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- Written by: LAKE COUNTY NEWS REPORTS
UPPER LAKE, Calif. — The Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake tribe presented an $80,000 check to support the emergency response efforts of the Northshore Fire Protection District.
The Northshore Fire District said this latest round of support will assist with emergency response efforts and staff support.
The tribe’s contribution will assist with staffing and maintaining equipment to support firefighters when on duty.
“Everyday the brave men and women of the Northshore Fire Protection District are there for our community,” said Sherry Treppa, chairwoman for the Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake. “While others are running from the danger, they are running into it. The Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake appreciate the work of the Northshore Fire Protection District and are honored to continue our support of public safety investments to better meet the needs of our community,”
“The Northshore Fire Protection District is grateful for the Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake’s ongoing support for our community. This latest donation will greatly aid in our emergency response efforts and ensure the tools our crews need are appropriately maintained and ready to protect the community,” said Northshore Fire Chief Mike Ciancio.
The contribution is a part of the Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake’s ongoing commitment to local communities and residents in the region.
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- Written by: LAKE COUNTY NEWS REPORTS
The Lake County Recreation Agency, or LCRA, Board of Directors is composed of two county supervisors, two Clearlake council members and two Lakeport council members.
There is a seventh, “at-large,” position on the board of directors that is to be appointed by the six current members.
If you are interested in applying for the at-large position, please complete the application and submit to
The application is available on the city of Lakeport website at this link.
To be eligible for appointment to the LCRA Board, candidates must be at least 18 years of age, a citizen of California, and a resident of and registered voter in the county of Lake.
The applicant is asked to describe education, experience, training, license or professional designation, and public service qualifications.
Candidates will describe what they consider to be the top three to five significant issues or priorities in regard to recreation in Lake County and their thoughts about addressing these concerns.
For more information, contact Assistant Lakeport City Manager/Finance Director Nicholas Walker at 707-263-5615, Extension 301.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
CLEARLAKE, Calif. — Clearlake Animal Control’s shelter continues to be filled with doings needing new families.
The shelter’s website lists 47 dogs waiting for adoption.
Dogs available to new families this week include “Tink,” a 2 year old Doberman Pinscher mix that shelter staff describe as a “total love bug” who wants all the attention she can get.
Another of the waiting dogs is “Bella,” a female American pit bull mix terrier with a short black and tan coat.
A longtime shelter resident and favorite, a shepherd mix named Terry, recently was adopted.
The shelter is located at 6820 Old Highway 53. It’s open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
For more information, call the shelter at 707-762-6227, email
This week’s adoptable dogs are featured below.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
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- Written by: Daniel Merino, The Conversation and Nehal El-Hadi, The Conversation
When an unexpected rainstorm leaves you soaking wet, it is an annoyance. When a drought leads to fires, crop failures and water shortages, the significance of weather becomes vitally important.
If you could control the weather, would you?
Small amounts of rain can mean the difference between struggle and success. For nearly 80 years, an approach called cloud seeding has, in theory, given people the ability to get more rain and snow from storms and make hailstorms less severe. But only recently have scientists been able to peer into clouds and begin to understand how effective cloud seeding really is.
In this episode of “The Conversation Weekly,” we speak with three researchers about the simple yet murky science of cloud seeding, the economic effects it can have on agriculture, and research that may allow governments to use cloud seeding in more places.
Katja Friedrich, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder in the U.S., is a leading researcher on cloud seeding. “When we do cloud seeding, we are looking for clouds that have tiny super-cooled liquid droplets,” she explains. Silver iodide is very similar in structure to an ice crystal. When the droplets touch a particle of silver iodide, “they freeze, then they can start merging with other ice crystals, become snowflakes and fall out of the cloud.”
While the process is fairly straightforward, measuring how effective it is in the real world is not, according to Friedrich. “The problem is that once we modify a cloud, it’s really difficult to say what would’ve happened if you hadn’t cloud-seeded.” It’s hard enough to predict weather without messing with it artificially.
In 2017, Friedrich’s research group had a breakthrough in measuring the effect of cloud seeding. “We flew some aircraft, released silver iodide and generated these clouds that were like these six exact lines that were downstream of where the aircraft were seeding,” she says. They then had a second aircraft fly through the clouds. “We could actually quantify how much snow we could produce by two hours of cloud seeding.” That effect, according to research on cloud seeding, is an increase in precipitation of somewhere around 5% to 20% or 30%, depending on conditions.
Measuring the effect on precipitation – whether rain or snow – directly may have taken complex science and a bit of luck, but in places that have been using cloud seeding for long periods of time, the economic benefits are shockingly clear.
Dean Bangsund is a researcher at the University of North Dakota who studies the economics of agriculture. “We have a high amount of hail damage in North Dakota,” said Bangsund. For decades, the state government has been using cloud seeding to reduce hail damage, as cloud seeding leads to the formation of more pieces of smaller hail compared to fewer pieces of larger hail. “It doesn’t 100% eliminate hail; it’s designed to soften the impact.”
Every 10 years, the state of North Dakota does an analysis on the economic impacts of the cloud seeding program, measuring both reduction in hail damage and benefits from increased rain. Bangsund led the last report and says that for every dollar spent on the cloud seeding program, “we are looking at something that is anywhere from $8 or $9 in benefit on the really lowest scale, up to probably $20 of impact per acre.” With millions of acres of agricultural fields in the cloud seeding area, that is a massive economic benefit.
Both Freidrich and Bangsund emphasized that cloud seeding, while effective in some cases, cannot be used everywhere. There is also a lot of uncertainty in how much of an effect it has. One way to improve the effectiveness and applicability of cloud seeding is by improving the seed. Linda Zou is a professor of civil infrastructure and environmental engineering at Khalifa University in the United Arab Emirates.
Her work has focused on developing a replacement for silver iodide, and her lab has developed what she calls a nanopowder. “I start with table salt, which is sodium chloride,” says Zou. “This desirable-sized crystal is then coated with a thin nanomaterial layer of titanium dioxide.” When salt gets wet, it melts and forms a droplet that can efficiently merge with other droplets and fall from a cloud. Titanium dioxide attracts water. Put the two together and you get a very effective cloud-seeding material.
From indoor experiments, Zou found that “with the nanopowders, there are 2.9 times the formation of larger-size water droplets.” These nanopowders can also form ice crystals at warmer temperatures and less humidity than silver iodide.
As Zou says, “if the material you are releasing is more reactive and can work in a much wider range of conditions, that means no matter when you decide to use it, the chance of success will be greater.”
This episode was written and produced by Katie Flood. Mend Mariwany is the executive producer of The Conversation Weekly. Eloise Stevens does our sound design, and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl.
You can find us on Twitter @TC_Audio, on Instagram at theconversationdotcom or
Listen to “The Conversation Weekly” via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here.
Daniel Merino, Associate Science Editor & Co-Host of The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation and Nehal El-Hadi, Science + Technology Editor & Co-Host of The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.