’ve sampled the tap water coming from 44 intakes and wells, Ryan said. Of that number, 14 were wells, 28 were intakes and two were not categorized.

Summary data showed that of the 14 wells, nine had nitrates detected and two had total coliform. Three wells had no detections of anything, Ryan said.

Of the 28 intakes, or pipes that run into the lake to extract water, Ryan said 15 had total coliform and two had total coliform and E. coli.

Solomon said total coliform is a bacteria that’s in the same general class as E. coli. While it may not make you sick, it’s an indicator that water isn’t clean and needs more treatment.

They also tested homes where herbicide treatment on the lake was happening nearby and had no detections of the chemicals, Ryan said.

The next phase of testing is on cyanotoxins, which are associated with HABs. Ryan said so far they’ve gotten initial surveillance reports for two homes, one with a well, one with an intake. Both had intact cyanotoxins coming out of their taps, even with water treatment in place.

She said they just tested 22 more homes for cyanotoxins and are waiting for the lab results.

The program gives the lab reports to participants along with guidance and a resource list on how to get help to set up a proper filtering system for their water.

Solomon said they are still recruiting participants for that project.

Paulukonis said they are planning a webinar for the project’s community drinking water component, with the goal of wanting people to understand the hazards of water that isn’t treated to a safe level.

Ryan said they’ve met with Lake County Environmental Health to let them know the concerning results from the testing.

She said there needs to be more support and help for private water systems.

Paulukonis said next year’s focus for drinking water will be similar, and will look at the water intake and wells on creeks that feed Clear Lake.

They also intend to look at fish tissue and crustaceans coming out of the lake, and the hazards in consuming those, Paulukonis said.

Ryan said good things are already coming from the collaboration, and Solomon said they are hoping the project continues long-term.

“We anticipate we will be here for years to come working on this in partnership with Big Valley,” she said. “There’s a lot of work to do.”

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. – The Scotts Valley Community Advisory Council will hold its next meeting on Monday, July 26.

The group will meet at 5 p.m. via Zoom.

The meeting ID is 961 3716 8087, passcode is 567514. The meeting also can be accessed via phone at 1-669-900-6833.

Under old business, they will discuss the pending request to clear Scotts Creek beginning at the bridge at Hendricks and Scotts Valley Road and ending downstream from a newly installed culvert, get a report on June 9 site visits from the Natural Resources Conservation Service and consider the bridge approach over Scotts Creek at Scotts Valley Road and Hendricks Road.

In new business, the group will hear about new use permits, community emergency notifications, Scotts Valley water usage by the city of Lakeport and the Scotts Valley Water Conservation District.

They also will discuss a request for a bike lane on Scotts Valley Road, get a report on the Scotts Valley Firewise Committee and consider whether to continue with Zoom meetings or resume in-person gatherings.