The Wild West returns to Genoa on Feb. 1-3.

See the early days of Nevada through the eyes of Eilley Bowers – famous “Queen of the Comstock” and Julia Bulette – Virginia City’s most beloved “working girl”. With their dislike for one another, the comedy and the drama will unfold on the stage of Genoa’s Historic Town Hall.

In this original two act play by CobwebPalace Productions, Eilley Bowers is played by Lisa Bommarito. Julia Bulette is played by Kim Copél, who is a local historian. Both women are residents of Genoa and long-time locals.

Performances are scheduled for 7pm Feb. 1 and Feb. 2, and 2pm Feb. 3. Doors open one hour prior to each performance for no-host cocktails, a raffle and fortune telling.

Period attire is encouraged.

The general admission tickets are $12. Tickets can be purchased at the following Genoa businesses: Genoa Town Office, Genoa Trading Company and Sweet Repeats. Tickets may be purchased by contacting Lisa Bommarito at (775) 782.3893 or Kim Copél at (775) 220.0605. Part of the proceeds will benefit the town of Genoa.

A candlelight vigil to honor Alyssa Byrne will be Jan. 17 at 4:30pm.

The 19-year-old Petaluma woman died earlier this year after attending the SnowGlobe Music Festival.

People will be gathering at Lakeview Commons in South Lake Tahoe.

By USSA

COPPER MOUNTAIN, Colo. -– Under clear skies and chilly temperatures, Luke Mitrani (Mammoth Lakes) and Olympic champion Kelly Clark (West Dover, Vt.) led the United States on Jan. 12 by finishing second at the Sprint U.S. Grand Prix at Copper Mountain.

Australia’s Nathan Johnstone and Torah Bright took the wins.

It was the first domestic stop for athletes to gain Olympic qualifying points and 5Star World Snowboard event points.

Five American men finished in the top seven including Zach Black (Breckenridge, Colo.) in fifth, Greg Bretz (Mammoth Lakes) sixth, and Benji Farrow (Ludlow, Vt.) seventh.

Similarly, five U.S. women cracked the top seven including Arielle Gold (Steamboat Springs, Colo.) fourth, Kaitlyn Farrington (Bellevue, Idaho) fifth, Ellery Hollingsworth (Darien, Conn.) sixth and Elena Hight (South Lake Tahoe) seventh.

Truckee is considering an ordinance that would ban all plastic checkout bags and require businesses to impose a fee on recyclable paper checkout bags.

The ordinance’s main intention is to stimulate reusable bag use, and in effect, reduce Truckee’s waste through a dramatic decrease in the consumption of single-use checkout bags. All money collected by a business under this ordinance would be retained by the business and used to cover its implementation costs.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, less than 5 percent of single-use plastic bags are recycled.

Truckee officials say the ordinance has the potential to eliminate the waste generated by plastic bags, while also having a 50-80 percent reduction in the amount of single-use paper shopping bags that are used and thrown away.

Staff is soliciting feedback from the community via this online survey, and from businesses via this survey link.

For more information, contact Nichole Dorr at ndorr@townoftruckee.com or (530) 582.2909.

Cold doesn’t even begin to describe the weather in Tahoe.

Bone chilling, icy, record breaking — that’s the kind of cold South Lake Tahoe residents are experiencing today. The 1993 record of minus 7 degrees for Jan. 12 was broken. The new record for Jan. 12 is minus 12 degrees.

Truckee nearly set a record with its minus 14. The record of minus 15 was set in 1963.

The National Weather Service says to expect another record in South Lake Tahoe on Jan. 13. The 2007 record of minus 7 could be eclipsed because the forecast is for a minus 10 in the early hours of Sunday.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

That’s ice floating on Lake Tahoe on Jan. 12 near Regan Beach in South Lake Tahoe. Photo/Kathryn Reed

By USSA

ST. ANTON, Austria — Alice McKennis (Glenwood Springs, Colo.) came out of the No. 4 start position Jan. 12 to pick up a career first Audi FIS Alpine World Cup win in a challenging downhill in St. Anton.

McKennis led three Americans into the top six – five in the first 15 – on a dominating day for the U.S. Ski Team, becoming the ninth American to find the podium this season and the fifth winner. McKennis moved into fourth in the downhill standings, with three Americans in the top four.

Laurenne Ross (Bend, Ore.) had a career best downhill fifth and Lindsey Vonn (Vail) returning to action in sixth.

Leanne Smith (North Conway, N.H.) and Julia Mancuso (Squaw Valley) tied for 15th. Stacey Cook (Mammoth Mountain) was 22nd.

By Huffington Post

A college degree’s impact on earning potential is well known, but new data questions whether an associate’s degree can beat out a bachelor’s.

Mark Schneider, president of CollegeMeasures.org and a vice president at the American Institutes for Research, told NBC many associate’s degrees “are worth a lot more than I expected and that I think other people expected.”

A recent CollegeMeasures.org report that analyzed wage statistics in Virginia found that of the most popular courses of study, recipients of four-year nursing degrees earned the most during their first year out of college with a wage of $48,959. Those with two-year nursing degrees averaged only slightly less at $45,342. This greatly outperforms some four-year programs, and other data says this phenomenon exists in other majors too. Political science and history majors’ earned average was $31,184 and $30,230, respectively, in their first year out of college.

Additionally, students who receive an occupational and technical associate’s degree could earn $10,000 per year more than those with a non-occupational associate’s degree, CollegeMeasures.org found.

There’s more data to suggest that completing community college can sometimes earn students a ticket to the upper-middle class. NerdWallet’s look at jobs that require an associate’s degree showed the median 2010 pay for Air Traffic Controllers was $108,040. Construction managers brought in $83,860 and radiation therapists received $74,980.

To be sure, bachelor degree programs outperform associate’s degrees in most industries. For example, engineering majors can look forward to a median starting salary above $60,000, according to PayScale.com. But Schneider told NBC this pattern of finding workers with two-year technical degrees outearning many four-year grads has been consistent across the states it has studied so far.

“In the U.S., we’ve tended to think that the bachelor’s degree is the only thing that matters,” Schneider said, “and this data tells us that technical degrees from community colleges are hidden gems.”

By Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times

California plant life is unusually rich and diverse. The state has more than 5,500 native plant species, more than any other state. Roughly 40 percent of them are found nowhere else.

A new study offers an explanation for that incredible variety: The state’s climate, latitude and complex topography created plant refuges that reduced extinction rates. Species that may not have survived elsewhere because of climate shifts during the past 45 million years could persist here in ecological niches.

The state’s mountain ranges played a vital role in that preservation, capturing ocean moisture and allowing plants to move up or down slope to stay in appropriate conditions.

The study, published in the journal Evolution, was conducted by Lesley Lancaster as part of a postdoctoral fellowship at UC Santa Barbara and Kathleen Kay, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz.

Their findings depart somewhat from those of a landmark 1978 study that attributed much of the state’s floristic diversity to elevated rates of species formation after the onset of a Mediterranean climate several million years ago.

Using fossil records and DNA sequences to reconstruct plant lineages, Lancaster and Kay estimated historical rates of species development, extinction and migration and concluded that species formation was not greater in California. “We have pretty good evidence that there was no increase in speciation with a Mediterranean climate,” Kay said. “The most important factor is the refuge from extinction.”

She added that the findings underscore the “importance of protecting areas in California so that it can continue to be a refuge for biodiversity in the future.”

Bundle up with lots of layers, including wearing your insulated jacket and gloves.

Here is the Jan. 12 ski report.

— Curtis Fong

With the onset of really cold weather, frozen water pipes are inevitable. Unfortunately, along with this problem, the fire department responds to an increase of structure fires caused by residents trying to quick-fix the problem themselves.

Instead of using space heaters, torches, or other hot flame devices to thaw pipes, call a professional plumber to get the water flowing again. In the long run, it’s much cheaper and effective than burning the house down around those frozen pipes.

This has been another fire safety tip from your South Lake Tahoe Fire Department.

— Sallie Ross-Filgo, South Lake Tahoe Fire Department