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On Thursday the National Weather Service in Sacramento issued a winter storm watch for areas including Lake County that warned of the possibility of snow in higher elevations, and also put out a freeze warning for Lake County that is set to end Friday morning.
The agency’s Eureka office also released a winter storm watch covering the North Coast, warning of snowfall in Trinity, Del Norte, Humboldt and Mendocino counties.
Snow is forecast to fall in those areas as low as 2,000 feet as the result of scattered snow showers that officials predict will take place Saturday night and Sunday.
North Coast residents are told to expect between 6 and 8 inches of snow about 3,500 feet late Friday night through Saturday morning, with an additional 2 to 4 inches down to 2,500 feet Saturday afternoon and into Sunday morning.
The National Weather Service also reported that a record cold air mass was entrenched over the San Francisco Bay Area and Central Coast region, with sub-freezing temperatures expected overnight Friday.
Officials urge anyone traveling to slow down, allow extra time due to potential storm-caused hazards and be prepared for changing conditions.
When traveling through mountainous terrain, motorists should watch for falling rocks and rockslides due to the saturated ground, officials suggested.
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Toni Funderburg is leading the local Wreaths Across America event. The wreath laying ceremony will take place at 8:45 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 11, at Hartley Cemetery in Lakeport.
Cities nationwide are participating to collect wreaths for their own national cemeteries to place on the gravesites.
Funderburg said the goal for Troop 42 was to place at least 200 wreaths at the gravesites of veterans at Hartley Cemetery.
“We want and need to recognize them for their service to our country,” said Funderburg.
As of Wednesday, Funderburg said they were short 90 wreaths.
She said Troop 42 is grateful to those who have sponsored a $15 wreath, but they need more help to reach their goal, she said.
“We will take anything that anybody has to offer because it will all add up,” she said.
The deadline to buy a wreath is Saturday, Nov. 27, at Lakeport Tire & Auto Service, 1901 S. Main St.
People can also go to www.wreathsacrossamerica.org to make a donation or purchase a wreath. Funderburg said donors can easily designate Hartley Cemetery as the recipient of the pledges.
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The event will be held from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 27, in downtown Lakeport.
Visitors to downtown Lakeport will find themselves taken back in time, with the town turned into an old English village for a day, complete with costumed characters and carolers.
Downtown businesses will be open, and Third and Main streets will be lined with a variety of vendors.
Other highlights of the day will be musical entertainers, and free wagon rides through town courtesy of Eleven Roses, and Santa’s Workshop, featuring Santa Claus in Museum Park and activities and snacks for children. Santa’s Workshop hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The Christmas Lighted Parade begins at 6 p.m. The Annual Hospice Tree Lighting will take place at Museum Park following the parade.
For more information, contact the Lake County Chamber of Commerce at 707-263-5092 or visit www.lakecochamber.com .
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LAKEPORT, Calif. -- A driver escaped injury on Wednesday when his vehicle went off the highway and flipped over.
The single-vehicle crash occurred shortly after 4 p.m. on Highway 29 outside of Lakeport.
Officer Efrain Cortez of the California Highway Patrol said the male driver was heading southbound in the righthand lane in his Toyota Camry when he drifted off the highway.
The vehicle went onto the shoulder, which was muddy from the recent storms. Cortez said the mud grabbed the wheels and when the man tried to steer back onto the highway he overcorrected.
The Camry flipped over and went through a fence, landing on its top in the northbound lane of Mountain View Road.
Also responding to the scene was Lakeport Fire Protection District, which brought an ambulance. However, Cortez said the driver was uninjured.
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Judge Stephen Hedstrom gave the sentence to Patrick McDaniel Sr., 46, in connection with the 2008 shooting of Patrick O’Connor Sr., also of Clearlake Oaks.
McDaniel is alleged to have pistol-whipped and then shot O’Connor in the chest the day before Thanksgiving on Nov. 26, 2008, outside the home of O’Connor’s next-door neighbor on Second Street. O’Connor survived the attack.
Defense attorney William Conwell represented McDaniel at trial, and defense attorneys Komnith Moth and Thomas Quinn represented McDaniel Sr. at sentencing.
Deputy District Attorney Sharon Lerman-Hubert prosecuted the case on behalf of the Lake County District Attorney’s Office.
In October 2009, a jury found McDaniel guilty of attempted voluntary manslaughter and assault with a firearm. McDaniel also was found guilty of possession of a firearm by a felon, possession of ammunition by a felon and carrying a loaded firearm.
In addition, the jury found true special allegations that McDaniel personally used a firearm in the commission of the crime, intentionally discharged a firearm and caused great bodily injury to the victim.
After the shooting, McDaniel fled to Las Vegas, Nev., where he was captured by U.S. Marshals the following month, officials reported. During that time he failed to appear for sentencing on a felony drug possession case. As a result he was additionally charged with felony failure to appear.
McDaniel was sentenced in all three cases on Wednesday, the District Attorney's Office reported.
At sentencing, prosecutor Lerman-Hubert argued that McDaniel should receive the upper term, a total of 20 years in prison, due to the callous nature of the crime, his flight to another state and a lengthy criminal history dating back to1983.
Judge Hedstrom sentenced McDaniel to the upper term, citing the seriousness of the crime and McDaniel's lengthy record, which included felony convictions and violent conduct.
McDaniel will be eligible for parole in 2025.
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The next time you thrill at the sight of a comet blazing across the night sky, consider this: It's a stolen pleasure. You're enjoying the spectacle at the expense of a distant star.
Sophisticated computer simulations run by researchers at the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) have exposed the crime.
“If the results are right, our Sun snatched comets from neighboring stars' back yards,” said SWRI scientist Hal Levison. And he believes this kind of thievery accounts for most of the comets in the Oort Cloud at the edge of our solar system.
“We know that stars form in clusters,” Levison said. “The Sun was born within a huge community of other stars that formed in the same gas cloud. In that birth cluster, the stars were close enough together to pull comets away from each other via gravity. It's like neighborhood children playing in each others' back yards. It's hard to imagine it not happening.”
According to this “thief” model, comets accompanied the nearest star when the birth cluster blew apart.
The Sun made off with quite a treasure – the Oort Cloud, which was swarming with comets from all over the “neighborhood.”
The Oort cloud is an immense cloud of comets orbiting the Sun far beyond Pluto. It is named after mid-20th century Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, who first proposed such a cloud to explain the origin of comets sometimes seen falling into the inner solar system.
Although no confirmed direct observations of the Oort cloud have been made, most astronomers believe that it is the source of all long-period and Halley-type comets.
The standard model of comet production asserts that our Sun came by these comets honestly.
“That model says the comets are dregs of our own solar system's planetary formation and that our planets gravitationally booted them to huge distances, populating the cloud,” said Levison. “But we believe this kind of scenario happened in all the solar systems before the birth cluster dispersed.”
Otherwise, said Levison, the numbers just don't add up.
“The standard model can't produce anywhere near the number of comets we see [falling in from the Oort Cloud]. The Sun's sibling stars had to have contributed some comets to the mix,” Levison said.
Comets in the Oort Cloud are typically one or two miles across, and they're so far away that estimating their numbers is no easy task. But Levison and his team said that, based on observations, that there should be something like 400 billion comets there. The “domestic” model of comet formation can account for a population of only about 6 billion.
“That's a pretty anemic Oort Cloud, and a huge discrepancy – too huge to be explained by mistakes in the estimates. There's no way we could be that far off, so there has to be something wrong with the model itself,” Levison said.
He pointed to the cometary orbits as evidence.
“These comets are in very odd orbits – highly eccentric long-period orbits that take them far from our Sun, into remote regions of space,” he said. “So they couldn't have been born in orbit around the Sun. They had to have formed close to other stars and then been hijacked here.”
This means comets can tell us not only about the early history of the Sun – but also about the history of other stars.
“We can study the orbits of comets and put their chemistry into the context of where and around which star they formed,” Levison said. “It's intriguing to think we got some of our 'stuff' from distant stars. We're kin.”
Dauna Coulter works for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
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