LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said it will use aircraft to determine the cause of a power outage impacting parts of southern Lake County that began on Saturday evening and which the company said could leave a large number of residents without power until late Sunday night.

The situation is particularly concerning as an excessive heat warning for Lake County is set to continue through early Monday morning, with daytime highs on Sunday expected to once again surpass the century mark.

PG&E reported that the power outage affecting 816 customer accounts in and around Hidden Valley Lake and the area of Spruce Grove Road began at 5:30 p.m. Saturday.

In posts on social media, community members reported the outage, which left them without a way to cool off their homes. One resident reported it was about 106 degrees when the power went out.

Other posts asked people to check on their elderly neighbors.

A PG&E representative told Lake County News late Saturday night that due to terrain, crews could not walk the area to investigate what had caused the outage.

PG&E plans to bring in a helicopter on Sunday morning in order to find the issue and restore power to the impacted customers.

The company’s website said power was not expected to be restored until 11:30 p.m. Sunday.

The PG&E representative could not say if the outage would in fact last that long and said the company had not notified the county of Lake about the situation.

She then referred Lake County News to the county website where facilities where community members can get out of the heat are listed.

However, a check of that list — which Lake County News had published earlier in the week — showed none of those facilities will be open on Sunday.

Late Saturday night, Lake County News reached out to Board of Supervisors Chair Bruno Sabatier, who confirmed PG&E had not notified county leadership about the outage or its potential to continue another 24 hours.

He said he contacted Supervisor Moke Simon and County Administrative Officer Carol Huchingson about possibly needing to open up a cooling center if the outage isn’t resolved earlier than Sunday night.

Additional information about the outage and possible assistance for south county residents will be published as it becomes available.

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

Editor’s note: This week we’re pleased to debut a new informational column on the health of Clear Lake. The new “Lady of the Lake” column is written by Angela De Palma-Dow, a scientist, certified limnologist and staffer at Lake County Water Resources (It should be noted, she’s writing these columns on her own time, not county time, and the views expressed are her own). Her goal is to answer questions from community members about Clear Lake. Email her at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Dear Lady of the Lake,

We have a family property on the lake in Soda Bay and the water in the lake there is really gross, it’s weedy, it smells, and I have heard that the algae growing on the top is toxic? We have children and dogs. What is going on and what do we do?

— Concerned in Soda Bay

Dear Concerned,

Thank you for asking this question, I am glad you are paying attention to the lake and you are noticing that the conditions have changed.

What you are seeing happens in the hot, summer months and sometimes into fall in many places around Clear Lake. There are three things you are seeing in the water that can contribute to the picture you described.

One: aquatic plants (or macrophytes) grow in the water, some are rooted in the lake sediments at the bottom and some are not rooted, and are free-floating.

Two: Green algae are microscopic plants (sometimes called phytoplankton) that are the primary fish food in the lake. Clear Lake is very green — that is from the green algae and that is why we have a world class fishery and people come from all over to catch record-sized fish in the lake.

Three: Cyanobacteria, sometimes called blue-green algae, but it’s not really an algae, is a bacteria that lives in the water and sometimes can look and act just like green algae.

Cyanobacteria is NOT a preferred food source for fish. Sometimes when cyanobacteria populations grow in great numbers (called blooms) they can produce toxins that can cause public health hazards, traditionally referred to as harmful algal blooms, or HABs.

All three of these things you might be seeing need three main things to live and reproduce. They need light, warm temperatures and food — from nutrients in the water.

During the summer the days are longer, so there is plenty of light throughout any given day. Macrophytes, algae and cyanobacteria all conduct photosynthesis, meaning they turn sunlight energy and carbon in the air into both oxygen and food energy or starch to grow.

Also during the summer, the air and water temperatures can be very, very warm (right now as I write this, the evening temperature is 97 degrees Fahrenheit — so pretty warm).

Lastly, all plants need some type of nutrition or food to fuel basic metabolic processes like growing and reproducing.

For macrophytes, algae and cyanobacteria, the three main nutrients they rely on for growth are carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus. Carbon and nitrogen are very abundant in the atmosphere and water, carbon in the form of CO2 and nitrogen in the form of N2 (gas) and any animal or plant waste or breakdown product in the water.

Phosphorus is least common, therefore phosphorus is the main driver of growth, because it’s normally least available, so it’s what limits growth of macrophytes, algae and cyanobacteria.

Now, in your bay, you are seeing what we call “the perfect storm.” There is abundant light, warm temperature and plentiful food nutrients.

During the summer phosphorus is most abundant in the water column compared with the rest of the year.

Normally phosphorus is bound in the sediments at the bottom of the lake, but during the spring and summer months, the lake is really active. Animals dig in the sediment bottom, winds mix up the sediments into the water column, and people even boat around and stir up sediments and shorelines through wave action.

Also, rooted macrophytes will absorb phosphorus from the sediment into their tissues through their roots and stems.

All this activity has effectively moved phosphorus into the water column where it is eaten by green algae and cyanobacteria.

As the temperatures get warmer and the days longer, more and more growth of macrophytes, green algae and cyanobacteria occurs and as the algae and cyanobacteria in the water column die, there are new cells waiting to eat the nutrients they released before it settles back into the sediment.

You are seeing this feedback loop of very productive growth happening in your bay. The conditions of this “perfect storm” are just right to promote growth of all three of these things, and will probably continue until something happens to break the cycle, like we get a really strong cold wind that prevents the growth of the algae and cyanobacteria (but can also stir up new nutrients from the bottom) or we get cold air and water temperatures or we received a large amount of rain to dilute the water.

If you are thinking that this list of things are unlikely in the summer in Lake County, you are probably right, especially as we head into another heat wave and continue this drought.

The smell you are noticing is from the dying of the macrophytes at the surface of the water where it’s really hot, and the matting and dying of the cyanobacteria.

Once the plants and cyanobacteria cells die, they eventually do get reabsorbed and recycled into the rest of the lake — but a majority of their mass goes to feed the next generation of cyanobacteria and green algae, and the cycle repeats itself. All summer long.

What can you do? Unfortunately, not much. I know you don’t want to hear that, but there really isn’t anything anyone can do to stop the process or stop the growth of algae or cyanobacteria.

This process is literally mother nature perfection — these organisms have been on the earth for millions of years, and in Clear Lake for hundreds of thousands.

People cannot control the light or water temperature, and while local and state agencies are working to remediate or reduce the amount of phosphorus and nitrogen in the lake, this process takes years and years and is very expensive.

There is nothing currently “chemically” approved that can be put in the lake that would safely “fix” the problem, no matter what Youtube claims.

There are short-term band-aid solutions, like watering down the algae mats, or breaking them up with a jet-ski or airboat, but those are all labor intensive and take gasoline energy and only provide a short-lived solution that might last a day. These types of activities also break up algae and cyanobacteria cells, releasing nutrients and feeding surrounding cells.

If there was a magic, effective solution, it would have already been in place and it would be used in lakes all over the country that suffer from this same situation like along Lake Erie and multiple lakes in Florida.

Stay safe! Even with all this, you and your family can stay safe. Make sure to monitor conditions of the lake, and any water body, before you go into the water. If the water looks like pea soup, is bright green, slimy or like paint, then stay out of the water.

Streams can also have cyanobacteria, but it can be growing in clumps or strands along the bottom, or benthic, portion of the stream.

For Clear Lake there is a comprehensive cyanobacteria monitoring program managed by Big Valley EPA and other tribal partners.

They have a website where they post their monitoring results on a map every two weeks — https://www.bvrancheria.com/clearlakecyanotoxins — and they post results on their Facebook page called “Clear Lake Water Quality.”

Red pins mean DANGER levels have been found and it’s recommended to not go into the water in that area. Orange pins mean WARNING, and yellow mean CAUTION. Green pins mean no cyanobacteria toxins have been detected in the sampled water from that area.

However, conditions can change daily in the summer, so use your judgement to keep you and your family safe.

Also know that public health trigger levels (caution, warning, danger) are based on adult human bodies and not children or pets, so even if there is a caution level (yellow pin) in an area where you wanted to go swimming, children and pets could be more sensitive and you should really think about looking for another location to enjoy the lake.

For pets especially, because they will unknowingly drink water while swimming and lick their fur when they get out of the water, be extra cautious and remember, when in doubt, just keep them out!

In case pets do go into the water, you should rinse or wash them down with clean, non-lake water as soon as possible.

It’s going to be a long, hot and sunny summer, it’s up to each of us to stay safe and recreate responsibly.

— Sincerely, the Lady of the Lake

Additional resources to help you learn about cyanobacteria, as well as green algae and macrophytes

County of Lake: http://www.lakecountyca.gov/Government/Directory/WaterResources/ClearLake/Cyanobacteria.htm
State HABs informational portal webpage: https://mywaterquality.ca.gov/habs/

Upcoming public learning opportunities about cyanobacteria include the Lake Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, July 20, the Clearlake City Council meeting on Thursday, July 15 and the Lakeport City Council meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 3 (board and council meeting agenda items are subject to change, check relevant city and county websites for the most current information).

Angela De Palma-Dow is a limnologist (limnology = study of fresh inland waters) who lives and works in Lake County. She has a Masters of Science from Michigan State University. She is a Certified Lake Manager from the North American Lake Management Society, or NALMS, and she is the current president/chair of the California chapter of the Society for Freshwater Science. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Lake County Animal Care and Control has many dogs of various breeds waiting for new homes this week.

Dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of boxer, Chihuahua, husky, pit bull, Rhodesian Ridgeback, Rottweiler and shepherd.

Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.

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

Call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278 or visit the shelter online at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control.htm for information on visiting or adopting.

‘Dash’

“Dash” is a 2-year-old female Rhodesian Ridgeback mix with a short tan coat.

She is in kennel No. 15, ID No. LCAC-A-1183.

Male pit bull

This young male American pit bull has a short brown coat.

He is in kennel No. 18, ID No. LCAC-A-1028.

‘Hype’

“Hype” is a 5-year-old female boxer mix with a short red and white coat.

She is in kennel No. 20, ID No. LCAC-A-974.

‘Jim’

“Jim” is a 2-year-old pit bull terrier mix with a short black and white coat.

He is in kennel No. 23, ID No. LCAC-A-810.

‘Luna’

“Luna” is a 3-year-old female pit bull terrier mix with a short red coat.

She is in kennel No. 25, ID No. LCAC-A-1078.

‘Tinker’

“Tinker” is a 4-year-old Chihuahua with a short tan coat.

She is in kennel No. 26a, ID No. 1074.

Rottweiler-pit bull mix

This 1-year-old female Rottweiler-pit bull mix has a short black coat.

She has been spayed.

She is in kennel No. 27, ID No. LCAC-A-731.

‘Brutus’

“Brutus” is a 5-year-old male pit bull terrier with a short gray and white coat.

He is in kennel No. 28, ID No. LCAC-A-670.

Female pit bull terrier

This 4-year-old female pit bull terrier mix has a short white coat.

She is in kennel No. 29, ID No. LCAC-A-812.

‘Apollo’

“Apollo” is a 2-year-old male husky mix with a medium-length red and white coat and blue eyes.

He is in kennel No. 31, ID No. LCAC-A-783.

Male husky

This 2-year-old male husky has a medium-length red and white coat.

He is in kennel No. 32, ID No. LCAC-A-1024.

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

 

Plastic is the most common type of debris floating in the world’s oceans. Waves and sunlight break much of it down into smaller particles called microplastics – fragments less than 5 millimeters across, roughly the size of a sesame seed.

To understand how microplastic pollution is affecting the ocean, scientists need to know how much is there and where it is accumulating. Most data on microplastic concentrations comes from commercial and research ships that tow plankton nets – long, cone-shaped nets with very fine mesh designed for collecting marine microorganisms.

But net trawling can sample only small areas and may be underestimating true plastic concentrations. Except in the North Atlantic and North Pacific gyres – large zones where ocean currents rotate, collecting floating debris – scientists have done very little sampling for microplastics. And there is scant information about how these particles’ concentrations vary over time.

To address these questions, University of Michigan research assistant Madeline Evans and I developed a new way to detect microplastic concentrations from space using NASA’s Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System. CYGNSS is a network of eight microsatellites that was launched in 2016 to help scientists predict hurricanes by analyzing tropical wind speeds. They measure how wind roughens the ocean’s surface – an indicator that we realized could also be used to detect and track large quantities of microplastics.

Looking for smooth zones

Annual global production of plastic has increased every year since the 1950s, reaching 359 million metric tons in 2018. Much of it ends up in open, uncontrolled landfills, where it can wash into river drainage zones and ultimately into the world’s oceans.

Researchers first documented plastic debris in the oceans in the 1970s. Today, it accounts for an estimated 80% to 85% of marine litter.

The radars on CYGNSS satellites are designed to measure winds over the ocean indirectly by measuring how they roughen the water’s surface. We knew that when there is a lot of material floating in the water, winds don’t roughen it as much. So we tried computing how much smoother measurements indicated the surface was than it should have been if winds of the same speed were blowing across clear water.

This anomaly – the “missing roughness” – turns out to be highly correlated with the concentration of microplastics near the ocean surface. Put another way, areas where surface waters appear to be unusually smooth frequently contain high concentrations of microplastics. The smoothness could be caused by the microplastics themselves, or possibly by something else that’s associated with them.

By combining all the measurements made by CYGNSS satellites as they orbit around the world, we can create global time-lapse images of ocean microplastic concentrations. Our images readily identify the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and secondary regions of high microplastic concentration in the North Atlantic and the southern oceans.

Tracking microplastic flows over time

Since CYGNSS tracks wind speeds constantly, it lets us see how microplastic concentrations change over time. By animating a year’s worth of images, we revealed seasonal variations that were not previously known.

We found that global microplastic concentrations tend to peak in the North Atlantic and Pacific during the Northern Hemisphere’s summer months. June and July, for example, are the peak months for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Concentrations in the Southern Hemisphere peak during its summer months of January and February. Lower concentrations during the winter in both hemispheres are likely due to a combination of stronger currents that break up microplastic plumes and increased vertical mixing – the exchange between surface and deeper water – that transports some of the microplastic down below the surface.

This approach can also target smaller regions over shorter periods of time. For example, we examined episodic outflow events from the mouths of the China’s Yangtze and Qiantang rivers where they empty into the East China Sea. These events may have been associated with increases in industrial production activity, or with increases in the rate at which managers allowed the rivers to flow through dams.

Better targeting for cleanups

Our research has several potential uses. Private organizations, such as The Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit in The Netherlands, and Clewat, a Finnish company specializing in clean technology, use specially outfitted ships to collect, recycle and dispose of marine litter and debris. We have begun conversations with both groups and hope eventually to help them deploy their fleets more effectively.

Our spaceborne imagery may also be used to validate and improve numerical prediction models that attempt to track how microplastics move through the oceans using ocean circulation patterns. Scholars are developing several such models.

While the ocean roughness anomalies that we observed correlate strongly with microplastic concentrations, our estimates of concentration are based on the correlations that we observed, not on a known physical relationship between floating microplastics and ocean roughness. It could be that the roughness anomalies are caused by something else that is also correlated with the presence of microplastics.

One possibility is surfactants on the ocean surface. These liquid chemical compounds, which are widely used in detergents and other products, move through the oceans in ways similar to microplastics, and they also have a damping effect on wind-driven ocean roughening.

Further study is needed to identify how the smooth areas that we identified occur, and if they are caused indirectly by surfactants, to better understand exactly how their transport mechanisms are related to those of microplastics. But I hope this research can be part of a fundamental change in tracking and managing microplastic pollution.

[The Conversation’s science, health and technology editors pick their favorite stories. Weekly on Wednesdays.]

Christopher Ruf, Professor of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, University of Michigan

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Today, Mars is a planet of extremes — it's bitterly cold, has high radiation, and is bone-dry.

But billions of years ago, Mars was home to lake systems that could have sustained microbial life. As the planet's climate changed, one such lake — in Mars' Gale Crater — slowly dried out.

Scientists have new evidence that super salty water, or brines, seeped deep through the cracks, between grains of soil in the parched lake bottom and altered the clay mineral-rich layers beneath.

The findings published in the July 9 edition of the journal Science and led by the team in charge of the Chemistry and Mineralogy, or CheMin, instrument — aboard NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover — help add to the understanding of where the rock record preserved or destroyed evidence of Mars' past and possible signs of ancient life.

"We used to think that once these layers of clay minerals formed at the bottom of the lake in Gale Crater, they stayed that way, preserving the moment in time they formed for billions of years," said Tom Bristow, CheMin principal investigator and lead author of the paper at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. "But later brines broke down these clay minerals in some places – essentially re-setting the rock record."

Mars: It goes on your permanent record

Mars has a treasure trove of incredibly ancient rocks and minerals compared with Earth. And with Gale Crater's undisturbed layers of rocks, scientists knew it would be an excellent site to search for evidence of the planet's history, and possibly life.

Using CheMin, scientists compared samples taken from two areas about a quarter-mile apart from a layer of mudstone deposited billions of years ago at the bottom of the lake at Gale Crater.

Surprisingly, in one area, about half the clay minerals they expected to find were missing. Instead, they found mudstones rich with iron oxides — minerals that give Mars its characteristic rusty red color.

Scientists knew the mudstones sampled were about the same age and started out the same – loaded with clays — in both areas studied.

So why then, as Curiosity explored the sedimentary clay deposits along Gale Crater did patches of clay minerals — and the evidence they preserve — “disappear”?

Clays hold clues

Minerals are like a time capsule; they provide a record of what the environment was like at the time they formed. Clay minerals have water in their structure and are evidence that the soils and rocks that contain them came into contact with water at some point.

"Since the minerals we find on Mars also form in some locations on Earth, we can use what we know about how they form on Earth to tell us about how salty or acidic the waters on ancient Mars were," said Liz Rampe, CheMin deputy principal investigator and co-author at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Previous work revealed that, while Gale Crater's lakes were present and even after they dried out, groundwater moved below the surface, dissolving and transporting chemicals.

After they were deposited and buried, some mudstone pockets experienced different conditions and processes due to interactions with these waters that changed the mineralogy.

This process, known as "diagenesis," often complicates or erases the soil's previous history and writes a new one.

Diagenesis creates an underground environment that can support microbial life. In fact, some very unique habitats on Earth — in which microbes thrive — are known as "deep biospheres."

"These are excellent places to look for evidence of ancient life and gauge habitability," said John Grotzinger, CheMin co-investigator and co-author at Caltech in Pasadena, California. "Even though diagenesis may erase the signs of life in the original lake, it creates the chemical gradients necessary to support subsurface life, so we are really excited to have discovered this."

By comparing the details of minerals from both samples, the team concluded that briny water filtering down through overlying sediment layers was responsible for the changes. Unlike the relatively freshwater lake present when the mudstones formed, the salty water is suspected to have come from later lakes that existed within an overall drier environment.

Scientists believe these results offer further evidence of the impacts of Mars's climate change billions of years ago. They also provide more detailed information that is then used to guide the Curiosity rover’s investigations into the history of the Red Planet.

This information also will be utilized by NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover team as they evaluate and select rock samples for eventual return to Earth.

"We've learned something very important: there are some parts of the Martian rock record that aren't so good at preserving evidence of the planet's past and possible life," said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity project scientist and co-author at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "The fortunate thing is we find both close together in Gale Crater, and can use mineralogy to tell which is which."

Curiosity is in the initial phase of investigating the transition to a "sulfate-bearing unit," or rocks thought to have formed while Mars's climate dried out.

The mission is managed by JPL, a division of Caltech, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Colleagues in NASA’s Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division at Johnson and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland also are authors on the paper, as well as other institutions working on Curiosity.

With much of California to remain under an excessive heat warning through early Monday, the California Independent System Operator has extended a statewide Flex Alert for a second day on Saturday.

The goal of the Flex Alert is to avoid a possible shortage of energy as extreme heat in California and a growing wildfire in Southern Oregon threatening transmission lines continue to strain the state’s electric grid.

When the Flex Alert is in effect again between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Saturday, July 10, California’s residents are strongly encouraged to conserve energy by:

— Setting thermostats to 78 degrees or higher, if health permits.
— Avoiding using major appliances.
— Turning off all unnecessary lights.

Consumers are also encouraged to use fans for cooling and unplug unused electrical items.

Earlier in the day, before the Flex Alert takes effect and when solar energy is abundant, consumers are encouraged to take these steps to be comfortable and help grid operators balance electricity supply and demand:

— Pre-cool your home by lowering the thermostat.
— If you need to use your major appliances, do it before the Flex Alert is in effect, when solar energy is plentiful.
— Close window coverings to keep your home or apartment cool.
— Charge electronic devices and electric vehicles so there’s no need to do it later, when solar generation is down.

In addition to the Flex Alert, the California Independent System Operator is using multiple tools to help keep the grid stable, including a solicitation on July 1 to generators in the Western region to procure additional resources.

The California Independent System Operator is also working with business and industry to help them reduce electricity consumption at critical times.

Conditions on the grid became more challenging Friday afternoon when the rapidly expanding Bootleg wildfire in southern Oregon was threatening electric transmission lines, putting limits on the amount of energy that can be imported to California.

Voluntary conservation has helped keep the electric grid stable during past times of high stress on the grid, including last month when triple-digit temperatures across the West strained the system with higher demand for power.

Grid operators continue to closely monitor conditions and will have additional announcements as needed.

As California’s ability to store solar and wind energy with batteries or other technology continues to advance, crucial evening hours will be less of a challenge and similar emergencies rarer. But for now, collective action to conserve is our most effective way to support grid reliability.

For information on Flex Alerts, and to get more electricity conservation tips, visit the California Independent System Operator’s Flex Alert website.