NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – Save the Redwoods League, along with a team of renowned scientists, have announced initial findings from a multiyear study aimed at predicting how rapid global climate change will affect redwoods in old-growth forests over time.

Among the study's key findings, researchers found ancient redwood forests can store up to three times more carbon above ground than non-redwood forests worldwide.

Changing environmental conditions have triggered a growth surge in coast redwoods and giant sequoias, researchers said, and California summers have warmed, but precipitation has remained highly variable and not decreased over recent decades.

Scientists also developed a new tree ring record from ancient redwoods throughout California to support the study of how redwoods have been affected by severe droughts, fires and flooding in the past centuries.

The study, called the Redwoods and Climate Change Initiative (RCCI), is a collaborative research program that began in 2009.

It is led by Save the Redwoods League and top scientific researchers from UC Berkeley, Humboldt State University, the Marine Conservation Institute and other organizations to study past, present and future impacts of climate change on coast redwoods and giant sequoia forests.

Save the Redwoods League is the only nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting ancient redwood forests throughout their natural range.

“These results bolster our mission to protect redwoods because these trees are pulling incomparable amounts of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere which helps combat global warming,” said Emily Burns, Director of Science for Save the Redwoods League. “We have found ancient forests where climate conditions are accelerating growth and we predict these places will stay vibrant habitat refuges for other plants and animals in the foreseeable future.”

“There's no question that our climate is changing. With this research, we have laid the foundation for understanding how we can be responsible caretakers for these magnificent forests in the years ahead,” said Harry Pollack, Chief Operating Officer for Save the Redwoods League. “We started this study because we can't afford to wait. With only five percent of the world's ancient redwood forests left, Save the Redwoods League needs to continue to lead conservation work as we've done for 95 years.”

Save the Redwoods League announced the first round of study results on this past Wednesday, Aug. 14, during a day-long symposium at The David Brower Center in Berkeley by the top researchers involved in the study.

The researchers involved included Stephen Sillett, Allyson Carroll and Robert Van Pelt from Humboldt State University; Todd Dawson and Anthony Ambrose from UC Berkeley; and Healy Hamilton from the Marine Conservation Institute and Sound Science, LLC.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The National Weather Service has issued a special weather statement for areas of Northern California, including Lake County, warning of the potential for thunderstorms beginning Sunday afternoon and lasting into next week.

A low pressure system off the coast may bring the storms over interior Northern California, forecasters said.

Isolated storms are expected over the region's mountains, possibly spreading into the Sacramento Valley over the next several days, the report explained.

In Lake County, there is a 20-percent chance of thunderstorms and a small amount of rain on Sunday after 11 a.m., with similar chances for showers and storms on Monday, according to the forecast.

On Tuesday, the chances of showers are expected to rise to 30 percent, the National Weather Service said.

Sunnier conditions, with no expectations of precipitation, are forecast for next Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Updates will be posted if conditions change.

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.

CLEARLAKE OAKS, Calif. – State and local firefighters remained on scene overnight at a fire burning east of Clearlake Oaks.

The Double Fire was sparked shortly before 6 p.m. Friday on the south side of Highway 20 at Mule Skinner Road near the Double Eagle Ranch, Cal Fire reported.

By late Friday night the fire had burned 70 acres and was 20 percent contained, according to Cal Fire Battalion Chief Greg Bertelli.

The fire is burning in steep, rugged country, consuming mainly brush and some grass and oak woodland, Bertelli said.

“We’re getting some spotting right now,” he said shortly after 10 p.m. Friday, explaining that a spot fire was burning on the opposite side of the highway but firefighters were picking it up.

On scene overnight were four hand crews, 10 engines, four bulldozers, four water tenders and numerous overhead officers, with resources coming from Cal Fire, Lake County Fire, Northshore Fire and Kelseyville Fire, Bertelli said. Williams Fire also had resources at the scene.

“Everyone’s going to be working all night,” said Bertelli.

Fire resources will be stepped up in the morning, when Bertelli said they will bring in four additional hand crews, which are necessary due to the terrain’s inaccessibility to equipment like bulldozers.

Cal Fire had sent air attack, tankers and a helicopter to the scene on Friday evening, with those air resources hitting the fire aggressively during its first hours, when there had been concerns that the fire had the potential to burn hundreds of acres.

A concern overnight was the wind. Bertelli said the winds usually kick up at night and can shift, but they were cautiously optimistic. “We’re not letting our guard down.”

The California Highway Patrol remained on scene helping with traffic control through the fire area.

Bertelli said the CHP was slowing traffic down as it passed along Highway 20 near the fire, and he urged people to be cautious in that area.

He expected traffic control to be in effect until the fire is contained.

As to an expected containment time, Bertelli said, “We’ll be out here at least for a couple few days.”

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. – Seventeen solid oak pews with padded seats plus a baptismal pool, with a total value of more than $40,000, were donated to the new Valley Cowboy Church in Spring Valley by Hospice Services of Lake County.  

The pews and pool were included in hospice's purchase of the former Calvary Baptist Church property on Parallel Drive in Lakeport.

As part of its commitment to recycle and re-use contents of the building, Hospice Services of Lake County sought a buyer for the pool and pews.

After talking with pastors Jackie Hansen-Merritt and Joe Merritt of the Valley Cowboy Church, hospice officials agreed to donate the items to the new church.

Several members of the church, including both pastors, came with two large trailers and pickup trucks to move the pews to their new home.

The baptismal pool was dismantled and removed from the Parallel Drive site over several days.

“The only things we already have are a piano and a horse trough,” said Hansen-Merritt when they came to pick up the pews.

She was thrilled to get the pool and pews, and said the congregation was growing.

The Valley Cowboy Church is located at 1556 New Long Valley Road in Spring Valley.

The building once housed a different church and the new pastors have opened the walls to expand the sanctuary accommodating the new pews and a larger congregation.

Future improvements include building a fenced area on the church grounds for horses so members of the congregation can ride their horses to church and have a safe place to leave them while they attend services.

Hansen-Merritt said the idea came to her when she realized how many of the local residents in Spring Valley had to drive miles out of the valley to attend church, and those that couldn’t drive didn’t have a church to go to.

Many of the residents in the valley have horses and she thought the local residents should have the option to ride their horses to church.

For more information about the Valley Cowboy Church, contact Pastor Jackie Hansen-Merritt at 707-350-1109.

Christine Hutt works for Hospice Services of Lake County, Calif.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – Two Nevada children who were the focus of a Friday statewide Amber Alert in California have been located.

Lillyanna Ramires, 9, and her brother, Martin Angel Rosales, 3, were found safe in the Sacramento area, according to an early Saturday morning update from the state of Nevada’s Amber Alert system.

The children were taken from the Department of Child and Family Services in Elko, Nev., on Wednesday by their noncustodial parents, Martin Cisneras Rosales, 33, and Amber Schenck, 29.

The California Highway Patrol issued the Amber Alert for the area from Sacramento south to Mexico on Friday evening.

Details about the children’s recovery were not immediately available early Saturday morning.

Atmospheric physicist Nick Gorkavyi missed witnessing an event of the century last winter when a meteor exploded over his hometown of Chelyabinsk, Russia.

From Greenbelt, Md., however, NASA’s Gorkavyi and colleagues witnessed the atmospheric aftermath. The explosion created a never-before-seen belt of “meteor dust” that circulated through the stratosphere for at least three months.

Shortly after dawn on Feb. 15, 2013, the meteor, or bolide, measuring 18 meters  across and weighing 11,000 metric tons, screamed into Earth’s atmosphere at 41,600 miles per hour.

Burning from the friction with Earth’s thin air, the space rock exploded 23 km above Chelyabinsk, releasing more than 30 times the energy from the atom bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

Some of the surviving pieces of the Chelyabinsk bolide fell to the ground. But the explosion also deposited hundreds of tons of dust up in the stratosphere, allowing the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite to make unprecedented measurements of how the material formed a thin but cohesive and persistent stratospheric dust belt.

“We wanted to know if our satellite could detect the meteor dust,” said Gorkavyi, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who led the study, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “Indeed, we saw the formation of a new dust belt in Earth’s stratosphere, and achieved the first space-based observation of the long-term evolution of a bolide plume.”

Gorkavyi and colleagues combined a series of satellite measurements with atmospheric models to simulate how the plume from the bolide explosion evolved as the stratospheric jet stream carried it around the Northern Hemisphere.

About three and a half hours after the initial explosion, the Ozone Mapping Profiling Suite instrument’s Limb Profiler on Suomi detected the plume high in the atmosphere at an altitude of about 40 km, quickly moving east at about 190 miles per hour.

The day after the explosion, the satellite detected the plume continuing its eastward flow in the jet and reaching the Aleutian Islands.

Larger, heavier particles began to lose altitude and speed, while their smaller, lighter counterparts stayed aloft and retained speed – consistent with wind speed variations at the different altitudes.

By Feb. 19, four days after the explosion, the faster, higher portion of the plume had snaked its way entirely around the Northern Hemisphere and back to Chelyabinsk. But the plume’s evolution continued: At least three months later, a detectable belt of bolide dust persisted around the planet.

The scientists’ model simulations, based on the initial Suomi NPP observations and knowledge about stratospheric circulation, confirmed the observed evolution of the plume, showing agreement in location and vertical structure.

“Thirty years ago, we could only state that the plume was embedded in the stratospheric jet stream,” said Paul Newman, chief scientist for Goddard’s Atmospheric Science Lab. “Today, our models allow us to precisely trace [the dust from] the bolide and understand its evolution as it moves around the globe.”

The full implications of the study remain to be seen.

Every day, tens of metric tons of small material from space encounters Earth and is suspended high in the atmosphere.

Even with the addition of the Chelyabinsk debris, the environment there remains relatively clean. Particles are small and sparse, in contrast to a stratospheric layer just below where abundant natural aerosols from volcanoes and other sources collect.

Still, with satellite technology now capable of more precisely measuring tiny atmospheric particles, scientists can embark on new studies in high-altitude atmospheric physics.

How common are previously unobservable bolide events? How might this debris influence stratospheric and mesospheric clouds?

Scientists previously knew that debris from an exploded bolide could make it high into the atmosphere. In 2004, scientists on the ground in Antarctica made a single lidar observation of the plume from a 1,000-ton bolide.

“But now in the space age, with all of this technology, we can achieve a very different level of understanding of injection and evolution of meteor dust in atmosphere,” Gorkavyi said. “Of course, the Chelyabinsk bolide is much smaller than the ‘dinosaurs killer,’ and this is good: We have the unique opportunity to safely study a potentially very dangerous type of event.”

Dr. Tony Phillips works for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – This week Lake County Animal Care and Control has a number of large breed dogs ready for adoption.

Coonhound, hound, lab and border collie mixes are available and needing new homes.

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.

If you're looking for a new companion, visit the shelter. There are many great pets hoping you'll choose them.

In addition to the animals featured here, all adoptable animals in Lake County can be seen here: http://bit.ly/Z6xHMb .

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

'Zeus'

“Zeus” is a 9-month-old male Labrador Retriever-border collie mix.

He has a short chocolate- and white-colored coat, weighs 56 pounds and has been neutered.

He's in kennel No. 6, ID No. 37370.

Male Labrador Retriever mix

This male Labrador Retriever mix is 7 months old.

He has a short brown coat and weighs 29 pounds. Shelter staff did not report if he had been altered.

Find him in kennel No. 8, ID No. 37318.

'Samantha'

“Samantha” is a 5-month-old Australian Shepherd mix.

She has a short blue merle coat, weighs 23 pounds and has been spayed.

She's in kennel No. 13, ID No. 37520.

'Dee'

“Dee” is a 10-month-old bluetick coonhound.

She weighs nearly 22 pounds, has a short blue merle coat and has been spayed.

Find her in kennel No. 14a, ID No. 37287.

'Missy'

“Missy” is a 4-year-old bluetick coonhound.

She weighs 39 pounds, has a short blue merle coat and has been spayed.

She's in kennel No. 14b, ID No. 37288.

'Bear'

“Bear” is a 1-year-old Labrador Retriever mix.

He has a short black coat and weighs 66 pounds. Shelter staff did not report if he had been neutered.

He's in kennel No. 16, ID No. 37345.

Female hound mix

This female hound mix is 8 years old.

She has a short black coat and weighs 54 pounds. It was not reported if she had been spayed.

Find her in kennel No. 25, ID No. 37390.

To fill out an adoption application online visit http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control/Adopt/Dog___Cat_Adoption_Application.htm .

Lake County Animal Care and Control is located at 4949 Helbush in Lakeport, next to the Hill Road Correctional Facility.

Office hours are Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday. The shelter is open from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and on Saturday from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Visit the shelter online at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control.htm .

For more information call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278.

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

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Lake County Winery Association invites community members to be the judges at the People’s Choice Wine Awards at the Lake County Fair on Saturday, Aug. 31.

The event takes place from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Lake County Fairgrounds, 401 Martin St., Lakeport.

As follow up to the competitive and prestigious 2013 Lake County Wine Awards event, where an acclaimed panel of wine experts from across the country blind-tasted and awarded medals to the top Lake County wines, community members are invited to judge for themselves and select the “People’s Choice.”

“We were honored to have a distinguished panel of professional wine judges evaluate the wines of our distinct winegrowing region and we are excited to share those wines with our community and discover The People’s Choice,” said Jacquelyn Farrington of Six Sigma Ranch, the event’s chair.

Tickets cost $45, which includes entrance to the fair and People’s Choice.

For more information or to purchase tickets to the People’s Choice Wine Competition on Aug. 31, visit www.lakecountywineries.org .

People who relocate into or out of California may confront the issue of whether the living trust that they established in the state of their former residence should be revoked and a new trust established under the laws of their new state of residence.

Let us discuss the issues.

Trusts are contracts. Like all contracts trusts must declare which state’s laws govern the administration, interpretation and validity of the trust instrument.

Typically, the laws of the state where the trust is established are initially chosen. Accordingly, when a California resident establishes a living trust for his California assets, California law governs. A California court is then much better able to understand how the terms of the trust and California law interplay.

It is more difficult when a court must interpret a trust established out of state and apply a different state’s law relating to the interpretation and validity of the trust.

California statutory trustee powers, trustee authorities and trust administration rules that apply to all California trusts, except insofar as the trust specifically provides otherwise, automatically apply.

In certain areas, however, California law requires that the trust follow the statutory rules without exception.

What if the California resident later leaves California? A trust is administered wherever the trustee resides. The laws of the second state where the trustee now resides would apply should the trustee ever use the state’s courts with respect to administration matters, such as the duties of the trustee to the beneficiaries and the rights of the beneficiaries under state law.

The laws of the first state would usually continue to apply to issues of interpretation and validity. That said, different states take different views on what issues are matters of administration, on the one hand, versus matters of interpretation or validity, on the other.

Does that mean that a new trust must always be established in the second state? It depends.

If the resident moves between community property states then perhaps a new trust is not necessarily needed.  Some trusts provide that its governing law may be changed.

If so, is changing which state law governs sufficient? Not usually. Amending the state specific legal references concerning the trustee powers, trustee authority, and definition of legal terms will need to be amended.

Next, is it always desirable to change the jurisdiction of a trust when relocating? Not always. It might not be suitable if there were significant real property holdings or legal issues continuing in the first state.

For example, consider a settlor moves from California to Arizona, also a community property state, but who keeps a home in California and has death beneficiaries in California, he or she might decide to keep the California trust as such.

Also there may be asset protection and tax differences between the laws of the states that require consideration.  

Depending on circumstance, the settlor might decide to add the new assets acquired in Arizona to the California trust or perhaps establish a separate trust under Arizona law.

What if the original trust is generally speaking out of date? Obviously, in that case it is much more likely that the old trust will be revoked (scrapped) and assets transferred to a new trust established under the laws of the second state.

Lastly, when people change residences they will want to create new powers of attorneys under the new state’s laws to designate agents to make decisions during periods of incapacity affecting their finances, property, legal affairs, and health care.

Dennis A. Fordham, attorney (LL.M. tax studies), is a State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Probate and Trust Law. His office is at 55 First St., Lakeport, California. Dennis can be reached by e-mail at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or by phone at 707-263-3235. Visit his Web site at www.dennisfordhamlaw.com .

Something big is about to happen on the sun.

According to measurements from NASA-supported observatories, the sun’s vast magnetic field is about to flip.

“It looks like we’re no more than three to four months away from a complete field reversal,” said solar physicist Todd Hoeksema of Stanford University. “This change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system.”

The sun’s magnetic field changes polarity approximately every 11 years. It happens at the peak of each solar cycle as the sun’s inner magnetic dynamo re-organizes itself.

The coming reversal will mark the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24. Half of “Solar Max” will be behind us, with half yet to come.

Hoeksema is the director of Stanford’s Wilcox Solar Observatory, one of the few observatories in the world that monitor the sun’s polar magnetic fields.

The poles are a herald of change. Just as Earth scientists watch our planet’s polar regions for signs of climate change, solar physicists do the same thing for the sun.

Magnetograms at Wilcox have been tracking the sun’s polar magnetism since 1976, and they have recorded three grand reversals – with a fourth in the offing.

Solar physicist Phil Scherrer, also at Stanford, describes what happens: “The sun’s polar magnetic fields weaken, go to zero, and then emerge again with the opposite polarity. This is a regular part of the solar cycle.”

A reversal of the sun’s magnetic field is, literally, a big event. The domain of the sun’s magnetic influence (also known as the “heliosphere”) extends billions of kilometers beyond Pluto.

Changes to the field’s polarity ripple all the way out to the Voyager probes, on the doorstep of interstellar space.

When solar physicists talk about solar field reversals, their conversation often centers on the “current sheet.”

The current sheet is a sprawling surface jutting outward from the sun’s equator where the sun’s slowly-rotating magnetic field induces an electrical current.

The current itself is small, only one ten-billionth of an amp per square meter (0.0000000001 amps/m2), but there’s a lot of it: the amperage flows through a region 10,000 km thick and billions of kilometers wide. Electrically speaking, the entire heliosphere is organized around this enormous sheet.

During field reversals, the current sheet becomes very wavy. Scherrer likens the undulations to the seams on a baseball.

As Earth orbits the sun, we dip in and out of the current sheet. Transitions from one side to another can stir up stormy space weather around our planet.

Cosmic rays are also affected. These are high-energy particles accelerated to nearly light speed by supernova explosions and other violent events in the galaxy.

Cosmic rays are a danger to astronauts and space probes, and some researchers say they might affect the cloudiness and climate of Earth.

The current sheet acts as a barrier to cosmic rays, deflecting them as they attempt to penetrate the inner solar system.

A wavy, crinkly sheet acts as a better shield against these energetic particles from deep space.

As the field reversal approaches, data from Wilcox show that the sun’s two hemispheres are out of synch.

“The sun’s north pole has already changed sign, while the south pole is racing to catch up,” says Scherrer. “Soon, however, both poles will be reversed, and the second half of Solar Max will be under way.”

When that happens, Hoeksema and Scherrer will share the news with their colleagues and the public.

Dr. Tony Phillips works for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – On Friday, the day that striking Lake Transit workers had intended to return to the job, curtailed bus services remained in place as the transit operator said it was taking its legally afforded time to process the return of workers.

At the same time, both Teamsters Local 665 and Paratransit Services have indicated their willingness to return to negotiations in order to arrive at a new contract.

Teamsters Local 665, which represents 28 striking Lake Transit workers, accused Paratransit Services, the operator of Lake Transit, of locking out employees after they were not allowed to return to work on Friday.

However, Paratransit Services officials said they were using the five days to process the workers’ return to work that is afforded to employers by the National Labor Relations Act,

“The reason for this is to insure that all administrative matters are handled in a legally appropriate manner and the rights of all parties are protected in the process,” Paratransit Services said in a Friday statement.

The Washington-based nonprofit said it has several “special cases” involving striking employees that they need to make sure are handled appropriately.

Paratransit Services said it is retaining the replacement workers it has hired since the strike started. The striking workers will be allowed to come back when they’re called from a preferential recall list to fill open positions, a process that Paratransit Services said is typically done based on seniority.

Despite the continuing tensions, the two sides appear ready to head back to the negotiating table.

Local 665 President Ralph Miranda said he sent a letter to the federal mediator overseeing negotiations to ask that Paratransit Services meet them for negotiations.

On Friday, Paratransit Services said it also had requested that negotiations resume next week and were awaiting a response.

Also on Friday, Assemblymember Yamada traveled to Lower Lake to visit with the striking workers and with Paratransit Services officials.

This week, Yamada and state Sen. Noreen Evans had sent the union and Lake Transit a letter encouraging the two sides to sit down for binding arbitration.

Paratransit Services representatives gave Yamada their own update on the status of negotiations and discussed the service restoration.

They reported that Yamada informed them that she didn't want to involve herself in local matters and realized they had a federally assigned mediator to assist in negotiations.

The strike began on Monday, July 29, less than a month after a two-day strike union members held to protest continuing disagreements over wages.

The union had agreed to give up step increases in 2010 during negotiations for the contract still in place, but argue that they had done so with the understanding that the step increases would be restored once the economy improved.

On Thursday Teamsters members voted to return to work immediately and unconditionally in an effort to restore full transit services to the community members that rely on them.

That followed a Wednesday Lake Transit Authority Board meeting in which the union called on the board to support binding arbitration and appoint a fact-finding group to help bring the strike to an end.

The board declined to take action, saying the contract between Lake Transit and Paratransit Services prohibits the authority from interfering with the employer-employee contractor.

The union, which has consistently asserted that Paratransit Services can’t restore services through the beginning of September as it says it is on track to do, said its members chose to return to work “for the benefit of those who have been left stranded by the ineptness of Paratransit.”     

During the strike, Local 665 called on Lake Transit to enforce performance of its contract, but at the Wednesday transit board meeting, Lake Transit General Manager Mark Wall said the contract’s language allowed for the contractor to be fined only $200 per month if it failed to meet performance standards.

Paratransit Services said Friday that it intends to move forward with restoring the majority of services by next Thursday, Aug. 22. Revised scheduled will be issued this next Monday.

Meanwhile, Teamsters Local 665 Secretary-Treasurer Mark Gleason said Friday that union leadership and members plan to head to Sacramento to seek a review and hearing concerning the conduct of Lake Transit and Paratransit Services.

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.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – Two children abducted from Elko, Nev., earlier this week are the subjects of a newly issued Amber Alert.

The California Highway Patrol issued the alert Friday evening on behalf of the Elko Police Department in the effort to locate 9-year-old Lillyanna Ramires and her younger brother Martin Angel Rosales, 3.

The Amber Alert was activated from Sacramento south to Mexico, the CHP said.

Authorities said the children were the victim of a parental abduction that occurred at around 4 p.m. Wednesday.

The suspects believed to have abducted the children are Martin Cisneras Rosales, 33, the father of the little boy, and Amber Schenck, 29, who is the mother of both children, authorities said.

Nevada media are reporting that the children were taken from the Department of Child and Family Services, whose care they were in due to concerns for their safety.

The couple may be driving a 1980s or 1990s model blue Ford Mustang, with a Nebraska or paper license plate, the CHP said.

The CHP said both children and Martin Rosales are Hispanic, but could not offer other physical descriptions.

Schenck is a Caucasian female with sandy-colored hair and blue eyes. She is 5 feet, 9 inches tall and weighs 150 pounds.

If they’re seen, the public is asked to immediately call 911.