Don’t forget to set your clocks back an hour tonight before you go to bed.
At 2am Nov. 1 it’s time to return to standard time.
The whole reason for this, according to the federal government, is energy and fuel savings.
By David Siders, Sacramento Bee
Lamenting “the worst epidemic of tree mortality” in the state’s modern history, Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday sought federal aid to remove dead trees from California forests and called for more controlled burns to reduce the risk of wildfire.
The declaration, including a controversial exemption from environmental reviews, comes amid California’s ongoing drought and a bark beetle infestation that has killed millions of trees weakened by lack of water.
Brown said the die-off exacerbates the risk of wildfires and the threat of erosion. He ordered state agencies to remove dead or dying trees from high-hazard areas and said his administration will work with federal authorities to expand controlled burns.
Each year the two South Shore Soroptimist clubs collaborate to honor two local women in the community.
Eligible applicants must be women who provide the primary financial support for their families and
are enrolled in or have been accepted to a vocational/skills training program or an undergraduate
degree program. Each recipient will receive $2,000, and is then eligible for up to $10,000 at the national level.
The award honors women who have faced a challenge such as poverty, domestic or sexual violence, divorce, the death of a spouse, or other life challenges, yet had the courage and fortitude to turn their lives around.
Information and application forms are available here and here.
The deadline to apply is Dec. 1.
The Washoe County Sheriff’s Office and the Second Judicial District Court have been receiving numerous calls about an ongoing phone scam in which the scammers identify themselves as District Court or sheriff’s personnel.
The scammers then claim the potential victims owe a substantial fine for failing to report for jury service.
The Second Judicial District Court does not impose monetary sanctions for missed jury service over the phone. Additionally, the Second Judicial District Court does not accept payments over the phone.
Anyone who has been a victim of this scam, or who receives such a call, is encouraged to take down as much information as possible, such as a name and call back number, without giving any information to the scammer. Then contact the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office at 775.785.9276.
Whittell High School’s football team will enter postseason play with an undefeated regular season record.
The Warriors for the first time in the school’s history won all of its games, compiling a 9-0 record in Division IV West League. The league champs are hoping to vie for the state title.
Next up is Carlin on Nov. 6 at 6pm at home. Carlin High School comes to Zephyr Cove having lost only one game.
— Lake Tahoe News staff report
By Kathryn Reed
INCLINE VILLAGE – El Nino is already here. Now it’s a matter of waiting to see what the ramifications of it will be to the greater Lake Tahoe area.
This particular El Nino is on target to be comparable to 1982-83 and 1997-98 – the biggest ones in the last 100 years.
This was some of the information Kelly Redmond, regional climatologist for the Western United States with the Desert Research Institute, shared with more than 150 people during a lecture at the Tahoe Environmental Research Center in Incline Village on Oct. 29.
El Nino is the warming of the ocean waters. Everything else is a consequence of an El Nino. They tend to peak in the winter.
During El Ninos the jet stream drops south because the atmosphere reacts to the warming ocean. More moisture goes to Southern California, often leaving the Northwest dry. The Lake Tahoe-Reno area is often bypassed in normal El Nino years.
One thing that is different in the ocean now compared to the previous two large El Ninos are the two blobs sitting off the west coast of North America. Redmond said in his career he has not seen anything like this before. How they might affect El Nino is unknown.
El Nino is not a sure bet to create a banner snow year. Photo/LTN file
“There is little to suggest that a big El Nino causes more snow,” Redmond said. “We tend to get more extreme events.”
While moisture of any kind is welcome after four years of drought, if it comes in the form of rain, that could impact the local economy and water storage down stream. Tahoe is missing about a year’s worth of precipitation. That means it would take the equivalent of two year’s of wet stuff to make things normal.
Normal is a relative word for these parts. Redmond said this area has the most variable precipitation in the United States.
“It goes up and down tremendously,” he said while a chart depicting that fact was shown on the screen. “This is why you need reservoirs to balance things out.”
The models are also indicating this will be a warm winter, though not as warm as last year. This in turn will mean the snow line will be higher. More rain than snow is likely to be the end result.
“How the precipitation falls makes quite a bit of difference. Snow is free storage,” Redmond said. “There are 2½ to three Shasta dams worth of water just sitting there. It wasn’t there this year.”
Snow needs freezing overnight temperatures to keep its consistency. It needs a break from the melting sun. But that hasn’t been happening of late. The trend is that the overnight temps are steadily increasing. This is especially true in the spring.
Data from 1948-2015 for the months of October to March show the average freezing level in the basin being 8,700. Last winter it was 2,000 feet higher than that.
By Tracy Rucinski and Tom Hals, Reuters
Junior creditors of Caesars Entertainment launched a fresh attack against a top U.S. restructuring attorney, alleging that James Sprayregen of Kirkland & Ellis misled a judge and asking that the law firm be disqualified from parts of the casino group’s bankruptcy case.
Jones Day, the junior bondholders’ law firm, asked the court to reconsider a May order that allowed the bankrupt unit of Caesars Entertainment Corp to hire Kirkland, led by Sprayregen.
The dispute between two of the best-known law firms in corporate restructuring adds another layer of feuding to Caesars’ $18 billion bankruptcy, which involves the biggest U.S. private equity and hedge fund firms.
By Michel Martin, NPR
Have we finally turned a corner?
Has it finally happened that when a man says he is making job decisions around his family we can finally believe him, as opposed to wondering when the email exchanges with his outside honey are going to come out?
This past week, two of this country’s most powerful men — who work in a city where power is everything and work is king — both made career decisions with personal and family needs at the center.
In case you missed it, Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, laid down some conditions for seeking the position of House Speaker — and one of them was that his caucus accept that he would be spending less time on the road, because he needs to spend time with his three young children.
Then, Vice President Joe Biden announced last week that he will forgo a third try at the presidency, in part because he and his family had needed time to recover from the death of his son, Beau.
By Kurtis Alexander, San Francisco Chronicle
Californians slashed their water use 26 percent in September, meeting Gov. Jerry Brown’s goal of a 25 percent reduction for the fourth straight month even as the specter of complacency rises with forecasts of drenching El Niño rains, according to state data released Friday.
But state water officials, rather than relishing in modest progress, toughened their stand against those getting in the way of even greater savings.
The State Water Resources Control Board announced for the first time that it was slapping fines on four urban water suppliers that haven’t conserved as much as they should. The Southern California cities of Beverly Hills, Indio and Redlands, as well as the Coachella Valley Water District, face penalties of $61,000 apiece, officials said.
A 23-year-old ex-felon was arrested Thursday in connection to a shooting incident in South Lake Tahoe the night before.
Jahem Barton, 23, of South Lake Tahoe was arrested Oct. 29 on charges of an ex-felon in possession of firearm ammunition and resisting arrest.
On Oct. 28 several rounds were fired into a vehicle parked in front of a residence in the 800 block of Emerald Bay Road. There are no reports of any injuries.
Barton was tracked down the night of Oct. 29 near Grocery Outlet on Highway 50. The road was closed as officers apprehended the suspect.
The investigation is ongoing.
— Lake Tahoe News staff report