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- Written by: LAKE COUNTY NEWS REPORTS
With COVID-19 still a significant concern in our region, Lake County residents are encouraged to stay safe at home whenever possible.
County departments are seeking to provide comprehensive services in the safest possible manner, and some availability of in-person services is now permissible under the health orders, provided social distancing and other precautions are strictly observed.
As of Monday, June 1, most County offices will be reopening to the public, Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., as an enhancement of services that have been available remotely throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Like all businesses reopening in Lake County, county departments are self-certifying they are taking appropriate safety measures. Departmental certifications will be posted at county offices upon reopening.
Each certification form will include contact information if you wish to submit a complaint.
Health-focused complaints regarding any Lake County business, including county departments, may also be submitted to
“Residents can stay safe at home and still access many essential county services,” said Board of Supervisors Chair Moke Simon. “Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, county departments have adapted and are now able to deliver services without requiring an in-person visit.”
County Administrative Officer Carol Huchingson and Court Executive Officer Krista LeVier, recently estimated 350 to 400 people passed through security at the county courthouse in Lakeport during a typical pre-COVID-19 week.
Those at elevated risk of severe COVID-19 complications may wish to reach out to a county department, and arrange for service without physically visiting the courthouse or another county facility.
A county department directory is available here.
The county of Lake’s Worksite Prevention Protocol is viewable here.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
The agency issued a hazardous weather outlook for Lake County due to the potential for storms.
The forecast calls for showers and possibly a thunderstorm during the day on Saturday. Rainfall totals could range between a tenth and a quarter of an inch, or more if there is a thunderstorm.
Saturday also is expected to see wind gusts of more than 20 miles per hour and daytime temperatures in the low 60s.
On Saturday night there is a forecast of patchy fog with temperatures dropping into the high 40s.
On Sunday morning, there are more chances of patchy fog before 11 a.m., with partly sunny conditions anticipated for the rest of the day and temperatures of about 70 degrees, with winds of nearly 10 miles per hour. Sunday night is forecast to see more patchy fog and temperatures into the low 50s.
The National Weather Services is forecasting more patchy fog on Monday, with the rest of next week looking clear and sunny, with light winds, nighttime temperatures into the mid-50s and daytime temperatures peaking in the mid-80s.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
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- Written by: DENNIS FORDHAM
Many of my clients want to remain in their homes for as long as they are mentally and physically able to do so.
Nowadays, with the pandemic, people who avoid going into a residential care facility, such as an assisted living or a skilled nursing home, are much less likely to get COVID-19 and other communicable illnesses that spread easily in senior living facilities.
This reality motivates seniors to consider the option of remaining at home as long as possible.
If assistance is required with their activities of daily living then they want such assistance to be provided at home so long as it is feasible.
Preparation for such in-home care includes planning around one’s present and anticipated personal care needs, financial needs and estate planning documents.
A long-term personal care plan is needed. Personal care entails a wide variety of needs: Bathing, toileting, dressing, walking, meals, doctor visits, shopping, household chores, banking, and paying household bills.
Some people rely on family members or friends who live with them to take care of these many activities.
Being proactive helps: Ask your health care provider to recommend any improvements to your household environment to facilitate your personal care. Consider hiring a traveling nurse to make an in-home evaluation.
For example, does your bathroom need to be fitted with grab bars? Do you need a wheelchair ramp to your door? Consider engaging an emergency 24 hour/seven-day service to assist you at the push of a button on a pendant you wear around your neck.
Do you have someone to make routine welfare checks to see you are well? Do you have someone to take you grocery shopping or to do shopping for you? Do you have meals on wheels? Do you need in-home care services to assist you with your activities of daily living? Are the people you trust acting in your best interest?
Personal care planning also involves having an advance health care directive, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, waiver, and possibly even a physician’s order regarding life-sustaining treatment.
The advance health care directive allows you to say how you want to be treated, how you don’t want to be treated, and whom you want as your agent to make health care decisions for you when you cannot make them yourself.
Advance health care directives come in a wide variety of types, such as the California Medical Association advance health care directive, the California Statutory advance health care directive and a wide variety of attorney drafted directives.
Advance health care directive forms are available at your physician’s office, local hospital, Hospice, attorney, online and many stationary stores.
Any long-term personal care plan needs to factor how the expenses are to be paid. A budget needs to be planned and financial planning needs to be done to make sure that there is adequate money. There are certain financial planners – eldercare financial planners – who specialize in financial planning for senior citizens.
The attorney who does the legal estate planning needs to know what personal care and financial planning are in place in order to draft estate planning documents that take the same into consideration.
The estate planning documents need to provide authority and guidance for others – such as agents or a trustee – to act in furtherance of the personal care plan and the budget.
Specifically, the power of attorney would need to say the agent is to pay for and to hire certain types of services related to providing in home care and to modifying the house to make it suitable.
It would also authorize the agent to hire financial advisors to assist in the financial planning. That agent would then be able to utilize retirement funds and other assets held outside of a trust to pay for such expenses.
Likewise, the trust would also need to speak to these same issues to allow the trustee to utilize trust assets in furtherance of these same objectives.
Putting a plan together involves accessing different resources to meet different needs. The Lake and Mendocino County Area Agency on Aging has put together a useful Resource Directory for Older Adults. The Area Agency on Aging can be reached at 800-510-2020 or 707-468-5132, or visit it online at www.lakecountyca.gov/Page9118.aspx .
Dennis A. Fordham, attorney, is a State Bar-Certified Specialist in estate planning, probate and trust law. His office is at 870 S. Main St., Lakeport, Calif. He can be reached at
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- Written by: Karen Fox and Lina Tran
On May 29, a family of sunspots — dark spots that freckle the face of the sun, representing areas of complex magnetic fields — sported the biggest solar flare since October 2017.
Although the sunspots are not yet visible (they will soon rotate into view over the left limb of the Sun), NASA spacecraft spotted the flares high above them.
The flares were too weak to pass the threshold at which NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center (which is the U.S. government's official source for space weather forecasts, watches, warnings and alerts) provides alerts.
But after several months of very few sunspots and little solar activity, scientists and space weather forecasters are keeping their eye on this new cluster to see whether they grow or quickly disappear.
The sunspots may well be harbingers of the Sun's solar cycle ramping up and becoming more active.
Or, they may not. It will be a few more months before we know for sure.
As the sun moves through its natural 11-year cycle, in which its activity rises and falls, sunspots rise and fall in number, too. NASA and NOAA track sunspots in order to determine, and predict, the progress of the solar cycle — and ultimately, solar activity.
Currently, scientists are paying close attention to the sunspot number as it's key to determining the dates of solar minimum, which is the official start of Solar Cycle 25.
This new sunspot activity could be a sign that the sun is possibly revving up to the new cycle and has passed through minimum.
However, it takes at least six months of solar observations and sunspot-counting after a minimum to know when it's occurred. Because that minimum is defined by the lowest number of sunspots in a cycle, scientists need to see the numbers consistently rising before they can determine when exactly they were at the bottom.
That means solar minimum is an instance only recognizable in hindsight: It could take six to 12 months after the fact to confirm when minimum has actually passed.
This is partly because our star is extremely variable. Just because the sunspot numbers go up or down in a given month doesn't mean it won't reverse course the next month, only to go back again the month after that. So, scientists need long-term data to build a picture of the sun’s overall trends through the solar cycle.
Commonly, that means the number we use to compare any given month is the average sunspot number from six months both backward and forward in time — meaning that right now, we can confidently characterize what October 2019 looks like compared to the months before it (there were definitely fewer sunspots!), but not yet what November looks like compared to that.
On May 29, at 3:24 a.m. EST, a relatively small M-class solar flare blazed from these sunspots. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation.
Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however — when intense enough — they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.
The intensity of this flare was below the threshold that could affect geomagnetic space and below the threshold for NOAA to create an alert.
Nonetheless, it was the first M-class flare since October 2017 — and scientists will be watching to see if the Sun is indeed beginning to wake up.
Karen Fox and Lina Tran work for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.