In Gueckedou, near the village where Ebola first started killing people in Guinea's tropical southern forests a year ago, doctors say they have had to stop pricking fingers to do blood tests for malaria.
Guinea's drop in reported malaria cases this year by as much as 40 percent is not good news, said Dr. Bernard Nahlen, deputy director of the U.S. President's Malaria Initiative. He said the decrease is likely because people are too scared to go to health facilities and are not getting treated for malaria.
"It would be a major failure on the part of everybody involved to have a lot of people die from malaria in the midst of the Ebola epidemic," he said in a telephone interview. "I would be surprised if there were not an increase in unnecessary malaria deaths in the midst of all this, and a lot of those will be young children."
Figures are estimates in Guinea, where half the 12 million people have no access to health centers and die uncounted. Some 15,000 Guineans died from malaria last year, 14,000 of them children younger than 5, according to Nets for Life Africa, a New York-based charity dedicated to providing mosquito nets to put over beds. In comparison, about 1,600 people in Guinea have died from Ebola, according to statistics from the World Health Organization.
Malaria is the leading cause of death in children younger than 5 in Guinea and, after AIDS, the leading cause of adult deaths, according to Nets for Life.
Ebola and malaria have many of the same symptoms, including fever, dizziness, head and muscle aches. Malaria is caused by bites from infected mosquitoes while Ebola can be contracted only from the body fluids of an infected victim — hence doctors' fears of drawing blood to do malaria tests.
People suffering malaria fear being quarantined in Ebola treatment centers, and health centers not equipped to treat Ebola are turning away patients with Ebola-like symptoms, doctors said.
WHO figures from Gueckedou show that of people coming in with fever in October, 24 percent who tested positive for Ebola also tested positive for malaria, and 33 percent of those who did not have Ebola tested positive for malaria — an indication of the great burden of malaria in Guinea.
(Michelle Faul, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
In 2003, California started regulating certain chemicals used to prevent furniture and household items from burning. While the bay once charted the highest worldwide pollution levels of the toxin, a sharp decline has been reported in the bay's birds, shellfish and fish, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
"This is quite a success story," said Rebecca Sutton, the study's lead author and a senior scientist at the San Francisco Estuary Institute. "We tie these results directly to the phaseout."
Manufacturers used the chemicals — called Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers, or PBDEs — as a cheap way to meet flammability standards, the newspaper reported. They had been widely used since the 1970s.
The toxins are ingested when people breathe in household dust, and they enter the environment when items made with the chemicals degrade and wash into natural bodies of water where wildlife live, says the study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.
Myrto Petreas of the California Department of Toxic Substances Control found in separate research 15 years ago that Bay Area women had levels of the toxins about 10 times higher than women in Europe. Petreas was not part of the most recent study.
In pregnant women, the toxins may cause babies to have lower IQs, attention-deficit disorder and hyperactivity, researchers found.
The study found that the banned toxins have declined in the bay's mussels by up to 95 percent. It's also less common in blood taken from women at San Francisco General Hospital, researchers say.
Despite the ban, manufacturers continue to innovate new and potentially harmful types of fire retardants, said Arlene Blum, executive director of the Berkeley-based Green Science Policy Institute. "Industry wants to find another chemical as similar as possible."
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
"We figured, what better time to show the love of Jesus than on his birthday?" Ed Brashier, minister of a church in Gardendale, Ala., said on Christmas.
Tornadoes killed four people in southwest Mississippi on Tuesday as a storm system kicked off twisters across the region.
Marion County coroner Norma Williamson identified one of those killed as Amber Sumrall, 33, of Sandy Hook. Sumrall died after being trapped in the Head-to-Toe beauty salon where she worked, Williamson told The Hattiesburg American.
She also confirmed the identity of MaryJean Sartin, who was trapped when a neighbor's trailer home flipped onto hers. Leonardo Drummond and Josie White were killed when a tornado hit their mobile home in Laurel, WAPT-TV reported.
The storm cut power to 4,100 members of the Pearl River Valley Electric Power Association, but power was restored to the last 450 customers by 3 p.m. Thursday.
In Hawaii, a rare blizzard that dusted two island mountaintops gave tourists and residents a white Christmas.
The blizzard eased Thursday, but strong winds were blowing the snow around on two Big Island summits. While snow on the mountains is common, a blizzard is unusual.
The National Weather Service canceled a blizzard warning Thursday morning for the summits of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
A blizzard warning remained in effect Wednesday for the summits of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa on the Big Island of Hawaii. While snow on the mountains is common, a blizzard with significant accumulation is unusual.
Up to 8 inches of snow could accumulate above 11,500 feet, the National Weather Service said. "Usually it's just a dusting or up to an inch or two," said weather service Meteorologist Norman Hui. "Right now we have a pretty powerful winter storm."
Kimberly Zarate-Amaya can normally see the summit of Mauna Kea from her home in Mountain View, but Wednesday's dense fog made it difficult to get a glimpse of the snow-capped mountain.
She was hoping to be able to take her kids up to Mauna Kea to see the snow, but the road was closed Wednesday because of icy conditions.
"Honestly the fact it's coming at Christmas is what makes it exciting," she said. "How often we can say in Hawaii we have a White Christmas?"
The earliest the public can go up will likely be Friday, as road-clearing crews won't be working on Christmas, said Ryan Lyman, forecast meteorologist for the Mauna Kea Weather Center. But people living on the Hilo side of the island will at least get a glimpse of a white mountain because the snow will be around for a few days before melting, he said.
The last time there was a White Christmas was in 2008, he said.
(JJennifer Sinco Kelleher, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
By the time she returned Tuesday to her Columbia trailer park she had called home for only a short time, a neighbor's mobile home had flipped onto her grandmother's, trapping her and Bordelon's aunt. She said her grandmother, 73-year-old Maryjean Sartin, was killed. She was one of four killed in Columbia and Laurel by likely tornadoes that tore through the communities.
"I had left the house to go pick up a friend to go to Hattiesburg and do some Christmas shopping," said Bordelon, whose sons are 6 and 4. "But the weather turned so bad that we decided to wait. By the time I got home, I'd rounded the corner and then saw all the damage."
Bordelon, 26, said the wind from the storm apparently blew under the neighbor's trailer and flipped it. Bordelon said her aunt was hospitalized.
Although she identified her grandmother, authorities have not released the names of the victims.
The destructive system damaged communities from Mississippi to Georgia and was making its way off the Eastern coast. Flood warnings were issued for several counties in Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Louisiana.
In Columbia, police were stationed at all major intersections after traffic lights were either swept away or destroyed. At least 20 people were injured there, according to Mississippi Emergency Management Agency officials.
The Oak Crest Trailer Park included between 15 and 20 homes. On Wednesday, five were still standing but most had damage. There was not much left on the site besides wood and metal debris, clothes and a teddy bear or two strewn throughout.
Utility crews worked Wednesday to restore electricity to the area.
About 6,000 people were without power after the storm Tuesday, Gov. Phil Bryant said at a news conference in Columbia, about 80 miles southeast of the state capital of Jackson.
Mississippi Power told The Associated Press about 300 customers still were out, but most would have power by the end of the Wednesday.
Bryant toured the stricken area by helicopter and by vehicle. He said state emergency officials believe the destruction was caused by a tornado, although the National Weather Service has not confirmed that yet.
State emergency workers were still evaluating the damage in Columbia and in Jones County to the northeast. Three of the four people killed were in mobile homes and the fourth at a business.
(Jack Elliott Jr, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
In the spring and summer of 2014, Earth's icy northern region lost more of its signature whiteness that reflects the sun's heat. It was replaced temporarily with dark land and water that absorbs more energy, keeping yet more heat on an already warming planet, according to the Arctic report card issued Thursday.
Spring snow cover in Eurasia reached a record low in April. Arctic summer sea ice, while not setting a record, continued a long-term, steady decline. And Greenland set a record in August for the least amount of sunlight reflected in that month, said the peer-reviewed report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies.
Overall, the report card written by 63 scientists from 13 countries shows few single-year dramatic changes, unlike other years.
"We can't expect records every year. It need not be spectacular for the Arctic to continue to be changing," said report lead editor Martin Jeffries, an Arctic scientist for the Office of Naval Research, at a San Francisco news conference Wednesday.
The report illustrates instead a relentless decline in cold, snow and ice conditions and how they combine with each other. And several of those have to do with how the Arctic reflects sun heat.
The Arctic's drop in reflectivity is crucial because "it plays a role like a thermostat in regulating global climate," Jeffries said, in an interview. As the bright areas are replaced, even temporarily, with heat-absorbing dark areas, "That has global implications."
The world's thermostat setting gets nudged up a bit because more heat is being absorbed instead of reflected, he said.
The Arctic has been affected more by man-made warming than the rest of the globe, Jeffries and the report said. But it comes in spurts, pauses and drops.
For example, the Arctic sea ice's lowest point this year wasn't as small as 2012 and was only the sixth lowest since 1979. But the past eight years have all had the eight-lowest amounts of summer sea ice on record, Jeffries said.
While Greenland's ice sheet lost 474 billion tons of ice in 2012, it only lost 6 billion tons in the past summer, the report said. While the U.S. East Coast shivered during January's cold snap from a polar vortex that slipped south, parts of Alaska were 18 degrees warmer than normal.
Polar bear populations in parts of the Alaska region were shrinking but elsewhere they were more or less stable, the report said.
"Eight years ago, 2014 would have been considered an alarming year," said University of Colorado ice scientist Ted Scambos, who didn't contribute to the report. "With 2007 and 2012 behind us, not so much now."
(Seth Borenstein, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
The plastic is broken up into more than 5 trillion pieces, said the study published Wednesday in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.
The paper is the latest in a nascent field where scientists are trying to better understand how much of the synthetic material is entering the oceans and how it's affecting fish, seabirds and the larger marine ecosystem.
The study's lead author is Markus Eriksen of the 5 Gyres Institute, an organization that aims to reduce plastic in the oceans.
To gather data, researchers dragged a fine mesh net at the sea surface to gather small pieces. Observers on boats counted larger items. They used computer models to calculate estimates for tracts of ocean not surveyed.
The study only measured plastic floating at the surface. Plastic on the ocean floor wasn't included.
Bits greater than about 8 inches accounted for three quarters of the plastic that the research estimated is in the ocean.
Kara Lavender Law of the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Mass., who wasn't involved in the study, said the researchers gathered data in areas where scientists currently don't have measurements for floating plastic debris, including the Indian Ocean, the Southern Ocean near Antarctica and the South Atlantic.
Studying the amount of plastic in the ocean will help scientists understand how the material will affect the environment and potentially the food chain.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
"I would pack your patience," said Robert Sinclair Jr., of AAA New York.
The storm, forecast to dump rain along the coast and snow inland, could cause delays at Northeast airports and along its busy highways. Precipitation was forecast to sweep in from the south tonight into Wednesday morning and exit the region Thursday morning.
Jeff Masters, chief meteorologist for Weather Underground, said coastal cities are likely to mostly receive rain, although he cautioned Monday afternoon that meteorologists would be keeping a close eye on the rain/snow line.
"A small deviation in the track could change things dramatically," he said.
As of Monday, the highest amount of snow was expected to fall in northeastern Pennsylvania, the Catskills of upstate New York and into Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. Ten inches was possible in some places, forecasters said.
Officials at the three major airports in the New York City area — Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty — were "monitoring weather forecasts carefully," and were ready to take action if needed, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airports.
Sinclair noted that an estimated 41.3 million travelers were expected to hit the nation's highways for the holiday weekend. That's a 4.3 percent increase over last year.
All the major U.S. airlines were closely monitoring the situation but have not yet canceled flights or made any other changes.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
Two lawsuits could force the area's main planning agency and the county government to significantly revamp their blueprints on such projects. At stake is how tens of billions of dollars should be spent in the next few decades on all manner of infrastructure and services for the region’s swelling population.
Experts on global warming and municipal governance said the outcome of these suits could provide crucial direction for cities and counties across California, if not nationwide.
On the heels of a second round of court victories, environmentalists allege that key local government officials profess to care about climate change but don't back it up with detailed prescriptions for "smart growth" and other ways of curbing greenhouse-gas emissions. They contend that this pattern continues amid warnings from Gov. Jerry Brown, who has urged local governments to devote more attention and resources to increased levels of carbon dioxide, sea level rise and the like.
The Sierra Club, the Cleveland National Forest Foundation and the Center for Biological Diversity are among those that punctuated their assertions with two lawsuits - one against the county government and the other against the San Diego Association of Governments, or SANDAG. They prevailed in both cases at the Superior Court level, then again this month before the 4th District Court of Appeal.
"It's a big wake-up call for the San Diego region, which has continually ignored the science, ignored the policy and the laws," said Jana Clark, a board member of the Cleveland National Forest Foundation.
Neither the county nor SANDAG has said whether it will appeal further. The county Board of Supervisors is scheduled to discuss options for its court case during a closed-session meeting Tuesday. SANDAG said its board members are set to review the transportation suit at their next meeting.
"Without a doubt, we're disappointed with the majority ruling on this," said SANDAG Executive Director Gary Gallegos. He was referring to the appellate court's 2-1 ruling against his agency Monday.
"I would argue that we're making as much progress as we can make, given the resources that are available locally," he added.
In general, SANDAG and the county government have said they already follow state rules on air quality, greenhouse gases and other related aspects. At the same time, they note the difficulty of establishing long-range action targets for climate change, a topic that remains controversial in political and policy-making circles.
Appellate decisions
On Oct. 29, an appellate panel affirmed a Superior Court judge's ruling that San Diego County's climate action plan lacks deadlines, quantifiable standards, enforcement measures and other specifics needed to lower emissions of greenhouse gases.
In particular, it found that the document, which guides land use in unincorporated areas, fails to meet requirements set by the California Environmental Quality Act.
This week, the same court confirmed a lower court's rejection of SANDAG's blueprint for spending $200 billion on transportation projects — everything from widening Interstate 5 to expanding the trolley system. It said the agency didn't spell out how such activities would affect air quality and climate change, and that it failed to provide solutions for, among other things, curtailing greenhouse- gas emissions.
The appellate court said the transportation framework glosses over projections that climate pollutants would increase sharply by 2050. California has issued directives for local agencies to reduce greenhouse emissions by that time — and to disclose to the public how it would do so.
"We are upholding the right of the public and our public officials to be well-informed about the potential environmental consequences of their planning decisions," the ruling said.
Mass-transit debate
In a statement Monday, SANDAG noted that it's the first metropolitan planning body in California to complete a transportation plan since the state adopted new rules for trimming emissions of greenhouse gases. The agency said it has faced ambiguous guidance on how to forecast climate change's effects and prepare for them.
SANDAG aims to cut auto emissions by putting 36 percent of the region's transportation funding toward mass transit during the first decade of the plan and 57 percent by the final decade, said executive director Gallegos. Still, he said, financial limits such as the loss of state redevelopment funds hinder how much rail line and other public-transit infrastructure the region can add.
Leaders of the environmental groups that sued SANDAG and the county said both agencies have largely dismissed approaches that could expand infrastructure to meet population growth and still rein in emissions.
Chief among their recommendations is a proposal to build a trolley line that would ring San Diego's urban core, along with a push to complete light-rail and other mass-transit projects within a decade instead of putting them much further down the planning line.
La Mesa Mayor Art Madrid, who served on the SANDAG board and abstained from voting on the transportation plan when it was passed in 2011, said he saw the document as incomplete at the time.
"We have, in my opinion, the worst public transportation system in the state," Madrid said this week. "We're focusing all our attention on freeway lanes."
San Diego's case
The court battles contrast sharply with recent developments in San Diego.
In September, Mayor Kevin Faulconer and the City Council represented a broad coalition in finalizing the city's Climate Action Plan. That road map calls for lowering greenhouse- gas emissions by getting more commuters to bike or use mass transit, retrofitting old buildings, planting more trees and boosting the use of solar and other renewable energy sources.
While drafting the document, city officials cast a wide net for suggestions — seeking ideas from business organizations to environmental groups to grassroots community advocates.
"We brought everyone to the table … so everybody had input on what the plan should include," Faulconer said.
(Deborah Sullivan Brennan, U-T)
top
Forecasters, meanwhile, defended the National Weather Service following criticism from Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who accused the agency of failing to anticipate how bad Buffalo’s epic snowstorm would be.
Cuomo, in the region for a sixth straight day, said state-deployed pumps and sandbags were in place as rain and temperatures over 60 rapidly melted the snow. Residents shoveled snow in T-shirts against the backdrop of white drifts.
By late morning, minor to moderate flooding was reported in several creeks, but nearby homes were largely spared, and the sewers in Buffalo and elsewhere were handling the runoff.
The snowfall across the Buffalo area ranged from less than a foot to about 7 feet, depending on where the bands of snow coming off Lake Erie hit hardest.
Forecasters said the potential for flooding remained through Wednesday morning.
"As of this moment, the situation is not as problematic as it could have been," Cuomo said a day after advising residents to pack a bag in case they needed to leave their homes. "But again, a question mark until we know fully what Mother Nature holds for us throughout the rest of the day and tomorrow."
The new threat, he said, was wind - gusts up to 65 mph, with the potential to uproot trees from the soggy ground and knock out power needed to operate homeowners' basement sump pumps.
David Fruehauf was out early clearing leaves from a storm drain in front of his house in suburban Orchard Park, and said he would remain vigilant as the snow melted.
"These are the enemies of a sewer," Fruehauf said, kicking at colorful leaves surrounding the drain. "There's still a long ways to go. The (snow) is shrinking, but it's got to have a place to go."
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
The $5 billion industry exports rice to more than 100 countries and specializes in premium grains used in risotto, paella and sushi. Nearly all U.S. sushi restaurants use medium-grain rice grown in the Sacramento Valley.
The rice harvest is just the latest victim of California's historic drought, which has sharply reduced crop production as it enters its fourth year. With 95 percent of the state in "severe" to "exceptional" drought, farmers are leaving fields unplanted, cattle ranchers are reducing herds and almond growers are tearing out orchards. California, the nation's second-largest rice-growing state after Arkansas, usually produces more than five million pounds of rice and sells about half of it abroad.
But this year, rice farmers only planted 420,000 acres — 25 percent less than last year — because of water restrictions, according to the California Rice Commission. On a clear October day, farmer Mike DeWit watched as a giant combine harvester cut and threshed a field of rice plants, discharging the grain into a tractor-pulled wagon. DeWit, who usually plants 1,000 acres of rice on his family farm in Woodland, outside Sacramento, said he only planted 700 acres this year because his water supply was cut by 30 percent.
So he idled one of his combine harvesters and hired one fewer worker and one fewer tractor.
"I think it's the worst as far as the California rice industry is concerned on record," DeWit said. "One more dry year, and I think the impacts on California rice farmers will be devastating."
The reduced plantings also affect migratory birds and other wildlife that depend on flooded rice fields as habitat. Every fall, millions of waterfowl fly south from Canada and Alaska to spend their winters in California's Central Valley.
After the fall harvest, farmers usually cover their fields with water to break down the rice stalks, creating wetlands habitat for millions of ducks and geese that can feed on uncollected grains and other plants.
"It is environmentally a very nice crop to have in the system. It mimics the natural system of a couple hundred years ago, when that area was wetlands," said Bruce Lindquist, a rice researcher at the University of California Davis.
In a typical year, rice farms flood 250,000 to 300,000 acres in winter, but this year as few as 50,000 acres may be flooded because of water restrictions, according to the rice commission. Conservationists are worried that waterfowl and shorebirds will be at greater risk for disease as they crowd together in fewer rice fields and wetlands. "When you have less rice out there, the impacts are significant for our environment, our economy, for the farms as well," said Jim Rice, a rice commission spokesman.
This year, conservation groups are renting 14,000 acres from rice farmers and temporarily flooding them, turning the fields into "popup wetlands" for birds traveling along the Pacific Flyway. The rice commission doesn't track prices, but Taro Arai, who runs eight Japanese restaurants in the Sacramento area, said he paid 8 percent more for rice this year and expects to pay even more next year. Arai, "chief dreaming officer" of the Mikuni Restaurant Group, is concerned about the reduced supply and rising cost of California sushi rice, but he's reluctant to buy rice from outside the state.
So he's looking into growing and harvesting his own rice as he prepares to open more restaurants in Northern California. "Sushi rice makes or breaks sushi for every restaurant in California or the United States," Arai said. "I hear the rumors there's a cheaper rice, but you want to eat high-quality California rice."
(Terence Chea, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
The planet faces a future of extreme weather, rising sea levels and melting polar ice from soaring levels of carbon dioxide and other gases, the U.N. panel said. Only an unprecedented global effort to slash emissions within a relatively short time period will prevent temperatures from crossing a threshold that scientists say could trigger far more dangerous disruptions, the panel warned.
"Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts," concluded the report by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which draws on contributions from thousands of scientists from around the world.
The report said some impacts of climate change will "continue for centuries," even if all emissions from fossil-fuel burning were to stop. The question facing governments is whether they can act to slow warming to a pace at which humans and natural ecosystems can adapt, or risk "abrupt and irreversible changes" as the atmosphere and oceans absorb ever greater amounts of thermal energy within a blanket of heat-trapping gases, according to scientists who contributed to the report.
"The window of opportunity for acting in a cost-effective way — or in an effective way — is closing fast," said Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton University geosciences professor and contributing author to the report.
The IPCC was set up in 1988 to assess global warming and its impacts. The report released Sunday in Copenhagen caps its latest assessment, a review of 30,000 climate change studies that it says establishes with 95 percent certainty that most of the warming since the 1950s is man-made. Today, a small minority of scientists challenge the mainstream conclusion that climate change is linked to human activity.
Global Climate Change, a NASA website, says 97 percent of climate scientists agree that warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities.
But the American public isn't as convinced. A survey conducted last year by Pew Research showed 67 percent of Americans believed global warming is occurring and 44 percent said the Earth is warming mostly because of human activity.
John Coleman, a former weather forecaster for KUSI and a founder of the Weather Channel, is one of those who has long held that climate change is "not happening."
"There is no significant man-made global warming now. There hasn't been any in the past, and there's no reason to expect any in the future," Coleman told CNN's "Reliable Sources" on Sunday.
Delegates to the international panel approved the final documents late Saturday after a weeklong line-by-line review that underscored that the IPCC process is not just about science. The reports must be approved both by scientists and governments, which means political issues from U.N. climate negotiations, which are nearing a 2015 deadline for a global agreement, inevitably affect the outcome.
The rift between developed and developing countries in the U.N. talks was on display in Copenhagen over a passage regarding what levels of warming could be considered dangerous. After a protracted battle, the text was dropped from a key summary to the disappointment of some scientists.
"If the governments are going to expect the IPCC to do their job," said Oppenheimer, they shouldn't "get caught up in fights that have nothing to do with the IPCC."
The omission meant the word "dangerous" disappeared from the summary altogether. It appeared only twice in a longer underlying report compared with seven times in a draft produced before the Copenhagen session. The less loaded word "risk" was mentioned 65 times in the final 40-page summary.
"Rising rates and magnitudes of warming and other changes in the climate system, accompanied by ocean acidification, increase the risk of severe, pervasive, and in some cases irreversible detrimental impacts," the report said.
While the IPCC is barred from endorsing policy, the report lays out possible scenarios and warns that the choices will grow increasingly dire if carbon emissions continue on their current record- breaking trajectory.
"It's not too late, but the longer you wait, the more expensive it gets," said Gary Yohe, a Wesleyan University professor who also participated in the drafting of the report. Damage to the Earth's ecosystems is "irreversible to the extent to which we have committed ourselves, but we will commit ourselves to higher and higher and higher damages and impacts" if the world’s leaders fail to act, Yohe said.
A succession of IPCC reports since the 1990s have drawn an ever-clearer connection between human activity and climate change. But Sunday's "synthesis report" makes the case more emphatically than before, asserting that the warming trend seen on land and in the oceans since the 1950s is "unequivocal" and that it is "extremely likely" — a term that the IPCC uses to denote a 95 percent or greater probability — that humans are the main cause.
"Human influence on the climate system is clear," the panel states in a 40-page summary for policymakers.
In late 2013, when the first report of this round of the IPCC's work came out, skeptics trained their attention on the contention that in recent years the rate of global warming has seemingly "paused" or slowed down. But the latest document is somewhat dismissive of that idea, acknowledging that, while the rate of warming in the past 15 years has indeed been somewhat smaller than the rate since 1951, "trends based on short records are very sensitive to the beginning and end dates and do not in general reflect long-term climate trends."
In cautious and often technically complex language, the new report cites soaring emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases in the past 60 years as the cause of nearly all the warming seen so far. While carbon dioxide is a naturally abundant gas essential for plant respiration, it has been accumulating in the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate as a byproduct of the burning of fossil fuels by automobiles, power plants and factories. Concentrations of the heat-trapping gas are 70 percent higher than in pre-industrial times, a level "unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years," the report states.
Most of the excess heat is absorbed by the ocean, muting the effects. Yet, climate change is having profound impacts on "natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans," the panel concluded.
And, since carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for 1,000 years or more, some impacts are locked in, perhaps for centuries to come, the report warned.
"Science has spoken. There is no ambiguity in their message. Leaders must act. Time is not on our side," said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
(Joby Warrick & Chris Mooney, THE WASHINGTON POST)
top
The shift from Stage 1 "drought watch" conditions to Stage 2 "drought alert" restrictions comes as California nears its fourth consecutive year of meager rainfall and a paltry snowpack. It's designed to reduce water consumption in San Diego by 20 percent and forestall deeper cuts, according to a city staff report on the topic.
Across the county, the region's wholesale water provider and most retail water districts have adopted forced limits on water use.
"I am pleased that the City Council approved these mandatory restrictions," said Councilman David Alvarez, chair of the environment committee. "It is critical that we take action now in order to guard against more severe restrictions in the future."
Under the new restrictions, San Diegans must limit outdoor watering to three days a week, based on a schedule set by the city. Sprinklers will be limited to 10 minutes per day in warm months and just seven minutes per day in cool months.
San Diegans will also need to use timed sprinklers or hoses with a shut-off nozzle for landscape irrigation. The rules also limit watering time and frequency of hand-watered and potted plants.
Ornamental fountains must be shut off except for maintenance purposes; the city didn't specify Monday what constitutes maintenance. Under voluntary water restrictions, fountains could operate using recirculated water.
Other restrictions limit car washing, construction-related water use and nonemergency access to fire hydrants.
The stepped-up conservation program would add to water-saving rules that the city has enforced since 2011.
Those include requirements for people to fix water leaks within 72 hours, avoid excessive irrigation and refrain from washing sidewalks and driveways.
In addition, restaurants are supposed to fill water glasses only upon request and hotels need to give guests the option of not laundering towels and linens daily.
The restriction on fountains is the first time the city has ordered a shutoff on water features since 2009.
The rule bans operation of fountains on both public property and private businesses and residences, city spokeswoman Robyn Bullard said. Occasional use for maintenance purposes, such as to maintain motors, is still allowed.
It applies to ornamental fountains only, leaving splash pads and other recreational water features, such as the county's Waterfront Park near San Diego harbor, in operation.
The city runs 32 fountains in city parks, half of which adorn the grounds of Balboa Park, said Assistant Park and Recreation Director Andy Field. Among those is the Bea Evenson Fountain near the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center.
The new San Diego rules include potential fines starting at $100, but city officials said they don't anticipate issuing many citations. Instead, they said, city officials will try to educate customers about water waste problems, and let them know how to solve them.
"Our goal here is not to launch a massive citation system, but rather to remedy the incidents of noncompliance," Bullard said. "When we receive notification of someone not adhering to water use restrictions, that individual or business is notified and given the opportunity and time to comply."
The Public Utilities Department aims to boost enforcement of the restrictions, but said they won't hire new staff to do so, Bullard said. Instead, up to 10 members of the department will be assigned to follow up on water waste complaints and make sure San Diegans are complying with the new rules.
Earlier this month, Mayor Kevin Faulconer and the City Council's environment committee separately urged a transition to mandatory water limits, arguing that the city needed to increase its rate of conservation.
Despite blistering weather during much of the late summer and early fall, San Diegans managed to save water in August and September compared with the same months in 2013. San Diego water users cut consumption by 5.7 percent in September and 4.4 percent in August compared to a year ago. Water officials called those significant steps toward reducing water use, but acknowledged that the city must do more to conserve.
The State Water Resources Control Board announced this month that Californians as a whole used 11.5 percent less water this August than they did the same time last year. It was the first full month of water-consumption data since the agency imposed unprecedented, statewide restrictions on outdoor watering as an emergency action amid the prolonged drought.
Despite those savings, Californians haven't come close to the 20 percent conservation rate that Gov. Jerry Brown called for in January when he declared the third straight year of drought.
The lack of rainfall this year was compounded by record heat, which has complicated efforts to reduce water use. The first seven months of the year are the warmest on record for California, the city reported. Meanwhile, water storage on the Colorado River and in California reservoirs is about half of average, the city of San Diego reported.
(Deborah Sullivan Brennan, U-T)
top
The storm's top sustained winds were clocked at 115 mph, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. Gonzalo was moving north-northeast at 16 mph and was expected to batter Bermuda for hours during the night.
A white haze covered the island as waves slammed into the shore and wind uprooted trees. The Bermuda Weather Service said the eye of Gonzalo would move over parts of the island, bringing a lull, but warned people not to go outside because the most dangerous winds were expected after nightfall.
Hurricane-force winds were predicted to batter Bermuda for seven hours, and forecasters said a storm surge would cause significant flooding on an island about one-third the size of Washington, D.C. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said the storm's wind speed was likely to slow as Gonzalo moved farther northward on a track that would take it past Newfoundland and across the Atlantic to Britain and Ireland, with a tropical storm watch issued for parts of southeastern Newfoundland.
In the Pacific, the powerful storm Ana churning toward Hawaii became a hurricane. The National Weather Service said Friday that Ana became a Category 1 hurricane about 230 miles south of Hilo with maximum sustained winds of 75 miles per hour.
A tropical storm watch was in effect throughout the archipelago.
The storm was expected to pass 115 miles southwest of the Big Island on Friday night, and to pass the rest of the Hawaiian islands over the weekend.
Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie proclaimed an emergency to help the state respond to the storm.
The Hawaii chapter of the American Red Cross planned to open evacuation shelters on the Big Island and recommended that those going to shelters bring a seven-day supply of food and water. Island Air planned to suspend some Maui and Lanai flights today and Sunday, but airports remained open.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
Most of the lanes could remain closed for as long as a week, as crews work to repair the busted 30-inch water main that caused the sinkhole — estimated at roughly 20 feet by 13 feet on the road surface, and as deep as 10 feet. The broken pipe also sent a torrent of water into the street Wednesday evening.
To make the repairs, authorities have closed all northbound lanes of El Camino Real between Oceanside Boulevard and Mesa Drive.
Cari Dale, Oceanside's water utilities director, said crews are hoping to be able to open at least one northbound lane today. But there is a complication: a large storm drain pipe that runs atop the busted 30-inch water main is also damaged, a discovery crews made Thursday.
Crews won't know what caused the rupture until they dig deep enough to reach the pipe, but Dale said she suspects corrosion of a flange on the pipe may be to blame. A similar problem led to a sinkhole — 6 feet by 8 feet on the road surface, and about 15 feet deep — on North River Road last November.
Dale said it could take a week for all the fixes to be made at the El Camino Real site and for the road to be fully reopened. Water users in the area have not been affected, she said.
(Teri Figueroa, U-T)
top
"Just 10 seconds of an early warning can make a difference in injuries and damages," said Roger Johnson, deputy director of the California Energy Commission. Critical valves can be turned off and dangerous equipment put down with a brief warning, Johnson said.
Johnson and 11 others involved with emergency response in government and the private sector testified at an informational hearing of a state Senate committee organized by Sen. Alex Padilla. He was the only senator present during the hearing held at San Francisco City Hall. The Los Angeles Democrat sponsored a bill signed by the governor requiring California emergency officials to develop an earthquake early warning system.
Dr. Clement Yeh, an emergency room doctor at San Francisco General Hospital, testified that just 10 seconds advance notice before a quake could give medical workers time to start moving patients, curtail operations and shut off dangerous instruments and machines.
Paul Coleman, deputy director of the state Office of Statewide Health Planning, said an early warning could help hospitals prepare for the injured while reducing the number of casualties because people will get out of harm's way. "A warning can reduce the demands on hospital emergency rooms," Coleman said.
A Bay Area Rapid Transit official said the train agency is already participating in a pilot program. Board Director John McPartland said the agency is part of a small network of researchers, government agencies and others who receive an early warning.
BART received a 10-second notice of the 6.0 earthquake that rocked the Napa Valley region of Northern California in the wee hours of Aug. 24, McPartland said. But the agency's computers took too long to process the information and the quake had ended by the time BART officials received the warning, he said.
Fortunately, McPartland said the strength of the quake had dissipated below a magnitude 3.5 by the time it reached BART tracks.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
Investigators say they don't know exactly what sparked the blaze, but that they think it began by accident on or near the golf course's seventh fairway, which borders Poinsettia Lane. An exact cause may never be found, the city's fire chief said Tuesday.
"All leads have been followed up, and the cause remains undetermined," Chief Mike Davis said. "We're at a standstill in our investigation. ... We just can't find anything that pinpoints a cause."
The lawsuit, filed in San Diego Superior Court, asserts that golf course employees or equipment likely started the fire, which eventually destroyed five homes, 18 apartment units and one commercial building when freak Santa Ana winds blew into the county May 14.
The Poinsettia fire was amongseveral wildfires that broke out in North County that day.
The lawsuit does not specifically say what was done wrong by golf course employees, but instead speaks in generalities.
"Defendant Omni ... caused the fire, and allowed it to spread to neighboring properties ... by negligently and carelessly operating its equipment, failing to properly maintain its real property, and failing to act as a reasonable prudent person would act under the same or similar circumstances," the suit alleges.
Attorney Gerald Singleton, whose Solana Beach firm specializes in fire litigation, said "at this point all we can say is we think it was caused by either the maintenance personnel or by the equipment." He said the fire might have been sparked by carbon deposit out of an exhaust pipe, by a lawn mower "or by any number of things."
Richard Moreno, a Los Angeles attorney representing Omni, said the company has yet to be served with the lawsuit and he couldn't comment. Omni bought the resort in 2013.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of about two dozen homeowners who had property damaged by the blaze.
Singleton said fire investigators found metal shavings near where the fire started, suggesting that a gas powered vehicle backfiring might have been the cause. He said the next move in the case will be for all sides, including attorneys for various insurance companies trying to recoup losses, to meet on Dec. 11 to inspect equipment and review all the evidence.
The lawsuit says that, given the Santa Ana conditions that existed that morning, golf course employees should have been aware of the heightened fire danger and acted accordingly.
It states that the resort failed to operate and maintain its mechanized equipment, such as golf carts and lawn mowers, in such a manner as to avoid exposing the community to an unnecessary risk of fire.
The suit also claims the course failed to "design, construct, monitor, and maintain its real property in a manner that avoids igniting fires during fire-prone weather conditions."
(J. Harry Jones, U-T)
top
The storm had top sustained winds of nearly 115 mph and was centered about 770 miles south of Bermuda on Tuesday afternoon, said the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. It was moving northwest at 13 mph.
Forecasters said Gonzalo could become a powerful Category 4 hurricane today as it spins over open waters through Friday on a track toward Bermuda. Category 4 storms have sustained winds of at least 130 mph with the potential to cause catastrophic damage.
"Folks in Bermuda are going to need to start paying attention to this thing," Dennis Feltgen, a National Hurricane Center meteorologist, said by phone.
Gonzalo was blamed for the death of an unidentified elderly man who was aboard a boat in St. Maarten's Simpson Bay Lagoon, which looked like a ship graveyard Tuesday with several masts protruding from the water. Acting Coast Guard Director Wendell Thode said 22 of the 37 boats destroyed by the storm were in the lagoon.
Officials in the nearby French Caribbean island of Martinique said they were helping in a regional search for five people believed to be aboard boats that went adrift or ran aground during the hurricane as well as two other people who reportedly fell overboard.
A statement said authorities on islands including Guadeloupe and St. Maarten were helping with the search. It was unclear where exactly the people reportedly went missing.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
The vast system, which claimed two lives Monday after spinning off tornadoes in Arkansas and Missouri, sent heavy thunderstorms across much of Georgia. Cars crawled under heavy rain on morning commutes in Atlanta as water pooled on some low-lying roadways.
The Storm Prediction Center said more than 36 million people were in the path of damaging storms that formed in the Midwest earlier in the week. The center said possible tornadoes and damaging wind gusts remained a threat as the storms head across the southern Appalachians into the Carolinas.
Georgia Power reported roughly 3,000 customers without electricity Tuesday afternoon, the bulk of the outages in the greater Atlanta area and north Georgia. Alabama Power reported about 7,000 customers still without power Tuesday afternoon. Tens of thousands of the utility's customers had their power restored overnight and early Tuesday.
Tornadoes also touched down in two Atlanta suburbs. An EF1 tornado hit Alpharetta — northeast of Atlanta — and an EF0 tornado was confirmed in East Point, southeast of downtown Atlanta, said National Weather Service meteorologist Ryan Willis.
In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency Monday even before the severe weather had cleared out of his state. The storms downed trees and power lines in Louisiana, leaving thousands without electricity.
A major utility provider in Louisiana, Entergy, said some more than 37,000 customers remained without power in hard-hit regions of that state.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
The three fault segments and one other in the region are loaded with enough tension to produce quakes of magnitude 6.8 or greater, according to the study.
They include the little-known Green Valley fault, which lies near key dams and aqueducts northeast of San Francisco. Underestimated by geologists until now, the fault running between the cities of Napa and Fairfield is primed for a magnitude-7.1 quake, according to researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey and San Francisco State University.
The water supplies of the San Francisco Bay Area, Southern California and the farm-rich Central Valley depend on the man-made water system that links to the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, noted James Lienkaemper, the U.S. Geological Survey geologist who was lead author of the study. The Green Valley fault is last believed to have ruptured sometime in the 1600s.
All four vulnerable fault segments belong to the San Andreas fault system, the geological dividing line that marks where the western half of California shifts northwest and away from the rest of North America at about 2 inches a year.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
A local meteorologist thinks there might be, and if he's right, San Diego has a good shot at a normal or slightly wetter-than-normal winter.
Steve Vanderburg, who worked as a meteorologist for the National Weather Service for 10 years — nine of them in San Diego — and is now with San Diego Gas & Electric, said he’s been trying to find more and better ways, besides the intermittent El Niño and La Niña cycles, for predicting this region's winter rainfall.
Since 1915, he said, India has had 21 monsoon seasons that were at least 8.5 percent drier than normal nationwide. This year, India’s monsoon rainfall deficit was about 12 percent.
Here's where it gets interesting: In 90 percent of the winters that followed the first 20 dry monsoon seasons, San Diego at least got close to its annual average of 10.34 inches of rain.
"One year was 7.08 inches, but the vast majority of the years were 10 inches or greater," Vanderburg said.
His prediction for San Diego's coming winter? There will be 11.15 inches of precipitation.
"I've got my fingers crossed," he said. "I really don’t want to deal with another dry year." Vanderburg joins other weather and climate experts that U-T San Diego consulted before it rolled out the 13th annual Precipitation Prediction Contest. The others also expect slightly above normal rainfall, largely based on the emergence of a weak El Niño this winter.
The professionals' prognostications are meant as a guide for our readers, who now get their turn. How much rain will fall at Lindbergh Field — San Diego's official weather station— from July 1, 2014, to June 30, 2015? Tell us the number, down to the hundredth of an inch, and you could win four adult ski passes for two days, plus lodging, at Arizona Snowbowl near Flagstaff.
Enter by visiting utsandiego.com/rain-contest. The complete contest rules are posted there.
Entries can also be emailed to rob.krier-at-utsandiego. com or mailed to Precipitation Prediction Contest, c/o Robert Krier, U-T San Diego, 350 Camino de la Reina, San Diego, CA 92108-3090.
In case of a tie, also tell us which day of the year you think will be the wettest. If two or more are tied on the season rainfall total, the person whose wettest day prediction is closest to the actual wettest day will be declared the winner.
You must be 18 or older to participate in the contest, and only one entry is allowed per person. Entries must be received by Tuesday.
Vanderburg has been crunching lots of numbers lately, and he found another reason to think San Diego might be due for a wetter winter. He discovered that when San Diego has had three dry years in a row (as it has now), the fourth year is almost always normal or wetter than normal.
Long-range forecasters have long considered conditions in the equatorial Pacific the key driver of winter weather across much of North America. When the sea-surface temperatures along the equator turn abnormally warm over several months, an El Niño is declared. When the waters are abnormally cool, it's a La Niña. El Niños up the odds of wet winters in Southern California; La Niñas load the dice in favor of dry winters.
But in many years, conditions in the Pacific are classified as neither El Niño or La Niña. And weak El Niño episodes, like the one shaping up this year, aren't always reliable indicators of a wet winter.
Vanderburg said scientists have a long way to go with long-range forecasting.
"There is so much data out there," he said. "I firmly believe the answer is out there. We just have to mine that data in an intelligent way."
(Robert Krier, U-T)
top
Imagine what changes might come next if the drought continues for the rest of our lifetime.
Megadroughts — dry periods that last decades or even centuries — are very much a reality in the Golden State. They have occurred several times during the past millennium, and researchers said there's a high chance that California is about to enter another super-long dry spell. Some climate experts actually believe the state is already in the realm of a megadrought.
Extended drought could lead to new ordinances that force residents and businesses to sharply curtail their water consumption — while paying more money for the water that's available. It could mean the end of lawns and widespread use of new technologies for saving water. It could reshape California’s farms and forests.
During the past three years, California has endured not only meager precipitation and small snowpacks, but also high temperatures in regions like San Diego County. In fact, the state has experienced low rainfall most of the time since 1999.
Reservoirs are currently about a third of capacity — roughly half their normal level.
"Right now, we're looking at the worst drought we've seen in modern records," said Alexander Tardy, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego.
Scientists warn the worst may still be to come, based on past cycles of megadrought that they've pieced together by analyzing tree rings, paleological records, computer modeling and other evidence.
In a study published this month, Cornell University researcher Toby Ault and some of his colleagues calculated the risk of a megadrought happening this century.
They concluded that natural circumstances and climate change combine to put the likelihood of a decade-long drought in the Southwest at 50 percent to 80 percent. And they estimate that the chance of a megadrought, which they define as a 35-year dry period, is 10 percent to 50 percent by the end of this century.
There's a small but real chance that such a drought could last half a century or longer, said Ault, a professor with Cornell's Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.
In 2010, a report by the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences found that a seven-decade drought would be ecologically and financially devastating to certain parts of California — but that the state as a whole could survive if regulators relied on water trading and reallocation in smart ways.
"As an adaptable and clever species, we can manage the risks of megadroughts," Ault said.
Capturing water
If the current drought extends for years, San Diegans would need to change habits and expectations about water. While no one predicts that drinking water would dry up, other uses — from backyard irrigation to agriculture — could be altered significantly.
"If we get to the point where we're rationing, everything needs a hard look. That means lawns in Rancho Santa Fe and La Jolla, and almonds in the Central Valley," said Bill Patzert, a climate scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
In Frank Herbert's series "Dune," inhabitants of the desert planet Arrakis collect water in wind traps and wear stillsuits that recycle moisture from their breath and body waste. Are Californians headed in that direction?
Not exactly, experts said, but capturing practically all usable water will be crucial to surviving the ongoing drought and future ones.
"What's going to be important is that we're consistent and tireless in our efforts ... to conserve water, to recycle water and to treat water as the precious resource that it is," said Emily Young, senior director of environment for the San Diego Foundation.
The county's residents used 20 percent less water in fiscal 2014 than they did in fiscal 2007, and lowered their water use in August by 6 percent compared with the same month last year. These savings came despite a hot, dry summer.
But if the drought continues, San Diegans would have to move quickly from the current per capita consumption level of 161 gallons per day to about half of that, said architect Robert Thiele, vice president of the San Diego Green Building Council.
"That's going to affect everybody's life," he said. Then he added: "It's not going to put them in jeopardy."
Some water experts said it would take vast public-works investments — and not just residents' individual conservation efforts — to achieve such a major reduction.
"I am not a proponent of the idea that we can conserve our way out of those policy problems," said John Minan, a law professor at the University of San Diego and a former chairman of the California Regional Water Quality Control Board. "Clearly, additional conservation is necessary. But you reach a point where conservation simply doesn’t produce additional water resources. So the struggle and challenge will be to find additional water resources."
Future waterworks
Some of the infrastructure projects are in the works.
For example, the city of San Diego plans to build a water purification plant that will treat wastewater to the quality of distilled water. Supporters of that system envision it producing 83 million gallons of drinking water per day by 2035.
In Carlsbad, a desalination plant is slated to open next year. That facility is expected to generate about 7 percent of the county’s drinking water by filtering 100 million gallons from the ocean each day.
"If we were to continue more than five years (with drought), you would see desalination plants going up" elsewhere for the region, said Tardy at the National Weather Service. "There's going to have to be more (water) infrastructure, storage and transportation."
On-site water recycling, now an experimental process, could become a standard plumbing feature of large facilities and campuses, Thiele said. Catching and cleaning storm water is another possibility. Other technologies could even capture water from the air, Thiele said.
UC San Diego has discussed the possibility of on-site water reuse, and it already wrings more than 15,000 gallons per day from air-conditioning systems on humid days, said John Dilliott, associate director of energy and utilities for the university.
"If we can start to think of our water system as a closed loop or natural system, we reuse water again and again," Thiele said.
One such example is the "Living Machine," a treatment system that enables staff at Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego to recycle sewage in the central courtyard.
The system, which looks like a planter blooming with hibiscus and wetland plants, filters sewage from the boot camp’s barracks into a series of gravel-filled chambers infused with purification microbes.
"It treats up to 10,000 gallons per day of mined sewer water," said Lt. Cmdr. Raymond Fletcher.
After additional steps involving ultraviolet light and chlorination, the treated water is pumped underground to maintain the bright green lawn on which Marine recruits pose during graduation ceremonies.
The depot has cut its water use by about 40 percent since 2007, and it considers the "Living Machine" a pilot project that's part of the Marine Corps' efforts to improve environmental sustainability across its operations in the United States and abroad.
"Across the (Department of Defense), you're going to see more of this kind of system of water capture and reuse," Marine Lt. Col. Mike Rohlfs said.
Orchids and orchards
In a state famous for citrus groves, suburban lawns and striking scenery, extended shortages of water would alter the panorama of farms, homes and wildlands.
(Deborah Sullivan Brennan, U-T)
top
A National Park Service helicopter and air tankers from the U.S. Forest Service were filling the gap and assisting firefighters tackling the blaze that prompted the evacuation of 60 homes in the community of Foresta, park spokeswoman Kari Cobb said.
It was not clear how long CalFire's grounding of the S-2T airplanes will last as the agency checks the safety of the aircraft and its pilots, Cal Fire spokeswoman Alyssa Smith said.
The tankers are part of a CalFire fleet that includes 11 UH-1H Super Huey helicopters and 14 OV-10A planes used to guide the other firefighting aircraft.
The tankers, however, are the backbone of the firefighting fleet and can each carry 1,200 gallons of fire retardant.
"These are our initial attack aircraft," department spokeswoman Lynne Tolmachoff said. The crash occurred on Tuesday as four California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection aircraft, including three tankers, were fighting the blaze as it climbed a steep canyon wall north of the Merced River, Tolmachoff said.
One of the planes hit the canyon wall and disintegrated, spilling pieces of the twin-engine aircraft onto state Highway 140.
The body of pilot Geoffrey "Craig" Hunt was recovered Wednesday. It was draped with a flag and accompanied by an honor guard as it was turned over to CalFire officials.
Hunt, 62, of San Jose was a 13-year veteran pilot of DynCorp International and flew the air tanker under a contract with the state.
"We know wildland firefighting is an inherently dangerous job, but Craig made the ultimate sacrifice," Cal Fire Director Ken Pimlott said in a statement.
Mike Lopez, president of the union representing Cal Fire firefighters, said Hunt had extraordinary skill.
Gov. Jerry Brown added his condolences in a statement, while ordering the Capitol flag to be flown at half-staff.
The fire had grown to 252 acres by Wednesday afternoon, though some of the smoke had lifted, said park fire information spokeswoman Jennifer Wuchner. Electricity was out in Yosemite Valley because power lines near the crash site were shut down, and park facilities were using generators, she said.
Highway 140 will be closed indefinitely because of rocks rolling onto the roadway and as the crash is investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board. Officials said the weather at the time of the crash was clear and winds were calm.
Tolmachoff said it was unclear if smoke from the fire or isolated updrafts or downdrafts within the canyon might have played a part in the crash.
NB: recognizing the peaking wildfire danger, the tanker fleet was reinstated two days later, after investigations on the crashed tanker found no evidence for technical failure.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano of Japan and Japanese-born U.S. citizen Shuji Nakamura won the prize for developing the blue light-emitting diode — the missing piece that now allows manufacturers to produce white-light lamps.
The arrival of such lamps is changing the way homes and workplaces are lit, offering a longer-lasting and more efficient alternative to the incandescent bulbs pioneered by Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison at the end of the 19th century.
"Red and green LEDs have been around for a long time but blue was really missing. Thanks to the blue LED we now can get white light sources which have very high energy efficiency and very long lifetime," Per Delsing, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, told a news conference.
The award is a notable example of a practical discovery winning the prize, in contrast to last year when the physics prize went to scientists who predicted the existence of the Higgs boson particle that explains how elementary matter attained the mass to form stars and planets.
"Incandescent light bulbs lit the 20th century; the 21st century will be lit by LED lamps," the academy said in a statement awarding the 8 million Swedish crown ($1.1 million) prize.
Frances Saunders, president of Britain's Institute of Physics, said the shift offered the potential for huge energy savings.
"With 20 percent of the world’s electricity used for lighting, it's been calculated that optimal use of LED lighting could reduce this to 4 percent. Akasaki, Amano and Nakamura's research has made this possible and this prize recognizes this contribution," she said.
Akasaki is at the Meijo University in Japan and Amano is professor at the Nagoya University. Nakamura is at the University of California Santa Barbara.
Contacted by telephone in the middle of the night, Nakamura said of the award: "It's unbelievable." In a later statement, he added: "It is very satisfying to see that my dream of LED lighting has become a reality."
Nakamura invented the blue-light emitting diode while working at Nichia, an unlisted firm, but received next to nothing from the company for the work until 2004, when a Tokyo court ordered Nichia to pay him a record 20 billion yen ($185 million). The company appealed and Nakamura settled for about $8 million.
In addition to lighting buildings, LED bulbs are transforming lamps in cars and the technology is also used as a light source in smartphones and computer screens.
The LED boom is upending the traditional lighting industry, and General Electric, one of the biggest players, forecasts that LEDs will account for about 70 percent of a $100 billion market by 2020, compared with 18 percent in 2012.
LED lamps last 10 times longer than fluorescent bulbs and 100 times longer than traditional incandescent tungsten filament bulbs.
(Niklas Pollard & Ben Hirschler, REUTERS)
top
1) Star presence: President Obama was one of many world leaders who addressed the summit, promising that the U.S. would be "stepping up to the plate" on climate action. Actor Leonardo DiCaprio was on hand too. But Chinese President Xi Jinping - whose country is the world's to emitter - was conspicuously absent.
2) Major promises: A range of governments, investors and financial institutions mobilized pledges of more than $200 billion to finance clean energy and support climate resilience among vulnerable developing nations. The U.N.'s ultimate goal: to attract $100 billion a year to fight climate change by 2020.
3) Unfinished work: The prospects for a truly global treaty to reduce carbon emissions - encompassing developed and developing nations - are still uncertain. Diplomats have set the end of 2015 as a deadline for a deal, but any agreement still has to overcome major international divisions.
(TIME Magazine)
top
The Department of Finance notified legislative budget writers on Monday that the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has spent the $209 million budgeted this fiscal year to fight wildfires.
The administration is transferring the additional money from its $449 million special fund established to address economic uncertainties.
The move is necessary as California battles "one of its worst fire seasons in recent memory," Keely Bosler, the finance department's chief deputy director, said in the letter to lawmakers.
So far this year, the department has responded to nearly 5,000 fires.
The worst may be yet to come, with the first of Southern California's hot, dry Santa Ana winds expected later this week.
(ASSOCIATE PRESS)
top
Four victims were brought down and confirmed dead, one day after Mount Ontake's big initial eruption, said Takehiko Furukoshi, a Nagano prefecture crisis-management official. The 27 others were listed as having heart and lung failure — they were discovered without a pulse and weren’t breathing but hadn’t yet been declared dead by a doctor — the customary way for Japanese authorities to describe a body until police doctors can examine it.
Officials provided no details on how they may have died.
It was the first fatal eruption in modern times at 10,062-foot Mount Ontake, a popular climbing destination about 130 miles west of Tokyo on the main Japanese island of Honshu. A similar eruption occurred in 1979, but no one died.
Rescue helicopters hovered over ash-covered mountain lodges and vast landscapes that looked a ghostly gray, like the surface of the moon, devoid of nearly all color but the bright orange of rescue workers' jumpsuits.
Japanese media reported that some of the bodies were found in a lodge near the summit and that others were buried in ash up to 20 inches deep. Police said only two of the four confirmed dead had been identified. Both were men, ages 23 and 45.
Mount Ontake erupted shortly before noon at perhaps the worst possible time, with at least 250 people taking advantage of a beautiful fall Saturday to go for a hike. The blast spewed large white plumes of gas and ash high into the sky, blotted out the midday sun and blanketed the surrounding area in ash.
Hundreds were initially trapped on the slopes, though most made their way down by Saturday night.
About 40 people who were stranded overnight came down on Sunday. Many were injured, and some had to be rescued by helicopters or carried down on stretchers. By nightfall, all the injured had been brought down, officials said.
Japan's Fire and Disaster Management Agency tallied 37 injured people and said it was trying to update the number still missing.
Furukoshi said rescuers gave priority to helping the survivors come down, leaving behind those who were obviously without hope.
Survivors told Japanese media that they were pelted by rocks. One woman said she covered her head with a knapsack, and later found a thermos inside had been flattened.
A man said he and others went into the basement of a lodge, fearing that the rocks would penetrate the roof. He covered himself with a thin mattress for protection.
"Even small eruptions can cause major damage if people are around, as they get hit by rocks that come flying," Nagoya University volcanologist Koshun Yamaoka said at a news conference Sunday. "And the problem is that catching signs of such small eruptions is difficult."
Volcanoes can also kill by spewing toxic gases and lung-choking ash. Smoke and ash continued to rise from Mount Ontake on Sunday.
(Mari Yamaguchi, ASSOCIATE PRESS)
top
Seizing on the spurned permit application, the San Diego County-based environmental group Protect Our Communities has accused the Bureau of Indian Affairs and its parent agency, the Interior Department, of violating federal bird protection laws in authorizing construction of the Tule Wind power plant, in a lawsuit filed this week in U.S. District Court in San Diego.
Iberdrola Renewables, a U.S. division of the Spanish utility giant, has been pursuing contracts and approvals from county, state and federal regulators for nearly a decade for the 85turbine project that would provide enough electricity to power tens of thousands of homes.
Last month, the Fish and Wildlife Service returned a permit application and check to Iberdrola for an eagle "take" permit related to a series of ridge-line turbines at the Tule site.
Take permits shield the permit holder from federal prosecution for the inadvertent deaths of eagles.
The lawsuit asserts that the Bureau of Indian Affairs authorized construction and operation of the wind farm before an eagle take permit was obtained by either the agency or developer, against the advice of state and federal wildlife officials. It characterized the actions as a violation of the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
A regional director for Fish and Wildlife recommended that Iberdrola consider rearranging the ridge-line turbines or moving the project to another location altogether to minimize or avoid eagle deaths, before submitting a take-permit application for the entire project. The ridge-line turbines are located on lands of the Ewiiaapaayp Band of Kumeyaay Indians.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs issued a record of decision in December authorizing a property lease for the construction of 20 turbines on tribal trust lands along the ridge line.
A spokesman for Iberdrola characterized the lawsuit as frivolous and without merit, but declined to discuss details further because of the pending litigation.
"Our development efforts at Tule continue and this project has gone through years of careful scrutiny," Iberdrola's Art Sasse said Friday.
"We have proven time and again that we have responsibly sited this project with the utmost concern for wildlife and habitat."
Kelly Fuller, executive director at Protect Our Communities, said recent surveys show about 50 pairs of golden eagles are currently nesting in San Diego County and are contending with the gradual encroachment of human development.
"To see Fish and Wildlife repeatedly say we want you either to redesign this turbine layout or move it to another location — they don't say that very often," said Fuller, who worked until recently for the American Bird Conservancy. "That's why we have felt compelled to go forward on this."
Fuller said Iberdrola has expressed a willingness to curtail hours of operation on some turbines, but that alone will not address the threat of the ridge-line turbines.
The lawsuit seeks to take back authorization of the project for further consideration by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Co-plaintiffs to the lawsuit include two Mount Laguna residents who are avid naturalists and bird watchers.
One of them, Nica Knite, owner of the Pine House Cafe & Tavern, says her business depends on hikers that come to see eagles and other birds.
(Morgan Lee, U-T)
top
The blaze has burned more than 150 square miles of a heavily forested region of the Sierra Nevada that is home to numerous hydroelectric plants and is crisscrossed with power lines, water pipes and wooden flumes.
It destroyed a dozen homes near the town of Pollock Pines in El Dorado County and threatened several reservoirs that supply water and electricity to portions of Northern California, but most of the utility infrastructure appears to have been spared. A popular lake basin that draws hikers, campers and anglers from throughout Northern California was threatened but escaped largely untouched. The King fire, which authorities say was started Sept. 13 by an arsonist, was 68 percent contained Friday.
The region saw a 20-degree drop in temperatures and a doubling of humidity levels in 24 hours, National Weather Service meteorologist Brooke Bingaman said. Showers, higher humidity and lower temperatures were expected through today before a warming trend next week.
More than 1,000 of the 8,000 firefighters who had been fighting the blaze, some for two straight weeks, were expected to be released from duty, said DanaWalsh, a fire information spokeswoman for the Eldorado National Forest.
The storm led the Klamath, Mendocino, Six Rivers and Shasta-Trinity national forests in the northern and coastal regions to lift seasonal burn restrictions on Friday.
(Don Thompson, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
The leaders of the hardest-hit nations also appealed for more help, with the president of Sierra Leone calling the Ebola virus "worse than terrorism."
The emergency U.N. session on Ebola reflected the deep concern about an outbreak that has so far killed nearly 3,000 people. U.S. health officials have warned that the number of infected people could explode to at least 1.4 million by mid-January, though they have also cautioned that the totals could peak well below that if efforts to control the outbreak are ramped up.
Despite the grim warnings, Obama said international aid simply is not flowing into West Africa fast enough.
"The outbreak is such where at this point, more people will die," Obama said as he closed out three days of diplomacy at the annual gathering of the U.N. General Assembly. "So this is not one where there should be a lot of wrangling and people waiting to see who else is doing what. Everybody has got to move fast in order for us to make a difference."
On Thursday, top lawmakers in Congress also approved the use of leftover Afghanistan War money to begin funding Obama's $1 billion request to help fight the outbreak.
Obama has come under criticism from some in West Africa for a slow response to the outbreak. He outlined a more robust plan last week, announcing that the U.S. would dispatch 3,000 U.S. troops to Liberia to set up facilities and form training teams to help with the response. The Pentagon mission will involve airlifting personnel, medical supplies and equipment, such as tents to house Ebola victims and isolate people exposed to the virus.
European Commission chief JosManuel Barroso announced Thursday that the European Union was increasing aid to tackle the outbreak by nearly $40 million.
The Ebola outbreak has hit Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea the hardest, leaving aid groups in the region have scrambled desperately for resources.
"Our 150-bed facility in Monrovia opens for just 30 minutes each morning. Only a few people are admitted, to fill beds made empty by those who died overnight," the president of Doctors Without Borders, Joanne Liu, told the U.N. meeting.
As leaders from West Africa appealed for more help from the international community, they also cast the outbreak as far more than a health crisis.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, addressing the conference via video, cited a "precipitous decline in economic activity" as well as the "loss of income and jobs" for people in her country.
President Ernest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone, who also spoke on a video feed, said his country was facing "life and death challenges" that were worse than the threat of terrorism. His comments appeared to be a veiled reference to the degree to which the threat from Middle East extremists — most notably the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria — has dominated the discussions at the U.N. this week.
Koroma took the dramatic step Thursday of sealing off districts where more than 1 million live in order to try to contain the outbreak.
The fears around the outbreak have spread far beyond West Africa, and one African leader made a plaintive appeal Thursday during his address at the U.N. for the world not to stigmatize the entire continent.
"Not all countries in Africa have disease," Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete said, to rare applause from the chamber. "In fact, the affected countries are closer to Europe than they are to Kenya, Tanzania or South Africa in eastern and southern Africa. ... To cancel visits to these parts of Africa is incomprehensible."
(Don Thompson, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
Though the heaviest damage was at Baja California Sur's southern tip, the hurricane initially left 95 percent of the state without electricity, Enrique Ochoa Reza said in an interview on the Mexico City station Radio Red. By Tuesday, service was back at 95 percent in the northern part of the state and 90 percent in the state capital, La Paz, Ochoa said.
The hurricane devastated the state's electricity infrastructure, taking out 543 high-tension transmission towers and 3,400 distribution posts, he said. Los Cabos was especially affected, as it was cut off from its source of electricity in La Paz. As an emergency measure, the commission has installed three diesel-powered generators with 20-megawatt capacity in Los Cabos, Ochoa said, while 160 smaller generators were supplying hospitals and shelters.
"The basic infrastructure has electricity," Ochoa said. "What we are doing is rebuilding for the rest of the economic activities."
The hurricane left thousands homeless, and many smaller areas cut off entirely. "This is going to be a disaster that's going to impact communities for a very long time," Richard Kiy, head of the International Community Foundation. "The rebuilding is going to take several months, and in some cases, it's going to take a couple of years."
Close to 25,000 tourists who had been stranded in the popular Los Cabos resort area, many of them from the United States, were airlifted out last week. Evacuations have continued but "will conclude in the next few days," the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City said in a statement on Monday.
Los Cabos International Airport has suspended commercial service until Oct. 8, though it remained open for humanitarian flights. The La Paz airport has remained open for commercial flights.
(Sandra Dibble, U-T)
top
"The United States has made ambitious investments in clean energy and ambitious reductions in our carbon emissions," Obama said. "Today I call on all countries to join us, not next year or the year after that, but right now. Because no nation can meet this global threat alone."
But none of the pledges made at Tuesday's one-day meeting was binding. The largest-ever gathering of world leaders to discuss climate was designed to lay the groundwork for a new global climate-change treaty. It also revealed the sharp differences that divide countries on matters such as deforestation, carbon pollution and methane leaks from oil and gas production:
* Brazil, home to the Amazon rain forest, said it would not sign a pledge to halt deforestation by 2030.
* The United States decided not to join 73 countries in supporting a price on carbon, which Congress has indicated it would reject.
* And minutes after Obama said "nobody gets a pass," Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli insisted the world treat developing nations, including China, differently than developed nations, allowing them to release more heat-trapping pollution. China, the No. 1 carbon-polluting nation, signed on in support of pricing carbon and vowed to stop the rise of carbondioxide emissions as soon as possible.
"Today we must set the world on a new course," said United Nations Secretary- General Ban Ki-Moon, who added that pricing carbon was critical. "Climate change is the defining issue of our age. It is defining our present. Our response will define our future."
In some ways, the summit, which was part of the annual U.N. General Assembly, answered that call.
The European Union said its member nations next month were set to approve a plan that would cut greenhouse gases back to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. The EU also called for using renewable energy for 27 percent of the bloc's power needs and increasing energy efficiency by 30 percent.
The United States will not release its new emissions targets until early next year.
By 2020, China will reduce its emissions per gross domestic product by 45 percent from 2005 levels, Zhang said. But because economic growth in China has more than tripled since 2005, that means Chinese carbon pollution can continue to soar. Still, outside environmentalists hailed the country's promises because they went beyond any of China's previous statements.
More than 150 countries set the first-ever deadline to end deforestation by 2030, but that goal was thrown into doubt when Brazil said it would not join. Forests are important because they absorb the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. The United States, Canada and the entire European Union signed onto a declaration to halve forest loss by 2020 and eliminate deforestation entirely by 2030.
(Dina Cappiello & Seth Borenstein, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
Girl Scouts have set up collection points while local charities are searching for money to install tanks next to homes. Officials truck in water for families in greatest need and put a large tank in front of the local firehouse for residents to fill up with water for bathing and flushing toilets.
About 290 families in East Porterville — a poor, largely Hispanic town of about 7,000 residents nestled against the Sierra Nevada foothills — have said their shallow wells are depleted. Officials say the rest of Tulare County has many more empty wells, but nobody has a precise count.
Other Central Valley counties also report pockets of homes with wells gone dry and no alternative water service.
"When you have water running in your house, everything is OK," said East Porterville resident Yolanda Serrato. "Once you don’t have water, oh my goodness."
With California locked in its third year of drought and groundwater levels dropping, residents and farmers have been forced to drill deeper and deeper to find water. Lawmakers in Sacramento passed legislation to regulate groundwater pumping, which Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law this past week.
Three days later, Brown signed an executive order that provides money to buy drinking water for residents statewide whose wells have dried up, while also directing key state officials to work with counties and local agencies to find solutions for the shortages.
The State Water Resources Control Board had already allotted $500,000 to buy bottled water for East Porterville residents, said Bruce Burton of the board's Drinking Water Program.
But many East Porterville residents, like Serrato, say all they want is to get a glass of water from the kitchen sink. Her well dried up nearly two months ago, she said, making life challenging for her husband and three children.
To bathe, they each have to fill a bucket from a 300-gallon tank in the front yard, carry it inside and pour water over their heads with a cup. They've lived in their home for 21 years, she said. "It's not that easy to say, 'Let's go someplace else.' " East Porterville sits along the Tule River, which starts high in the mountains and runs through the unincorporated town. Typically, river water permeates the sandy soil under the community, filling up wells as shallow as 30 feet deep. Not this year. Drought has caused the river to run dry, along with the wells.
Tulare County spokeswoman Denise England said East Porterville needs to get connected to the nearest water main in neighboring Porterville. That could cost more than $20 million and take up to five years, if the project didn't hit political snags, she said.
(Scott Smith, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
Jon and Libby McGuffin had been at the tail end of their Baja vacation and were set to head home Sunday when the airline canceled their flight as the Category 3 storm bore down.
With no rooms left at their hotel, the couple said, they found solace alongside other out-of-luck tourists and sustenance when a local store gave out food and supplies.
"The community helped each other survive," Libby, 38, said Thursday, the day after coming home to her four worried children.
The couple's four-day getaway — their first trip to Mexico — put them among the estimated 30,000 tourists in the area when Odile pounded the peninsula.
Luckily, friends they'd made by the poolside during their stay — who were also left stranded when all flights were canceled — invited them to ride out the storm in a motel room they'd just secured in the nearby coastal town of San Jose del Cabos.
They took a city bus to the inn and hunkered down with their friends. Other couples were with them, too.
They camped inside the stifling second-floor room. Outside, Jon said, "all hell broke loose." Howling winds, insane rain.
About 4 a.m., motel staffers banged on the door, yelling to get out. A nearby river had swollen. The first floor of the building was under 6 feet of water. The McGuffins and about 40 other guests made their way, in the dark, to the third floor.
"We are fairly scared," said Jon, 40. "We didn't know what was going to happen. We were all just hoping for daylight."
As dawn broke, they watched cars float down the street.
With rushing water beneath them, motel staffers and other locals laid a ladder like a bridge from the third floor to the motel's restaurant — on higher ground — and eventually helped everyone move across it.
The McGuffins and three other couples — "who became like family," Libby said — hitched a ride in the bed of a stranger's pickup back to Cabo's resorts. Destruction was everywhere. At one high-end hotel, they could see the ocean through the decimated lobby.
They looked for a place to stay, finally stumbling on a timeshare building where a man reluctantly let them use a room. They stayed for two days, the first day living on crackers, cookies and water from raided minibars.
On the morning of the second day, the four couples foraged for coconuts, finding more than a dozen. Later that day, a neighbor brought them bread and peanut butter from an unoccupied room.
They washed their clothes in the pool. And they talked to everyone they could. With no power — no TV, radio or phone service — word-of-mouth was how word spread.
That was how they caught wind that a big-box store was letting people in — five minutes at a time — to grab what they needed, a sort of organized looting with the store's permission. They stood in the long line but by the time they made it to the front, it had become a free-for-all. They grabbed food as well as some medicine to treat their scrapes and bug bites.
They'd heard that people had been looting throughout the area. And outside, at night, they saw people walking around with flashlights and billy clubs.
"We didn't know if it was good guys or bad guys." Libby said. "We knew we needed to get out of there."
On Wednesday came word that planes were flying tourists out. Three couples, including the McGuffins, found a taxi willing to take all of them — for $42. Jon had $43 in his pocket. They paid up.
At the airport, they stood outside in oppressive heat, in line for five hours just to reach the terminal. Inside was a controlled chaos. Airline staffers called out the names of destinations: Guadalajara, Mazatlan, Mexico City, Tijuana. They were told to get on a flight, any flight. Get out and they would be taken care of.
Then Libby heard a call out for Los Angeles. They grabbed their chance.
A short while later, they were onboard the outbound flight. The flight attendant put a hamburger on Libby's tray. "I totally just broke down and started crying." Until then, she hadn't broken down.
"It was so challenging, it was so crazy," Libby said about their ordeal. "But we fell in love with the people of Cabo. I can't say enough how amazing they are. Everybody was so kind."
"There are people there with aluminum roofs. Our story was hard, but there are people left behind who have it worse."
(Teri Figueroa, U-T)
top
Instead you hear the out-of-service "beep, beep, beep."
After Hurricane Odile struck southern Baja California, including the resort city of Cabo San Lucas, on Monday, Carolyn Piszczek, who lives in Kensington, heard reports of water and food shortages, power outages and long lines to access working telephones. But what’s been most frustrating has been the lack of information about her husband, Jeffrey Piszczek.
They last spoke Monday evening[Sep 15]. "This is gonna get really bad," he told her.
His cellphone is out of power and the landline from where he last reached her is out of service. She's been following the Facebook pages of two hotels, which posted they have Internet access and enough supplies "for their guests." He is not a guest at either hotel, though.
Her efforts to reach him or get updates from official channels have mostly failed as well, she said. The U.S. Consulate in Tijuana has been "trying to be helpful," but she said the State Department has been less
forthcoming.
Amy Grier, a spokeswoman with the State Department, said "severe damage to infrastructure" has made communication difficult. Grier said thousands of Americans have been evacuated so far, but exact numbers are still hard to come by.
She added that more consular workers have been dispatched to Mexican cities to help people leave, and that U.S. government agencies are on standby in case the Mexican government requests their help.
The hurricane destroyed stretches of road that connected the southern peninsula to the north, making auto traffic out of the area impossible. With Los Cabos international airport still closed, tourists were being flown out on military planes. Some 685 U.S. travelers were flown to Tijuana on Tuesday, then taken to the border to return home.
The Mexican military continued airlifting some of the area's estimated 30,000 stranded tourists on Wednesday, sending people to Tijuana and Mazatlan, where Customs and Border Protection officers are helping with their transfers and lodging.
"As travelers arrive, CBP is processing those travelers through the pedestrian facilities at both ports of entry," said Angelica DeCima, an agency spokeswoman.
To get information from the State Department about airlifts, people can email OdileEmergencyUSC@ state.gov.
Alfonso Padrés Pesqueira, a Mexican transportation official, issued a statement Wednesday saying that roads in affected areas remain closed. About 300 yards of highway near Bahia de Los Angeles were destroyed by water, and another segment was hit by landslides. Repairs are on hold because of continuing stormy weather.
Those who remained in Mexico struggled with a lack of power and running water and formed long lines for emergency supplies. There were scattered reports of looting.
In an email, Jane Springer, who lives in San Diego and Punta Chivato, a small town in Baja California, said communities north of the resorts, like Loreto, Mulege, Santa Rosalia, are facing serious challenges.
"These communities are hit much harder because they won't get the attention that Cabo will. Many have lost their homes, others will have to mop up themselves, be cut off by washed out roads and bridges, and generally make do until the government makes its way north," Springer wrote.
People in the U.S. turned to social media to gather and share news.
"Hurricane in Cabo has my wife and fam stranded. Not being evacuated, low on cash and supplies. Help!" wrote Matt Van Horn, of San Francisco, on Twitter on Wednesday afternoon. He posted updates on Facebook.
"Their hotel told them not to go to the airport and wait at the hotel. All signs that I see on the Internet says get to the airport immediately and get evacuated," he wrote. He also said his wife's group of friends paid $200 for nine bottles of water, and they were booted from their hotel suite to a flooded standard room when they started running out of cash.
Mexican President Enrique Pe%ntilde;a Nieto's office said the federal government was working closely with state authorities on relief efforts, including restoring water service. It said more than 239,000 people had their power knocked out by the storm, and 95 percent of electrical service in the affected areas was expected to be restored within four days.
Staff writer Sandra Dibble and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
(Roxana Popescu, U-T)
top
Close to 50 calls were made about trees blocking roadways, parking lots and driveways, Bill Harris, spokesman for the city's public works department, said Wednesday.
Harris said city crews — many who had stayed on from afternoon shifts — worked through the night Tuesday to clear areas blocked by debris.
"Restoring safe travel is our main priority and we're working hard to clear the public right of way, but we're asking everyone to slow down," he said. "There is a lot of debris left on the roads."
Harris estimated access to most areas would be restored by the close of business Wednesday, but it would take days to clear all the toppled tree trunks and branches. An estimate of the damage caused during the storm has not been compiled, he said.
Fallen trees crushed cars, closed roads and fell in public parks and shopping centers.
In Pacific Beach, lightning set fire to two or three palm trees.
In Kearny Mesa, a massive tree came down on Balboa Avenue west of Ruffin Road and struck a car. The driver was shaken but not injured. Tree branches littered Montgomery Field and several planes were upended on the tarmac, including one that was tossed over a fence onto two cars. Other aircraft were damaged, some when a hangar shifted in the wind.
Harris said at least a dozen planes were damaged, but more might be reported as owners assess their aircraft.
Palm fronds littered westbound Interstate 8 in Hotel Circle, which forced some maneuvering by motorists, and a downed eucalyptus tree blocked all lanes of northbound state Route 163 near Washington Street during the Tuesday evening commute, backing up southbound traffic for miles.
Several trees were downed in Rancho San Diego shopping centers. Cal Fire Capt. Kendal Bortisser said trees smashed cars in a Bank of America lot on Avocado Boulevard at Calle Verde, and other trees came down in the California Trust & Savings lot. Fallen branches were piled high and warning tape blocked most of the entrances to the retail center hours after the storm had passed. Ward Canyon Park in Kensington, the area surrounding the North Park Recreation Facility, and Old Trolley Barn Park were also in shambles. Maintenance crews will be assessing damages over the next several days, Harris said.
Downed trees also took down power lines, and were cited as the source of many power outages.
The storms left more than 15,000 utility customers without power, a San Diego Gas & Electric Co. spokeswoman said.
Hardest-hit was East County around Rancho San Diego, El Cajon and Spring Valley, but other outages occurred around North Park, Hillcrest, eastern Chula Vista and Paradise Hills.
During the worst period, around 9 to 10 p.m., there were 46 separate outages, utility spokeswoman Alison Zaragoza said. She said many of the outages were caused by falling trees bringing down wires.
Utility crews worked through the night and got most of the power back on by morning, though a few hundred customers were still not back on the grid by late Wednesday morning.
Harris said private properties were also damaged during the storm, and owners would need to dispose of downed trees on their own.
Tuesday's uncharacteristic storm was preceded by unusually hot weather. Fortunately, the heat wave will break today, when temperatures start to moderate, the National Weather Service says. San Diego's daytime high will be about 77, the seasonal average. The region's inland hills and valleys, which have been in the 90s and low 100s for several days, will top out at about 85 degrees. The entire county will cool a little more on Friday. Temperatures will remain moderate through the weekend.
Solspot.com says much of the coast will get 3 foot to 5 foot waves on Thursday. The swell is expected to
produce strong rip currents. Sea surface temperatures remain in the 70- to 75-degree range. The average for this time of year is 68.
Pauline Repard, Gary Robbins and Susan Shroder contributed to this report.
(Lyndsay Winkley, U-T)
top
A new online mapping tool rolled out Wednesday by the U.S. Forest Service and San Diego Gas & Electric will help homeowners and emergency responders answer both those questions with a color-coded early warning system indicating which areas have the highest fire risk when the hot, dry wind blows.
The Santa Ana Wildfire Threat Index includes a six-day outlook and uses 30 years of historical weather data and information about how parched local vegetation currently is to rank danger in four zones from Santa Barbara to San Diego.
"We can see three, four, five days away, 'Is this going to be one of those garden variety Santa Ana wind events we have or is this really going to be devastating to a particular area?' " said Tom Rolinski, a U.S. Forest Service meteorologist.
When winds are gusting, the maps will be updated with yellow for marginal fire risk, orange for moderate, red for high and purple for extreme. Clicking on an area will yield a full forecast, as well as advisories about how to prepare for a possible conflagration. Users also can find the locations of fires already burning and live readings from weather stations.
SDG&E maintains about 150 weather stations, concentrated in the fire-prone backcountry east of San Diego.
"We spend a lot of time looking at how we can make our overhead electrical system more fire- and wind-resistant."
Detailed data from the utility's weather-monitoring system helped test and validate the new tool owned by the Forest Service, SDG&E spokeswoman Stephanie Donovan said. Utility meteorologists also lent their expertise to the project.
"It's really not a San Diego-specific tool," she said. "What we gave them allowed them to provide a sharper focus and validate the information provided" both many other sources.
Tips for those in the higher-risk areas will include charging cellphones, keeping a full gas tank, studying evacuation routes and making contingency plans for pets.
"You live in the mountains and you work down in the city, what happens if a wildland fire breaks out in the middle of the day? How do you get to your pets or your kids in day care?" said John Miller, spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service.
The map is at www.santaanawildfirethreat.com. Utilities can also use the tool to prepare for strong winds that could knock down power lines; fire agencies can deploy engines in advance; and local agencies will know when to postpone construction work that could start a fire.
The maps are only intended for use when the winds are blowing, Rolinski said.
They showed no fire risk during this week's record-breaking heat because there were no Santa Ana winds. A fire in Cleveland National Forest forced evacuations while another in the Northern California town of Weed damaged or destroyed 200 homes.
A beta version correctly predicted at least three fires in the past year, including devastating blazes in northern San Diego County during a wind event in May, Rolinski said.
Homeowners who live and work in the most fire-prone areas welcomed the idea.
It could ease concerns of potential homebuyers who are considering a purchase in a fire-prone area by giving the assurance of an early warning, Trisha Barry, a real estate agent, said as she took pictures of a wilderness hiking area on the fringe of northern Orange County suburbs.
The area is tucked between dense housing developments and scrub-covered foothills. Her photos were intended to help promote the home's proximity to the vast outdoor playground — but the location cuts both ways when it comes to wildfires, she said.
Staff writer Morgan Lee contributed to this report.
(Gillian Flaccus, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
The Pacific Fishery Management Council — the rule-making body for federal fisheries — proposed on Monday to sharply cut the bag limit on bluefin, to help save the collapsing fishery.
It also proposed reducing number of bluefin that fishermen can have in their possession from 30 to six.
The council will vote whether to finalize that change at its November meeting in Costa Mesa, but the two-fish limit will be in place until then. In the meantime, council staff will analyze how different bag limits will affect catch levels, and what the socioeconomic impacts of those changes could be.
The proposed bag limit of two was a compromise between sportfishermen who favored three or more fish per day and environmental groups who lobbied for a complete moratorium on the species.
While neither side was completely satisfied with the proposed change, they called it a step toward restoring the imperiled tuna.
"We're very encouraged that the council recognized the need to pay attention to these fish," said Paul Shively, Pacific Ocean manager for the Pew Charitable Trusts.
"This fish population is in dire straits, and this was a big indication that they are aware of that."
Nonetheless, he said the compromise measure would only reduce catch by 30 percent, while the one fish per day limit that Pew favored would cut catch in half.
Buzz Brizendine, a representative on the Pacific Fisheries Management Council and captain of the Prowler, a sport boat out of Fisherman's Landing in Point Loma, said fishermen had hoped for higher limits, but were relieved that the council didn't propose sharper cuts.
"I think industry preferred three, but two is better than one," he said.
Despite abundant bluefin runs off the California Coast in recent years, the ocean-wide population has plunged to 4 percent of its historic high, scientists with the National Marine Fisheries Service estimate.
In their recent stock assessment for the species, scientists reported that there were 26,324 metric tons of Pacific bluefin in 2012, down from an estimated 627,000 metric tons of the fish at their historic high, according to Steve Teo, a research fisheries biologist with the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla.
Fishery managers have also noted that fewer young bluefin are surviving to adulthood.
Adult bluefin can grow up to 10 feet and 1,200 pounds, and migrate nearly 7,000 miles across the open ocean, according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Those caught in U.S. waters, however, are almost exclusively smaller, juvenile fish. The loss of younger bluefin may contribute to declines in the global population.
Nonetheless, California sportfishing accounts for only a small percentage of bluefin catch, compared with commercial operations in Japan, Mexico, Korea and Taiwan.
Restricting sportfishing limits won't make a big dent in the global haul, Brizendine said, but is a good faith gesture aimed at persuading other countries to reduce their catch as well.
"That way everybody's taking some cuts," he said.
It's a key step before an upcoming global meeting on tuna, Shively said.
"By making this action, we can go in with a strong message that the U.S. is committed to the recovery of the bluefin tuna population," he said. "It's important that we can go in with that leverage."
Paul Hoofe, a Newport Beach fisherman who is a California representative for the International Game Fish Association, said he had favored gradual cuts to catch limits, and said sudden, sharp restrictions will hurt the charter fleet.
"Now we're at the end, so it's life or death for the fishery," he said.
"But it also has a life or death affect on a lot of boats and a lot of landings, and it should have been thought of 20 years ago."
(Deborah Brennan, U-T)
top
In just a few hours, wind-driven flames destroyed or damaged 100 homes, the saw mill and a church. At times, the fire moved so fast that residents had only a few minutes to get out of the way.
On Tuesday, the "Weed Like To Welcome You" town sign still stood, but nothing else was normal as stunned residents assessed the damage, took stock of what they lost and gave thanks for what was saved.
"At the peak, essentially the entire town was evacuated," state fire spokesman Robert Foxworthy said.
Disastrous as the fire was for the community of 3,000 people, daybreak brought gratitude and relief that there were no reports of death or even serious injuries.
The intense blaze erupted Monday south of Weed. Winds gusting up to 40 mph pushed the flames into town, where they quickly chewed through a hillside neighborhood. The cause is still under investigation.
"It went through here so fast it was unbelievable. I've never seen anything like this," Jim Taylor, a retired butcher who has lived in the town for 30 years, said Tuesday. "I'm not a real religious person, but somebody was looking out for me."
Taylor said firefighting aircraft dropped retardant over his house. As his home and his deck furniture turned pink from the retardant, another house nearby erupted into flames. Across the street, pine and oak trees were burned to a crisp, and small flames and smoke drifted up from chunky embers.
The town and the forest that surrounds it were a tinderbox after three years of drought. And Weed’s winds are notorious.
The town's saw mill, once the world's largest, was among the structures damaged in the blaze.
On Tuesday, chimneys were the only thing still standing in the rubble, and broken pipes spurted water over the blackened landscape. The remnants of the Holy Family Catholic Church were still smoldering, its metal girders twisted on the ground.
Fire crews took advantage of calmer winds and fire-fighting aircraft Tuesday, gaining control in and around Weed. Flames still threatened in other parts of California.
In Oakhurst, a foothill community south of Yosemite National Park, a fire that had burned 320 acres was 40 percent contained. About 600 residents from 200 homes remained evacuated, Madera County sheriff's spokeswoman Erica Stuart said.
Farther north, a wildfire about 60 miles east of Sacramento forced the evacuation of 133 homes. El Dorado County sheriff's officials said residents of an additional 406 homes were being told to prepare to flee.
(Jeff Barnard, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
On Tuesday, San Diego's misery index jumped a few soggy points as our long heat wave joined with the remnants of Tropical Storm Odile to drench much of the county in a wave of moisture that made us sweatier than we already were. And we are going to stay that way for at least the next few days.
The rush of water in Mission Valley prompted a search for two people reported missing from a homeless encampment in the bed of the San Diego River behind Qualcomm Stadium. A friend called 911 about 7:20 p.m. to report a man and woman who had been there were gone, San Diego fire Capt. Joe Amador said. But following a two-hour search by firefighters, lifeguards, police officers and a helicopter, the two were located unharmed.
It was one of many storm-related incidents that kept San Diego firefighters and police officers busy, along with responding to heat-related medical-aid calls, Amador said.
Tuesday's high was 91 in San Diego, the hottest day since May 16, when the high was 92. This is the 11th straight day that temperatures reached at least 80 degrees here. El Cajon set a record with an 104-degree high, breaking the mark of 102 set in 2000. Chula Vista set a record, too, with a high of 98. That is 10 degrees above the 1979 record.
It won't feel much cooler today. As remnants of Odile head toward southeast Arizona, San Diego County could get scattered thunderstorms over the mountains and deserts and possibly in the valleys. Temperatures could be as much as five degrees cooler in some places, but with humidity remaining high, the numbers won't add up to anything resembling a reprieve. "Maybe there will be a tiny bit of relief on Wednesday," said Stephen Harrison, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. "It will cool down slightly, but it will be humid, so it will still feel uncomfortable."
Given Tuesday's weather drama, many of us might be OK with being merely uncomfortable.
In El Cajon, Escondido and La Mesa, temperatures hit 100 by 1 p.m. Then the Odile-assisted thunderstorms kicked up, bringing wind, rain and even hail. In Spring Valley, parts of a large tree blew down and landed on a school bus. No students were hurt. At Cuyamaca College in Rancho San Diego, several trees were blown over and hit at least four cars in the student parking lot.
In the afternoon, the San Diego County Sheriff's Department issued a traffic advisory asking drivers to avoid Avocado Boulevard and Calle Verde in Rancho San Diego, where crews were working to clean up storm debris.
Traffic on northbound state Route 163 came to a halt near Washington Street when a tree fell across lanes, and there were hundreds of power outages throughout the county. A Cessna was pushed onto its nose at Montgomery Field in Kearny Mesa and another was pushed onto a car.
The storms were a result of monsoonal moisture combining with extreme heat and a weak sea breeze that made the storms form farther west than usual.
"Instead of the storms starting over the mountains and staying there, they started over (Interstate) 15 and stayed there," said Brett Albright, meteorologist with the National Weather Service. "We had this big heat event, so we had all this instability built up. It was a confluence of all kinds of different weather phenomena coming together and producing a monsoon event for the valleys and the coast, which is very unusual."
The storms should leave the valleys and coast alone today, but the humidity isn't going much of anywhere. As for temperatures, the forecast calls for a high of 86 in San Diego and 96 in El Cajon.
Anyone needing a break from the heat (and high energy bills) can visit one of San Diego's Cool Zones, all of which are air-conditioned and open to the public. Check coolzones.org for details.
It will be cool enough for some schools, however. The San Diego Unified School District will return all schools to their normal schedule today, after putting campuses without air-conditioning on an early-closure schedule earlier this week.
Staff writers Robert Krier, Maureen Magee, Gary Robbins and Susan Shroder contributed to this report.
(Karla Peterson, U-T)
top
The Balkans' worst flooding since record-keeping began forced tens of thousands of people from their homes and threatened to inundate Serbia's main power plant, which supplies electricity to a third of the country and most of the capital, Belgrade.
Authorities organized a frenzied helicopter airlift to get terrified families to safety before the water swallowed up their homes. Many were plucked from rooftops.
Floodwaters receded Sunday in some locations, laying bare the full scale of the damage. Elsewhere, emergency management officials warned that the water would keep rising into Sunday night.
"The situation is catastrophic," said Bosnia's refugee minister, Adil Osmanovic.
Three months' worth of rain fell on the region in three days, producing the worst floods since rainfall measurements began 120 years ago. At least two dozen people have died, with more casualties expected.
The rain caused an estimated 2,100 landslides that covered roads, homes and whole villages throughout hilly Bosnia. Another 1,000 landslides were reported in neighboring Serbia.
The cities of Orasje and Brcko in northeast Bosnia, where the Sava River forms the natural border with Croatia, were in danger of being overwhelmed. Officials in Brcko ordered six villages to be evacuated.
Rescuers urged people to go to the balconies or rooftops of their houses with bright fabric to make themselves visible.
Brcko Mayor Anto Domic said that unless the Bosnian Army is able to reinforce from the air, the city will be flooded completely. He called for the Defense Ministry to use helicopters to lower steel barriers that could be backed by sandbags to contain the water.
"It is a very demanding task," he said, acknowledging that officials would have no other way to protect the port city of more than 70,000.
The floods and landslides raised fears about the estimated 1 million land mines planted during Bosnia's 1992-95 war. Nearly 120,000 of the unexploded devices remain in more than 9,400 carefully marked minefields. But the weather toppled warning signs and, in many cases, dislodged the mines themselves.
Beyond the immediate danger to Bosnians, any loose mines could also create an international problem if floodwaters carry the explosives downstream.
(Sabina Niksic & Jovanaa Gec, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
Scientists said the rise in sea level, up to 12 feet, will take centuries to reach its peak and cannot be reversed. But they said a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions could slow the melt, while an increase could speed it slightly.
Warm, naturally occurring ocean water flowing under the glaciers is causing the melt. "We feel it is at the point that it is … a chain reaction that's unstoppable," regardless of any future cooling or warming of the global climate, said Eric Rignot, a professor of Earth science at the University of California Irvine. He was the lead author of a NASA-funded study that was one of the two studies released Monday.
The only thing that might have stopped the ice from escaping into the ocean and filling it with more water "is a large hill or mountains," Rignot said. But "there are no such hills that can slow down this retreat," he added.
The peer-reviewed NASA study has been accepted by the journal Geophysical Research Letters and is expected to be published within days.
The NASA announcement coincided with the release of a University of Washington study that contained similar findings. It will be published Friday in the journal Science.
Both studies observed ice retreating from four massive glaciers in West Antarctica: Pine Island, Thwaites, Smith and Kohler.
The Thwaites glacier alone holds enough water to increase sea level by 2 feet, the University of Washington study said. Together, the glaciers hold enough water to raise it by several feet.
Sea levels will not rise suddenly, in spite of what the word "collapse" implies, said a statement by the university announcing its report. "The fastest scenario is 200 years, and the longest is more than 1,000 years."
The statement said university scientists used detailed maps and computer models to reach their conclusion "that a collapse appears to have already begun."
"Scientists have been warning of its collapse, based on theories, but with few firm predictions or time lines," the statement said.
The new projections of sea-level rise by both studies are higher and potentially more devastating than earlier projections by international scientists who authored an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report last year and U.S. scientists who wrote the federal government's National Climate Assessment, which was issued this month.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
top
Snow
Spring is normally the wettest time of year in the Rockies. While snowfall is common in the mountains in May, significant snowfall at lower elevations like Denver in May only occurs every five or 10 years, Colorado state climatologist Nolan Doesken said. Denver got between 4 and 7 inches of typical heavy, wet spring snow. While much of it didn’t stick to the warm ground, it weighed down trees just sprouting spring leaves and led gardeners to cover flowers and plants with plastic sheets and buckets. A freeze is expected to follow before warmer weather returns Tuesday.
Travel
The storm shut down Interstate 80 through southern Wyoming and into Nebraska for more than 24 hours. Some drivers abandoned their vehicles while stranded truckers filled up rest area parking lots along the highway, which averages more than 6,000 trucks per day. Snowy conditions appear to have contributed to at least one fatal crash southwest of Denver. The snow caused minimal problems at Denver International Airport, canceling about 60 of its 1,600 daily flights and delaying both arrivals and departures in the morning. The airport also briefly lost power, stalling some escalators and elevators. Airport spokeswoman Julie Smith said a backup generator spared the airport any major problems.
Drought
Much of the West remains in some stage of drought, with the worst conditions in Southern California and the Southern Plains and Texas Panhandle.
Firefighters [in Texas] Monday said that they have a grip on the fire that has destroyed 156 structures, including at least 89 homes.
No injuries have been reported from the fire that has scorched a 4-square-mile area around Lake Meredith, between the towns of Sanford and Fritch.
Texas A&M Forest Service spokesman Troy Duchneaux said about 2,100 people remain evacuated from roughly 1,300 homes as of late Monday.
He said the fire is about 65 percent contained and the prospects for continued success are good, with early morning temperatures in the upper-30s expected and relative humidity expected to reach 60 percent. He said a house-by-house search and damage assessment is planned for today.
It is the first wildfire in the area since February 2011 during one of the worst droughts in Texas history. Twelve people were killed in a March 2006 wildfire that burned nearly 1 million acres.
Conditions vary greatly within states. While Colorado's overall amount of snow in the mountains — the state's main water supply — is close to average this year, the snowpack in its southwestern corner is way below normal and severe drought continues to afflict farms and ranches in the southeast. Fire officials are predicting a normal Colorado wildfire season, which would be an improvement over recent years in which blazes have destroyed hundreds of houses.
Skiiing
After lots of snow in March and April, many Colorado ski resorts added extra days of skiing but only one resort is still open. After getting 17 inches of snow in the last three days, Arapahoe Basin says conditions are better than they were in February. Spokeswoman Leigh Hierholzer said about 2,000 people were on the slopes, apparently undeterred by slippery roads or the start of the workweek.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
The mountainous area in Badakhshan province has experienced days of heavy rain and flooding, and the side of a cliff collapsed onto the village of Hobo Barik around midday. Landslides and avalanches are frequent in Afghanistan, but Friday's was one of the deadliest.
Gov. Shah Waliullah Adeeb said more than 2,000 people were missing after the landslide buried some 300 homes — about a third of all the houses in the area.
At least 350 people were confirmed dead, according to Ari Gaitanis, a spokesman from the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. He said the U.N. was working with authorities on the ground to rescue people still trapped.
The governor said rescue crews were working but didn't have enough equipment.
"It's physically impossible right now," Adeeb said. "We don't have enough shovels; we need more machinery."
Badakhshan provincial police chief Maj. Gen. Faziluddin Hayar said rescuers had pulled seven survivors and three bodies from the mounds of mud and earth but held out little hope that more survivors would be found.
"Now we can only help the displaced people. Those trapped under the landslide and who have lost lives, it is impossible to do anything for them," Hayar said.
Video footage of the scene showed a large section of the mountain collapsed, sending mud and earth tumbling onto the village below.
The landslide was likely caused by heavy rain, said Abdullah Homayun Dehqan, the province's director for National Disaster Department. He said floods last week in different districts of the province killed four people and eight more were still missing.
(Amir Shan & Rahim Faiez, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
To get tornadoes — especially the big, deadly kind — everything has to come together in just the right way and it hadn't been doing that lately, said meteorologist Greg Carbin at the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.
Until the weekend, there had been relatively few significant twisters this year across the United States — just 20 and no deaths.
But the conditions were right on Sunday in the central U.S.
Dry, cool air swooped off California's Sierra Madre and the southern Rocky mountains. That sat on top of warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, creating thunderstorms. And the jet stream brought in wind shear, which helps provide rotation.
Cook that all with daytime heating and it makes a tornado outbreak, meteorologists say. What makes this outbreak unusual is that it is essentially stalled, Carbin said. The slow-moving jet stream plunging from the Northwest is keeping a large, high-pressure system off the East Coast. And that's preventing the tornado-prone weather from moving east and weakening.
That could mean more storms across the South, maybe into today.
In the past few decades, the U.S. has averaged about 1,250 tornadoes a year. Last year, which also had a slow start, ended with 908 tornadoes that killed 55 people.
"You expect to see one or two outbreaks like this each spring and certainly we were due," said Jeff Masters, meteorology director of the private Weather Underground.
(Seth Borenstein, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
"It makes you just take a breath now," said next-door neighbor Kenneth Billingsley, who witnessed the scene at what was left of Ruth's Child Care Center in this logging town of 6,600. "It makes you pay attention to life."
Bennett, 53, was among at least 35 people killed in a two-day outbreak of twisters and other violent weather that pulverized homes from the Midwest to the Deep South. The child, whose name was not released, was alive when she was pulled from Bennett's arms and was taken to a hospital. Her condition was not known.
As crews in Mississippi and Alabama turned from search and rescue efforts to cleanup, forecasters began to downplay their initially dire predictions of a third round of deadly twisters Tuesday. Meteorologists said the storm system had weakened substantially by evening, although some tornado watches and warnings were still in effect for isolated areas.
In North Carolina, the National Weather Service reported tornado touchdowns in five counties Tuesday, but the twisters caused only moderate structural damage to homes and toppled some trees. Two cities in the state reported extensive flooding from the storm system. No injuries were reported.
One of the hardest-hit areas in Monday evening's barrage of twisters was Tupelo, Miss., where a gas station looked as if it had been stepped on by a giant.
Francis Gonzalez, who also owns a convenience store and Mexican restaurant attached to the service station, took cover with her three children and two employees in the store's cooler as the roof over the gas pumps was reduced to aluminum shards.
"My Lord, how can all this happen in just one second?" she said in Spanish.
On Tuesday, the growl of chain saws cut through the otherwise still, hazy morning in Tupelo. Massive oak trees, knocked over like toys, blocked roads. Neighbors helped one another cut away limbs.
"This does not even look like a place that I'm familiar with right now," said Pam Montgomery, walking her dog in her neighborhood. "You look down some of the streets, and it doesn't even look like there is a street."
By the government's preliminary count, 11 tornadoes — including one that killed 15 people in Arkansas — struck the nation's midsection on Sunday, and at least 25 ravaged the South on Monday, the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center said.
Among those killed was 21-year-old University of Alabama swimmer and dean's list student John Servati, who was taking shelter in the basement of a Tuscaloosa home when a retaining wall collapsed on him.
His death — and that of at least two others in Alabama — came the day after the third anniversary of an outbreak of more than 60 tornadoes that killed more than 250 people across the state.
In Kimberly, Ala., north of Birmingham, the firehouse was among the buildings heavily damaged.
Four firefighters suffered little more than cuts and scrapes, but the bays over the fire trucks were destroyed, and the vehicles were covered with red bricks, concrete blocks and pieces of the roof.
The trucks were trapped, so the town had to rely on nearby communities for emergency help.
Louisville was also one of the hardest-hit areas, with officials reporting at least nine dead in and around town because of a powerful tornado with a preliminary rating of EF4, just shy of the top of the scale.
A team formed by the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks was searching on Tuesday for an 8-year-old boy still missing from the community after rescuers found the bodies of his parents near their destroyed home. The boy was believed to have been with his parents when the tornado struck, said department Capt. James Crawford.
Sennaphie Yates arrived at the small local hospital in Louisville to check on her grandfather just ahead of Monday's twister. As the funnel cloud closed in, staff members herded people into a hall.
"They had all of us against the wall and gave us pillows. They said, 'Get down and ... don't get up,'" she said.
The winds knocked down two walls and tore holes in the roof. Doctors moved some emergency room patients to a former operating room and sent some to other hospitals.
Bennett's day care center was not far from the hospital. Her niece Tanisha Lockett had worked at Ruth's Child Care since it opened seven years ago.
She said all but the one child — a 4-year-old girl who had been in the center's care since she was a baby — had been picked up before the storm.
On Tuesday, Bennett's family and those who worked for her stepped over schoolbooks, first aid supplies and a Hooked on Phonics cassette as they tried to salvage paperwork.
"We're just trying to keep a smile on our faces," said Jackie Ivy, an employee. "I cried all last night."
(Jeff Amy & Adrian Sainz, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
(TIME)
top
Nearly a half-million customers lacked power in Pennsylvania and Maryland. In Pennsylvania, where most of the outages were located, officials likened the scope of the damage to a hurricane. Some who might not get power back for several days sought warmth — or at least somewhere to recharge their batteries — in shopping malls, public libraries and hastily established shelters. One cafe in downtown Pottstown gave about 15 free meals to people who had lost power, encouraged them to plug in devices and let a few get a warm shower.
"It's just kind of giving back to the community — there's no other purpose of this," said iCreate Cafe owner Ashraf Khalil.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett said after an aerial survey of the storm's aftermath that crews put a priority on restoring electricity to hospitals, nursing homes, communications facilities and sewer plants.
"This storm is in some respects as bad or maybe even worse than Hurricane Sandy," he said during an appearance in the Philadelphia suburbs. He said a shipment of electrical generators from the federal government was on its way to Pennsylvania.
PECO, the dominant electricity provider in the Philadelphia area, had the most outages with 394,000. PECO spokeswoman Debra Yemenijian said most would have their lights back on by tonight, but she said some could be without power until Sunday.
About 200 people took advantage of seven shelters in three suburban Philadelphia counties, according to the American Red Cross of Southeastern Pennsylvania. Shelters also were open in central Pennsylvania.
The Northeast's second winter storm of the week dumped more than a foot of snow in some places on Wednesday, forcing schools, businesses and government offices to close, snarling air travel and sending cars and trucks sliding on slippery roads and highways. It also left a thick coating of ice on trees and power lines.
In hard-hit York County, south of Harrisburg, the downed trees and lines kept emergency officials busy. Calls to 911 on Wednesday were quadruple the normal volume, said Carl Lindquist, a spokesman for the county government.
Roughly 440,000 customers in York County, south of Harrisburg, remained without power by Thursday night, down by several hundred thousand from Wednesday and falling over the course of the day.
Also Thursday, a rare snowstorm hammered parts of the Pacific Northwest, leaving one person dead in a massive traffic pileup on Interstate 5 in Washington state's Clark County, causing multiple other wrecks, and closing schools and offices.
(Mark Scolforo, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
Among the dead on Mount Sinabung were a local television journalist and four high school students and their teacher who were visiting the mountain to see the eruptions up close, said National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho. At least three other people were injured.
Rescuers found 14 bodies, but fear that the death toll could rise after some residents who went up to tend to their crops on the volcano's slopes did not show up at their emergency shelters.
"We lost contact with 50 residents," said Benny Kaban, a local Protestant minister and aid worker.
Sinabung in western Sumatra has been erupting for four months, sending lava and searing gas and rocks rolling down its southern slopes. Authorities had evacuated more than 30,000 people, housing them in cramped tents, schools and public buildings. Many have been desperate to return to check on homes and farms, presenting a dilemma for the government.
On Friday, authorities allowed nearly 14,000 people living outside a three-mile danger zone to return home after volcanic activity decreased. Others living close to the peak have been returning to their homes over the last four months despite the dangers.
On Saturday, a series of huge blasts and eruptions thundered from the 8,530 foot-high volcano, sending lava and pyroclastic flows up to 2.8 miles away, Nugroho said. Television footage showed villages, farms and trees around the volcano covered in thick gray ash.
Following the eruption, all those who had been allowed to return home Friday were ordered back into evacuation centers.
Also Saturday, Ecuador's Geophysics Institute reported the Tungurahua volcano has erupted three times, spewing ash and lava in what it called an important increase in activity.
The institute said two moderate explosions on Saturday were followed by a third of greater size, and a pyroclastic flow.
(Binsar Bakkara, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
Wells are running dry or reservoirs are nearly empty in some communities. Others have long-running problems that predate the drought.
The communities range from the area covered by the tiny Lompico County Water District in Santa Cruz County to the cities of Healdsburg and Cloverdale in Sonoma County, the San Jose Mercury News reported.
Most of the districts, which serve from 39 to 11,000 residents, have too few customers to collect enough revenue to pay for backup water supplies or repair failing equipment, the newspaper reported.
There was some good news Wednesday on the lack of precipitation in California: as much as 2 feet of snow is possible atop the Sierra today as the first significant storm in nearly two months blows in. Snow levels should drop to Lake Tahoe's elevation — about 6,200 feet — by today. Snowfall could total up to 2 feet above 8,000 feet, with a foot or more above 7,000 feet.
A tenth of an inch of rain is also expected in the San Francisco Bay Area and more than 2 inches in parts of Sacramento.
As of Tuesday, snow water content was 12 percent of normal in the central Sierra and 5 percent of normal in the northern Sierra, state water official said. The snowpack atop Donner Summit where U.S. Interstate 80 crosses the Sierra southwest of Truckee, is the lowest it has ever been at this time of year in records dating back to the late 1800s, officials said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
As National Guardsmen and state troopers fanned out, Mayor Kasim Reed and Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal found themselves on the defensive, acknowledging the storm preparations could have been better. But Deal also blamed forecasters, saying he was led to believe it wouldn't be so bad.
The icy weather wreaked similar havoc across much of the South, closing schools and highways, grounding more than 1,000 flights and contributing to a dozen deaths from traffic accidents and a mobile home fire.
Yet it was Atlanta, home to major corporations and the world's busiest airport, that was Exhibit A for how a Southern city could be sent reeling by winter weather that, in the North, might be no more than an inconvenience.
The mayor admitted the city could have directed schools, businesses and government offices to stagger their closings on Tuesday afternoon, as the storm began, rather than dismissing everyone at the same time.
The result was gridlock on freeways jammed on normal days. Countless vehicles were stranded and many were abandoned. Officials said 239 children spent Tuesday night aboard school buses; thousands of others stayed overnight in their schools.
One woman's 12-mile commute home took 16 hours. Another woman gave birth while stuck in traffic; police arrived just in time to help. Drivers who gave up trying to get home took shelter at fire stations, churches and grocery stores.
Georgia State Patrol officials said two traffic fatalities had been reported in counties outside of Atlanta. State troopers also responded to more than 1,460 crashes between Tuesday morning and Wednesday evening and said more than 175 injuries had been reported.
"I'm not thinking about a grade right now," the mayor said when asked about the city's response. "I'm thinking about getting people out of their cars."
National Guardsmen in Humvees, state troopers and transportation crews delivered food and other relief, and by Wednesday night, Deal said all Atlanta-area schoolchildren were home with their parents.
Atlanta was crippled by an ice storm in 2011, and officials had vowed not to be caught unprepared again. But few closings or other measures were ordered ahead of time this week. Deal faulted government forecasters, saying they warned the storm would strike south of Atlanta and the snow would be light. But the National Weather Service explicitly cautioned on Monday that snow-covered roads "will make travel difficult or impossible." Temperatures in Atlanta are expected to be in the mid-50s by Friday.
(David Crary, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
Georgia State University student Alex Tracy looked on with amusement.
"My family is from up north and we're used to driving in the snow and stuff, and seeing everyone freak out, sliding and stuff, it's pretty funny," Tracy said.
A winter storm that would probably be no big deal in the North all but paralyzed the Deep South on Tuesday, bringing snow, ice and teeth-chattering cold, with temperatures in the teens in some places.
Many folks across the region don't know how to drive in snow, and many cities don't have big fleets of salt trucks or snowplows, and it showed. Hundreds of wrecks happened from Georgia to Texas. Two people died in an accident in Alabama.
"As I drove, I prayed the whole way," said Jane Young, an 80-year-old pastor's wife traveling in Austin, Texas, before dawn on her way to volunteer at a polling station when sleet began falling. "I said, 'Lord, put your hands on mine and guide me. This is your car now.' " As many as 50 million people across the region could be affected by the time the snow stops today. Up to 4 inches of snow fell in central Louisiana, and about 3 inches was forecast for parts of Georgia. Up to 10 inches was expected in the Greenville, N.C., area and along the state’s Outer Banks.
On the Gulf Shores beaches in Alabama, icicles hung from palm trees. Hundreds of students in the northeastern part of the state faced spending the night in gyms or classrooms because the roads were too icy. Four people were killed in a Mississippi mobile-home fire blamed on a space heater.
The governors of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi declared states of emergency.
New Orleans' merry Bourbon Street in the French Quarter was oddly quiet as brass bands and other street performers stayed indoors.
Lee and Virginia Holt of Wayne, Pa., walked into Cafe du Monde — a New Orleans landmark known for its beignets and cafe au lait — after finding the National World War II Museum closed because of the weather. "We understand they don't have the equipment to prepare the roads," she said. Her husband added: "Nor the experience."
Snow covered Atlanta's statues of civil rights heroes, and snowplows that rarely leave the garage rolled out onto the city's streets.
In the Midwest, dangerous cold continued to grip the region as the storm moved south. Many schools closed for the second straight day. In Minnesota, forecasters said wind chills could reach 35 to 50 degrees below zero.
Nationwide, more than 3,200 airline flights were canceled.
And in Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, the alligators burrowed into the mud to keep warm.
"Their metabolism slows down so they're able to not breathe as often, so they don't have to come to the surface as often," said Susan Heisey, a ranger at the national wildlife refuge.
(Ray Henry, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
As temperatures and wind chills plummeted throughout the day, even simple routines were upended by the need to bundle up, with anyone venturing outdoors being well advised to layer up with clothing, coats, hats, scarves and gloves.
And there's no quick relief in sight as subzero highs were expected to dominate across the region today.
"This is similar to what we had three weeks ago" in terms of life-threatening conditions, said Sarah Marquardt, a National Weather Service meteorologist. "With wind chills in the minus 30 to minus 40 range, you can get frostbite within 10 minutes on exposed skin." In Chicago, temperatures had fallen below zero by Monday afternoon with wind chills in the negative double- digits.
"We had two (employees) call in because they couldn't come to work because of the school closings, and another called in sick," said Kristelle Brister, the manager of a Chicago Starbucks, who was forced to bring her 9-year-old son to work after the city shut down its 400,000-student school system for the day.
Residents of Minnesota and Wisconsin faced similar if even somewhat more severe weather.
Wind chills in the minus 40s rocked Minneapolis, while in Milwaukee the chill hit minus 23 by midafternoon. Elsewhere, wind chills registered minus 18 in Dayton, Ohio, minus 14 in Kansas City, Mo., and minus 3 in Louisville, Ky.
The chill Monday was enough to keep even the hardiest people off the streets, including the customers of the Hollywood Tan salon in the southwestern Illinois' community of Belleville.
"It's definitely a lot slower," said salon manager Kelly Benton, who wasn't expecting anything near the 100 tanners the salon sees on a typical day.
But the chill didn't keep crowds from Tiny Tots and Little Tykes Preschool and Child Care Center in West St. Paul, Minn., where the cold weather means a lot more jumping rope and riding around on scooters — anything to escape cabin fever and let kids burn off some energy.
"We're just trying to keep them busy, but it's definitely more of a challenge when you can't get outside," said ManaRae Schaan, the executive director.
The brutally cold weather has brought a spike in business for GrubHub Seamless, a company that lets users order food online from restaurants and have the food delivered.
"Across the board, restaurant and delivery drivers are dealing with an influx of orders," Allie Mack, a spokeswoman for the company said in an email.
Not only that, but people seem to appreciate the drivers more, with Mack saying that during the Polar Vortex earlier this month, tipping was up by double digits in Detroit, Cleveland, Minneapolis and Chicago. And, for some reason, deliveries of buffalo chicken sandwiches jumped 37 percent.
"You figure people are probably being more generous to their drivers because their drivers are the ones braving the conditions while you're on your couch in your pajamas," Mack said.
Chicago cabdriver Kumar Patel said the cold translates into bigger tips for him too.
But the chill also seems to trigger some bad behavior as well, he said.
"They get in and they say they have to smoke because it's so cold," Patel said.
Still, he said, he can pick up a lot of fares in a short time. "They are going a block, sometimes only a half block," Patel said.
The frigid weather also sent runners inside to health clubs or into stores to buy treadmills.
"Treadmills and ellipticals are the No. 1 seller now that conditions are terrible," said Dave O'Malley, manager of Chicago Home Fitness.
In Milwaukee, Michael Comerford, a 33-year-old barista, said Monday that he is making far fewer lattes than normal but expects the trend to reverse once the severe chill subsides.
"Once it gets warmer, like the single digits or teens, it feels like a heat wave so people come out again," he said.
It is the same for Brandon Kulosa, whose business is getting rid of critters that become dissatisfied with their homes and move into ours.
"They hunker down when it gets this cold," said Kulosa, co-owner of Animal Trackers Wildlife Co. in suburban Chicago.
Not only that, he said, but the ones that already have gotten into your attic seem to recognize they have it pretty good and should not draw attention to themselves and risk eviction.
"You could have a raccoon up in your attic just sleeping," said his partner, Tony Miltz. "They're not going anywhere."
(Don Babwin, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
No human health data exist on MCHM, just a single study on rats. That's because MCHM is one of almost 62,000 chemicals that were grandfathered in when the Toxic Substances Control Act was passed in 1976. But even new industrial chemicals - and hundred in the U.S. each year - generally receive little review from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). At this point even the chemical industry agrees that the outdated law needs to be updated, but reform efforts have been stuck in gridlock. The West Virginia accident might change that - the Senate is scheduled to hold hearings on the spill in February.
(Bryan Walsh, TIME)
top
To the dismay of Germany, environmentalists and others, the European Commission stepped back from proposing tougher binding renewable energy targets for each of the 28 member nations. Instead, it seeks the introduction of a less ambitious pan-European goal of renewable energy consumption reaching 27 percent by 2030.
There are fears that the EU, long a trendsetter in climate change policies, might make it easier for the U.S., China and developing economies to dodge tougher action. The proposal by the commission, the bloc's executive arm, will shape the EU's energy and climate action policies over the coming years, but it still needs approval from EU governments and the European Parliament over the coming year.
On greenhouse gas emissions, the commission called for a reduction of 40 percent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels instead of its existing binding target that calls for a 20 percent reduction by 2020. Overall though, Europe's financial crisis and protracted recession from which it is only slowly emerging has subdued its appetite for tough climate action.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso defended the package as the right balance between fighting climate change and making sure Europe won't fall behind economically. "Climate action is central for the future of our planet, while a truly European energy policy is key for our competitiveness," Barroso said.
Germany, Europe's biggest economy, has vowed to replace nuclear power with renewable energy sources by 2022. Berlin had urged the commission beforehand to stick to binding national targets for energy generated from water, biomass, solar and wind instead of watering it down by introducing a pan-European goal. Economy and Energy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said without the previous binding targets, Europe would never have made the progress it has. But many poorer EU nations had pushed the commission in the other direction as they face higher energy prices, just as those are falling in competing economies like the U.S.
"When gas prices in the European Union are three or four times as high as in the United States, then this is a competitive disadvantage we can't accept," Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said.
The commission's proposal also includes facilitating shale gas exploration, or fracking. The technology is still in infancy in Europe amid fears of the environmental and drinking water pollution it might cause.
Currently, the EU's greenhouse gas emissions are down by 18 percent compared to 1990, while the bloc's economic output grew by 45 percent in the same time.
Britain and Germany said the EU must be prepared to go even further than its 40 percent reduction target if a new international treaty can be struck next year to limit global warming.
Renewable energies currently contribute 12.7 percent to the bloc's final energy consumption — including electricity, heating and mobility — compared to about 9.5 percent in the U.S. The EU's current 2020 target for a share of 20 percent includes binding goals for each nation, varying in ambition according to where they stand.
Some countries, such as Germany and Spain, already get more than 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources, meaning the new Europe-wide target could make it easier for some countries to scale back renewable energy efforts and meet their greenhouse gas reduction commitments by increased use of nuclear power instead.
(Juergen Baetz, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
For several days, a majority of Charleston-area residents have been told their water is safe to drink, that the concentration of a chemical used to wash coal is so low that it won't be harmful. Restaurants have reopened — using tap water to wash dishes and produce, clean out their soda fountains and make ice.
But as long as people can still smell it, they're wary — and given the lack of knowledge about the chemical known as MCHM, some experts say their caution is justified.
"I would certainly be waiting until I couldn't smell it anymore, certainly to be drinking it," said Richard Denison, a scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund who has followed the spill closely. "I don't blame people at all for raising questions and wondering whether they can trust what's being told to them."
The Jan. 9 spill from a Freedom Industries facility on the banks of the Elk River, less than 2 miles upstream from Charleston’s water treatment plant, led to a ban on water use that affected 300,000 people.
Four days later, officials started to lift the ban in one area after another, saying tap water was safe for drinking because the concentration of the chemical dipped below one part per million, even though the smell was still strong at that level. Late Friday, nearly all of the 300,000 people affected were told the water was safe.
Late Wednesday, however, health officials issued different guidance for pregnant women, urging them not to drink tap water until the chemical is entirely undetectable. The Centers for Disease Control said it made that recommendation out of an abundance of caution because existing studies don't provide a complete picture of how the chemical affects humans.
For Sarah Bergstrom, a 29-year-old nurse who is four months pregnant with her second child, the news was devastating. She hasn't drunk the water since the spill, but she has taken showers.
"I cried myself to sleep (Wednesday) night. I was both angry and scared," she said. "This baby that we've wanted for so long, I'm now questioning — have I done something that could have harmed her?"
(Ben Nuckols, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
Federal authorities began investigating how the foaming agent escaped a chemical plant and seeped into the Elk River. The spill contaminated the water supply of nine counties and forced residents to use bottled water. Just how much of the chemical leaked into the river wasn't known.
Late Friday, state authorities ordered Freedom Enterprises Inc to remove the chemicals in 14 aboveground storage tanks near the Elk River within 24 hours.
The chemicals in three of those tanks, including one that was discovering leaking Thursday, have mostly been removed. Within a day, the company must submit a plan to clean up contaminated soil and groundwater.
Officials are working with the company to determine how much can be in the water without it posing harm to residents, said West Virginia American Water president JeffMcIntyre.
"We don't know that the water's not safe. But I can't say that it is safe," McIntyre said Friday. For now, there is no way to treat the tainted water aside from flushing the system until it's in low enough concentrations to be safe, a process that could take days.
Officials and experts said the chemical, even in its most concentrated form, isn't deadly. However, people across nine counties were told they shouldn't wash their clothes in water affected, as the compound can cause symptoms ranging from skin irritation and rashes to vomiting and diarrhea.
Six people have been brought into emergency rooms with symptoms that may stem from the chemical; none were in serious or critical condition, said State Department of Health & Human Resources Secretary Karen L. Bowling.
Freedom Industries discovered Thursday morning around 10:30 a.m. that the chemical was leaking from the bottom of a storage tank, said its president Gary Southern. The company worked all day and through the night to remove the chemical from the site and take it elsewhere, Southern said. Vacuum trucks were used to remove the chemical from the ground at the site.
Southern said he didn't think the chemical posed a public danger. He also said the company didn't know how much leaked.
State officials started investigating Thursday when people complained about an odor coming from near the company's river terminal. Inspectors found a leaking aboveground tank at the site just after 11 a.m. and realized no one was trying to contain the spill, according to officials at the state's Department of Environmental Protection.
(Jonathan Mattise, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top
Many across the nation's midsection went into virtual hibernation, while others dared to venture out in temperatures that plunged well below zero.
"I'm going to try to make it two blocks without turning into crying man," said Brooks Grace, who was bundling up to do some banking and shopping in downtown Minneapolis, where temperatures reached 23 below, with wind chills of minus 48. "It's not cold — it's painful."
The mercury also dropped into negative territory in Milwaukee, St. Louis and Chicago, which set a record for the date at minus 16. Wind chills across the region were 40 below and colder. Records also fell in Oklahoma, Texas and Indiana.
Forecasters said 187 million people could feel the effects of the "polar vortex" by the time it spread across the country through today.
Record lows were possible in the East and South, with highs in the single digits expected today in Georgia and Alabama. Subzero wind chills were forecast up and down the coast, including minus 10 in Atlanta and minus 12 in Baltimore.
From the Dakotas to Maryland, schools and day care centers shut down.
"You definitely know when you are not wearing your thermal undergarments," said Staci Kalthoff, who raises cattle with her husband on a 260-acre farm in Albany, Minn., where the temperature hovered around 24 below zero and winds made it feel like minus 46. "You have to dress really, really warm and come in more often and thaw out everything."
Even with this nostril-freezing cold, the family prefers winter over summer. "You can always put on more layers," she said. "When it gets hot, you can only take off so much."
For a big swath of the Midwest, the subzero cold moved in behind another winter wallop: more than a foot of snow and high winds that made traveling treacherous.
Several deaths were blamed on the snow, ice and cold since Saturday, including the death of a 1-year-old boy who was in a car that went out of control and collided with a snowplow Monday in Missouri.
It took authorities using 10-ton military vehicles known as "wreckers" until early Monday to clear all the chain-reaction accidents caused when several semis jackknifed along snowy interstates in southern Illinois. The crash stranded about 375 vehicles, but there were no fatalities or injuries, largely because motorists either stayed with their cars or were rescued and taken to nearby warming centers if they were low on gas or didn't have enough coats or blankets, said Jonathon Monken, director of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency. Others got stuck in the snowdrifts, including the Southern Illinois men's basketball team, which had to spend the night in a church.
In the eastern United States, temperatures in the 40s and 50s Monday helped melt piles of snow from a storm last week, raising the risk that roads would freeze over as the cold air moved in Monday night, said Bob Oravec from the Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Md. The snap was set to be dramatic; Springfield, Mass., enjoyed 56 degrees Monday morning but faced an overnight low of 6.
More than 3,700 flights were canceled by late Monday afternoon, following a weekend of travel disruption across the United States. Airline officials said de-icing fluid was freezing, fuel was pumping sluggishly, and ramp workers were having difficulty loading and unloading luggage. JetBlue Airways stopped all scheduled flights to and from New York and Boston on Monday. Southwest Airlines ground to a halt in Chicago earlier in the day, but by the evening, flights resumed in "a trickle," a spokesman said.
Authorities in Indiana and Kentucky — where temperatures dropped into the single digits and below, with wind chills in the minus 20s and worse — warned people not to leave their homes unless they needed to go someplace safer. Utility crews worked to restore power to more than 40,000 Indiana customers affected by the weekend storm and cautioned that some people could be in the cold and dark for days.
Ronald G. Smith Sr. took shelter at an Indianapolis Red Cross after waking up the previous night with the power out and his cat, Sweet Pea, agitated in the darkness.
"The screen door blew open and woke me up, and it was cold and dark. I got dressed and I was scared, thinking, 'What am I going to do? My cat knew something was wrong. He was jumping all over the place," Smith said. "This is brutal cold. The cold is what makes this so dangerous."
Even after Indianapolis lifted a travel ban, officials urged residents to stay home for their safety and that of police and other emergency workers.
"It's still slick out there," said Marc Lotter, a spokesman for the mayor. "It's just not safe for people to be out on the streets."
Officials in Chicago and other cities checked on the homeless and shut-ins for fear they might freeze to death on the street or in their homes.
Between a heater that barely works and his drafty windows, Jeffery Davis decided he would be better off sitting in a downtown Chicago doughnut shop for three hours Monday until it was time to go to work.
He threw on two pairs of pants, two T-shirts, "at least three jackets," two hats, a pair of gloves, the "thickest socks you'd probably ever find" and boots, and trudged to the train stop in his South Side neighborhood that took him to within a few blocks of the library where he works.
"I never remember it ever being this cold," said Davis, 51. "I'm flabbergasted."
Only a few hardy souls braved the cold on the Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis, normally a busy pedestrian area. Many people downtown used the extensive heated skyway system, where it is warm enough to walk around in office attire. Nearly all stores on the skyway were open.
Jersey Devil Pizza & Wings was not.
"Apologies ... We are East Coast wimps. Too cold! Stay safe, see you Tuesday," read a sign taped to the door.
(Steve Karnowski, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
top