Cal Fire exclusive use helicopters depart the Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit for the season

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA — The two Type-1 helicopters contracted by Cal Fire for exclusive use towards aerial firefighting operations left the Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit (LNU) for the season on Tuesday.

Helitanker 8PJ, a CH-47 Chinook operated by PJ Helicopters, was based at the Napa County Airport (KAPC) starting back on June 3.

Helitanker 05PJ, a UH-60A+ Blackhawk also operated by PJ Helicopters, was based at the Sonoma County Airport (KSTS) starting on June 16.

The two exclusive use helicopters combined to fly 80 missions on wildfires where they dropped a combined total of 1,140,450 gallons of water on fires in 2025.

“The helicopters we contract exclusively for the use of aerial firefighting operations are a strategic investment we make in wildfire preparedness and rapid response, providing an added layer of protection for the communities we serve,” said Cal Fire Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit Chief Matt Ryan. “They are a symbol of the strength and readiness that Cal Fire brings to the region and complement our overall world-renowned aviation program that is the largest civil aerial firefighting fleet in the world.”

Helitanker 8PJ delivered 451,100 gallons of water on its 28 wildfire missions in 2025, which included 29.1 hours of night flying missions. Its night flight capabilities were relied on heavily during the Pickett Fire outside of Calistoga, as Helitanker 8PJ flew 12.6 hours at night on the 6,819-acre fire between Aug. 21 to 24.

Helitanker 05PJ flew 52 wildfire missions this year and dropped 689,350 gallons of water on fires. Its utility was on display here in the greater San Francisco Bay Area and beyond across California. 

During the Pickett Fire, Helitanker 05PJ conducted 19 flights. It was also deployed down to the Gifford Fire in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties between Aug. 8-15 where it conducted 21 aerial firefighting missions. 

The Gifford Fire is the largest wildfire in the state this year at 131,614 acres.

Even with the departure of the two exclusive use helicopters, Cal Fire LNU still has four aerial assets available for firefighting and rescue operations. 

Copter 612, based at the Boggs Mountain Helitack Base in Lake County, is a Sikorsky S70i with a fixed tank that can hold up to 1,000 gallons of water. Its primary mission is rapid initial attack
on wildfires and complex rescue operations.

At the Sonoma Air Attack Base in Santa Rosa are two S-2T Airtankers (AT85 and AT86) and one OV-10 Air Tactical Aircraft (AA140).

So far this year from Jan. 1 through Oct. 28, the Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit has seen 352 wildfires that have burned 8,331 acres. 

Details

Written by: LAKE COUNTY NEWS REPORTS

Published: 31 October 2025

Why is it so hard to adjust when clocks ‘fall back’?

Daylight saving time ends this Sunday at 2 a.m. It was introduced in 1918 as a way to conserve energy by making the most of summer’s daylight hours. 

But some people say that shifting our clocks is its own form of energy drain. 

That’s because many feel disoriented for days, or even weeks, after we “spring forward” or “fall back” by an hour. We asked neurologist Louis Ptacek, MD, who studies circadian rhythms, why this disruption to our internal clocks throws us for a loop and what we can do to make the adjustment easier.

What is a circadian clock and why is it important?  

A circadian clock, or circadian rhythm, is the 24-hour cycle of waking and sleeping in response to daylight and darkness.

When you’re sleeping and the sun comes up, your eyes sense the light even when they’re closed. That light sends a signal to the master clock in your brain saying, “Hey, the day is starting, time to get up.” Your body prepares by raising your body temperature and blood pressure and nudging your digestive tract and immune system to become more active.  

As nighttime comes on, the body winds it all back down. 

How does changing our clocks by an hour impact our internal clock?

Like an alarm clock, your circadian clock tells you it’s time to get up. When we “fall back” the day begins an hour earlier than the clock is anticipating, which make you feel like things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be. Similarly, toward the end of the day, you’re ready for bed at an early hour.  

All of this affects our physiology. When we’re thrown off like this, we’re more prone to making errors. Research shows that the number of car accidents usually goes up a bit when we change our clocks, people make mistakes at work — all because we’re out of sync with the environment.   

Are some affected more than others? If not, what makes the difference?

There are differences from person to person. It relates to what we call “chronotype,” the body’s natural preference for what time to wake up and to go to sleep. Some of us are morning larks, others are night owls, and some are in between. Night owls will typically do better than others when we set our clocks back, like we will this coming weekend. Morning larks will do better springing forward. 

Why can changing clocks affect people’s mood so much?

We know that our exposure to light has a strong connection with both our mood and our biological clock, but we don’t understand much about how mood and the biological clock are connected. It seems that our mood is affected by how well we’re aligned the solar day. Disrupting that alignment in people who are sleep-deprived or prone to depression can increase their risk of becoming depressed.

Understanding how that happens could benefit people who are not aligned with the solar day, like people who work night shift or people who frequently travel across time zones. It’s a question my lab is hoping to study in the future. We’ve identified a gene that’s at a nexus where mood and circadian rhythms are regulated, but there’s much more to learn about this connection. 

How can people mitigate the impact of daylight saving? 

Changing our clocks presents us with an opportunity to align ourselves better with the natural day and night.

• Ease into the change a few days beforehand. Get enough rest so that you’re not sleep deprived or living out of sync with your circadian rhythm.
• Change your sleep schedule by 15-30 minutes to counter the time change – 15 mins later for falling back, 15 mins earlier for springing forward. 
• Shift your mealtimes the same way and remember that it’s healthier to eat during the day than late at night.

Robin Marks writes for the UC San Francisco News Center.

Details

Written by: Robin Marks

Published: 31 October 2025

Supervisors hear report on September fish die-off

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The work to understand the cause of a September fish die-off in Clear Lake is continuing.

This week, the Board of Supervisors heard the latest on the ongoing efforts from scientists and local officials as part of a report from the Lake County Fish and Wildlife Advisory Committee.

At the start of September, a fish die-off was reported in Clear Lake. At that time, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife told Lake County News that the die-off was believed to have been related to low levels of dissolved oxygen in the water.

Luis Santana, chair of the Lake County Fish and Wildlife Advisory Committee and fish and wildlife director of Robinson Rancheria’s Danoxa Fish and Wildlife Department, presented the update to the board on Tuesday.

He explained during the discussion that he’s close to completing a full report on the die-off, and also is studying the case involving the discovery in September of a white sturgeon that had been living in the lake, which isn’t part of its natural range.

Santana said the fish kill occurred during the first couple of weeks in September. County residents shared photos with him of the incident.

In one case, a Soda Bay resident told him that they had been out on the lake the night before, “and everything seemed fine, but then the next morning, when they took a walk down the shoreline, there was a bunch of dead fish all over the place.”

Santana responded to the area on Sept. 7 and began doing water quality readings, specifically measuring dissolved oxygen levels. He took a shoreline sample and found that it was bad — but not so bad that fish couldn’t survive.

Fish like the Clear Lake hitch, Sacramento sucker and related fish should have about five milligrams per liter of dissolved oxygen in the water, but they can survive at lower dissolved oxygen levels, Santana said.

However, Santana said that once the dissolved oxygen levels drop to around 2.0 milligrams per liter, fish start to die. 

When he conducted measurements at the shoreline in Soda Bay, he got a reading of 3.95 milligrams per liter, still survivable but not good for the overall fitness of fish. 

Santana said a shoreline measurement is not really accurate for dissolved oxygen because wave action will provide some dissolved oxygen.

So he went out the next day to get vertical profiles of the lake. Launching from Keeling Park in Nice, Santana said as he was passing Lucerne he saw what he initially thought were waves but which he estimated were millions of threadfin shad, an introduced — not native — species to Clear Lake. He said the shad is a bait fish that the bass — also not native — love to eat.

When he saw the shad, Santana stopped at a spot in the middle of the lake and took dissolved oxygen measurements. Three feet below the lake’s surface, the dissolved oxygen measured 0.52 milligrams per liter. At 17 feet deep, it was 0.28 milligrams per liter, and at the lake’s bottom it was 0.22 milligrams per liter.

When he reached Dorn Bay, near the area where he first conducted measurements the previous day, Santana said the dissolved oxygen levels were not much better and below the 2 milligrams per liter level at which fish tend to die. At seven feet below the surface, the measurement was 1.0 milligrams per liter, falling to 0.2 milligrams at 13 feet down.

“So basically, in the entire water column, it was not suitable for fishes in the area,” Santana said.

The fish he saw dying included Sacramento blackfish, threadfin shad, largemouth bass, black crappie and bluegill. 

Santana said he found more measurements that were similar when heading back across the lake toward Keeling Park, and he saw still more fish species — including bullhead catfish, channel catfish and hitch — impacted.

He said the low dissolved oxygen levels impacted the entire ecosystem as far as fish were concerned.

Supervisor Bruno Sabatier thanked Santana for his presentation. “Definitely, if you live around the lake there, you can't not know about the fish kill that occurred this year and previous years. Typically it is dissolved oxygen,” he said.

Sabatier added, “It's been a bit of a stranger year for the lake, where the lake has not appeared to have as much algae. Now, algae can be in many different stages. It doesn't have to be on the top floating, but typically what we find is the dissolved oxygen does occur when we have the mats and other things where it gets really bad during the summertime.”

He asked if there was a culprit for the dissolved oxygen levels in Clear Lake this year, adding, “The lake just looked vastly different than what I was expecting.”

Santana said algae decomposition causes low dissolved oxygen levels, explaining that when the plants decompose, they suck oxygen from the water, and as a result fish kills occur.

However, “In this instance, that definitely wasn't it. I think it was lake turnover, but I can't really prove that, because I wasn't taking samples year round to be able to say, ‘Hey, this is what's occurring,’” Santana said.

Lake turnover explains what happens when a lake’s layers mix on a seasonal basis — typically in the spring and fall — causing the temperature to be more uniform through the water column. The process also moves dissolved oxygen from the surface of the water throughout the water body, while also distributing nutrients from the lake bottom through other lake layers. 

Santana called the die-off “a really weird event,” because the lake was looking really good and the bass in the lake were massive in size.

He said, however, that the situation wasn’t the result of algae. Santana cited findings from Big Valley Rancheria’s environmental department which monitors the lake, and its data concluded the same thing.

Chris Childers of Lake County Water Resources Department said they did vertical profiles on Clear Lake on Sept. 10 and found the same thing that Santana did —  very, very low dissolved oxygen from the surface all the way down to the bottom and all three arms of the lake.

Childers thanked Santana for his work, noting that it’s great that “we can all collaborate and work together and make things happen.”

Angela DePalma-Dow, executive director of the Lake County Land Trust and a former Water Resources staffer, thanked Santana and Childers for their work.

DePalma-Dow, who has worked with lakes in six different states, offered an explanation for conditions that are seen in small and large lakes alike.

Fish die-offs happen in some years and not in others, and DePalma-Dow said that while there wasn’t that much cyanobacteria — or algae — in Clear Lake this year, there were other things that grew a lot, and they tend to die at the end of the season, like the plants in a vegetable garden.

“So if you have a lot of things growing in your garden at the end of the year, right now, in fall, stuff will start to die, and that can consume oxygen. So that is one factor,” she said.

DePalma-Dow said she looked at seasonal patterns going back to 2012. In that year and in 2016, Lake County had a very significant drought, which was followed by a flood year in 2017.

She said there was a significant fish die-off in the drought year, followed by high water levels. The pattern continued in 2020 to 2022, with lower water levels, followed by more water in 2023 and 2024.

“So there's some patterns where you see drought and then flood years where you have a lot of growth of vegetation, a lot of space, a lot of disturbed soils that can contribute to algae and plant growth that all then died and could create these fish kill events,” she said, adding that these “are natural processes.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, and on Bluesky, @erlarson.bsky.social. Find Lake County News on the following platforms: Facebook, @LakeCoNews; X, @LakeCoNews; Threads, @lakeconews, and on Bluesky, @lakeconews.bsky.social. 

Details

Written by: Elizabeth Larson

Published: 30 October 2025

Police seek missing girl

UPDATE: Police said that Rory was located on the morning of Thursday, Oct. 30.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The Clearlake Police Department is asking for the community’s help in finding a missing teenager.

Rory Nychole Verling, 14, is described as a white female, 5 foot 9 inches, 130 lbs, blond/orange hair, blue eyes, and was last seen wearing a red shirt and checkered pajama pants, police said.

If you have any information regarding Rory's whereabouts, please contact the Clearlake Police Department at Clearlake Police Department, 707-994-8251, Extension 1, or text a tip to CLEARLAKEPD, followed by your message, at 888777.

Details

Written by: LAKE COUNTY NEWS REPORTS

Published: 30 October 2025