NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – Fire crews on the Mendocino National Forest are responding to several fires started by lightning after thunderstorms passed over the area early Sunday, with another fire in Glenn County also prompting evacuations.

Forest officials said a few fires are reported on the Grindstone Ranger District including one in the Snow Mountain Wilderness.

One fire has been reported on the Covelo Ranger District northeast of Covelo near Leech Lake.

Additional resources have been ordered to assist with the initial attack.

Forest officials said their primary wildfire response strategy for 2020 is aggressive initial attack and rapid containment to minimize the number of large wildfires.

In other fire news around the region, on Sunday morning officials ordered an evacuation at around 9 a.m. for the community of Fruto west of Willows in the area of Highway 162 and County Road 303 due to another lightning-caused fire.

That incident, the Elk fire, was reported to be 700 acres and 5-percent contained at around noon on Sunday.

The Glenn County Sheriff’s Office reported just before 1:30 p.m. that forward progress on the fire had been stopped, with evacuation orders lifted.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Dozens of Lake County teachers are able to purchase needed student art supplies, thanks to the Teacher Art Supply Grants offered by the Lake County Rural Arts Initiative.

Forty grants have been awarded thus far and more will be given throughout the month of August.

During this time of distance learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students aren’t able to share classroom art supplies as usual and many families are unable to purchase them for the home.

Enter the Lake County Rural Arts Initiative, or LCRAI, which is offering $100 grants to Lake County teachers, enabling them to purchase basic art supplies for students such as crayons, construction paper, paint, and glue.

Art-related equipment purchases for the classroom and specialized project-based supplies are also funded by the grant.

This is the first time the Teachers Art Supply Grant has been offered by LCRAI. They hope to also offer grants in future years.

The grants are especially timely now that distance learning is in place in most Lake County schools, said LCRAI Board member and Arts in Schools Committee member Kim Lewis.

As of last week, they’d received 115 grant applications and were able to award 40 grants. Thanks to an anonymous donation of $1,500 and an ongoing fundraiser, they’re now able to fund more.

“We have received an overwhelming number of applications for the Teachers Art Supply Grant. We are hoping to raise more funds through our online and offline fundraising efforts, in hopes of awarding as many grants to teachers as we are able to. They are all so deserving,” said Lewis.

The Arts in Schools Committee is comprised of several board members who, along with LCRAI President Alicia Brisker, will vet and select grant recipients.

Any teacher serving transitional kindergarten through 12th grade students in a Lake County public or charter school (i.e., not privately funded) is eligible for a grant.

Grant applications are available on the LCRAI website and will be received throughout the month of August.

It’s their hope to fund each request received; however, that depends on the amount of money raised.

LCRAI was founded in February of 2018 by Lake County residents Martha Mincer and Connie Lemen-Kosla with the goal of making Lake County an arts and culture destination as a means to boost the local economy through tourism.

One such project, a mural trail, has been installed by five local artists. Murals are located in Kelseyville, Lakeport and Clearlake and the trail will be updated with more locations added in the future.

A second mission of LCRAI is integrating arts for children into the community and Lake County schools. Research shows that participation in the arts by children and teens raises self-esteem as well as their classroom grades in other subjects.

In the past, the LCRAI has sponsored a kids’ mural station at the Kelseyville Pear Festival and children’s craft activities at the holiday fair at the Twin Pines Casino in Middletown.

To learn more about the LCRAI, its mural trail or to apply for or donate to the Teacher Art Supply Grants, visit the group’s website or Facebook page.

The LCRAI is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and all donations are tax-deductible.

Esther Oertel is a writer and food columnist for Lake County News. She lives in Middletown, Calif.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Lake County Library continues to adapt to the ever-changing pandemic situation with new services and social distancing variations on existing ones.

The library has just expanded its website with a colorful page devoted to the library’s educational and recreational resources and activities for children.

On the library’s website, click on the “For Kids” link to see the full array of online services that require nothing more than a library card to access.

On hoopla you can activate kids mode by signing in and then clicking Kids. Hoopla has movies, television shows, music and audiobooks for kids.

On Libby or on the Overdrive website you can find kids’ content by clicking the Kids tab at the top. Libby by Overdrive has ebooks, audiobooks and special read-along books.

For children and teens the library also offers three online services ABCmouse, Britannica, and TeachingBooks.

ABCmouse.com is the leading and most comprehensive fun digital learning resource for children ages 2 through 8.

Britannica School and Britannica Escolar are both educational sites for students to use for homework help, projects, or learning at home or at the library.

TeachingBooks.net is a multimedia website that generates enthusiasm for books and reading with engaging author programs and K-12 book resources for children and teens.

Patrons can check out ABCmouse accounts for home use on their computers or devices. The award-winning ABCmouse.com curriculum, created by Age of Learning, Inc., is designed to help young children ages 2 through 8 and beyond build a strong foundation for future academic success.

ABCmouse.com is 100-percent educational, with more than 8,500 learning activities across all major subject areas-reading, math, science, social studies, art, and music. ABCmouse is one effective early learning resource that’s available for you to check out from the library and use with your children at home.

When you check out an ABCmouse account from the library with Bring Learning Home, you will get full access to ABCmouse from the convenience of your home or anywhere you have an internet connection. You will also have access to the Assessment Center, which allows you to track your child’s progress in key early literacy and math skills over time. Funding for the ABCmouse Bring Learning Home program was provided by Doug and Laurie Dohring of Bell Haven Resort.

Britannica School and Britannica Escolar are both educational sites for students to use for homework help, projects, or learning at home or at the library.

Britannica School is the go-to site for research – the core of any inquiry learning model – offering thousands of up-to-date, curated, and curriculum-relevant articles, images, videos, audio clips, primary sources, maps, research tools, recommended Web sites, and three separate databases. Britannica Escolar is the leading knowledge-building resource that is universally trusted for accurate and age-appropriate content in Spanish.

Choose from two or three levels of learning – elementary, middle, and high school – for a wealth of unique content to explore. Select an article and adjust its complexity with a single click while maintaining the age-appropriate look – ideal for classes of students at multiple reading levels! Read-aloud functionality and a font size changer are just a few of the features specifically helpful for students with special needs.

Nonfiction, cross-curricular content in Britannica School is updated daily by the editorial team with new and revised articles and multimedia – at least 1,200 entries per month – to keep users informed and engaged. Britannica offers accurate, up-to-date content aligned to the common core and state standards.

Use handy how-to-conduct-research tools to build essential information literacy skills. Group together related content types for activities or projects using the easy-to-use Content Collector. For educators, review and adapt ready-made lessons on various subjects or create your own with the intuitive Lesson Plan Builder. Access to Britannica School and Escolar is provided by the California State Library.

TeachingBooks is a dynamic PreK-12 reading and library service that strives to deepen everyone's connections to the books they are reading. With 170,000+ engaging video, audio, and online resources, TeachingBooks brings to life the books that are enjoyed in your community. TeachingBooks is a database of resources for children's and young adult books and their authors and illustrators. Use TeachingBooks to search titles, authors and illustrators, and find resources to engage readers. The resource collection includes short movies, audiobook readings, book discussion guides, and more. Access to TeachingBooks.net is provided for Lake County Library by the California State Library in conjunction with Riverside COE.

In the pre-pandemic days library employees visited local schools to read picture books with younger children and to share with older children about library resources. With in-person visits no longer available, the library invites local teachers to request library visits to their virtual classrooms. Teachers can submit the requests through the link on the library’s For Kids page and an employee will contact them to make arrangements.

The library’s website gives information about library programs, services and policies. To speak to a library employee, call 707-263-8817.

Jan Cook is a library technician for the Lake County Library.

Past discriminatory housing practices may play a role in perpetuating the significant disparities in infant and maternal health faced by people of color in the U.S., suggests a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

For decades, banks and other lenders used redlining maps to deny loans to people living in neighborhoods deemed too risky for investment.

These maps, first drawn in 1935 by the government-sponsored Home Owners’ Loan Corp., or HOLC, shaded neighborhoods in one of four colors – from green representing the lowest risk to red representing the highest risk. These designations were based, in part, on the race and socioeconomic status of each neighborhood’s residents.

To investigate the link between historical redlining and infant and maternal health today, the team obtained birth outcome data for the cities of Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco between 2006 and 2015 and compared them to HOLC redlining maps.

They found that adverse birth outcomes – including premature births, low birth weight babies and babies who were small for their gestational age – occurred significantly more often in neighborhoods with worse HOLC ratings.

“Our results highlight how laws and policies that have been abolished can still assert health effects today,” said Rachel Morello-Frosch, a professor of public health and of environmental science, policy and management at UC Berkeley and senior author of the study, which appeared online this month in the journal PLOS ONE. “This suggests that if we want to target neighborhood-level interventions to improve the social and physical environments where kids are born and grow, neighborhoods that have faced historical forms of discrimination, like redlining, are important places to start.”

Non-Hispanic Black women living in the U.S. are one-and-a-half times more likely to give birth to premature babies than their white counterparts and are more than twice as likely to have babies with a low birth weight. Hispanic women face similar, though less dramatic, disparities, compared to non-Hispanic white women.

While the legacy of public and private disinvestment in redlined neighborhoods has led to well-documented disparities in income level, tree canopy coverage, air pollution and home values in these communities, the long-term health impacts of redlining are just now starting to be explored.

“Children born during the time of our study would be the great-great-grandchildren of those who were alive at the time of redlining, whose options of where to live would have been determined by redlining maps,” said study lead author Anthony Nardone, a medical student in the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program. “We chose to look at birth outcomes because of the stark inequities that exist across race in the U.S. today, inequities that we believe are a function of long-standing institutional racism, like historical redlining.”

Earlier work led by Nardone showed that residents of neighborhoods with the worst HOLC rating were more than twice as likely to visit the emergency room with asthma than residents of neighborhoods with the highest HOLC rating. And a recent study from the Harvard School of Public Health found a link between redlining and preterm births in New York City.

In the new study, the team found that neighborhoods with the two worst HOLC ratings – “definitely declining” and “hazardous” – had significantly worse birth outcomes than those with the best HOLC rating.

However, Los Angeles neighborhoods rated “hazardous” showed slightly better birth outcomes than those with the second-worst, or “definitely declining,” rating. In San Francisco and Oakland, neighborhoods with these two ratings showed similar birth outcomes.

This pattern might be attributed to the effects of gentrification on previously redlined neighborhoods, the authors surmised. They added that people in the hardest-hit neighborhoods may also rely more on community support networks, which can help combat the effects of disinvestment.

“We also saw different results by metropolitan area and slightly different results by maternal race,” Morello-Frosch said. “This suggests that maybe the underlying mechanisms of the effect of redlining differ by region and should be investigated further.”

Co-authors of the study include Joan A. Casey and Kara E. Rudolph of Columbia University; Deborah Karasek of the University of California, San Francsico; and Mahasin Mujahid of UC Berkeley.

This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health’s Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program (UG3OD023272 and UH3OD023272), the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (R00 ES027023 and P30 ES0090890), the UC Berkeley Superfund Research Program and a Postdoctoral Transdisciplinary Research Fellowship from the UCSF Preterm Birth Initiative.

Kara Manke writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County Animal Care and Control has seven dogs cleared for adoption this week.

Dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of Chihuahua, border collie, chow chow, German Shepherd, Labrador Retriever, pit bull and pug.

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 Web site 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.

‘Tico’

“Tico” is a senior male Chihuahua-pug mix with a short black and white coat.

He is in kennel No. 2, ID No. 13864.

‘Solito’

“Solito” is a male pit bull terrier with a black and white coat.

He is in kennel No. 6, ID No. 13839.

‘Oso Panda’

“Oso Panda” is a male border collie with a long black and white coat.

He is in kennel No. 7, ID No. 13840.

‘Manotas’

“Manotas” is a male German Shepherd-pit bull mix with a long black and brindle coat.

He is in kennel No. 8, ID No. 13841.

‘Pina’

“Pina” is a young female pit bull terrier with a short tan and brindle coat.

She is in kennel No. 9, ID No. 13842.

‘Luna’

“Luna” is a female German Shepherd with a medium-length black and tan coat.

She is in kennel No. 10, ID No. 13843.

Male chow chow

This male chow chow has a medium-length black coat.

He is in kennel No. 33, ID No. 13795.

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.

NASA and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than Oct. 23 for the first operational flight with astronauts of the Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station as a part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission will be the first of regular rotational missions to the space station following completion of NASA certification.

The mission will carry Crew Dragon commander Michael Hopkins, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialist Shannon Walker, all of NASA, along with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, mission specialist Soichi Noguchi for a six-month science mission aboard the orbiting laboratory following launch from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Crew-1 will launch in late October to accommodate spacecraft traffic for the upcoming Soyuz crew rotation and best meet the needs of the International Space Station.

Launch will follow the arrival of NASA astronaut Kate Rubins and cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos aboard their Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft and the departure of NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner from the space station.

The launch timeframe also allows for a crew handover with NASA’s SpaceX Crew-2 mission next spring.

The Crew-1 mission is pending completion of data reviews and certification following NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 test flight, which successfully launched NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley to the International Space Station on May 30 and returned them safely home with a splashdown off the Florida coast in the Gulf of Mexico on Aug. 2.

Demo-2 was the first crewed flight test of a commercially-owned and operated human space system.

NASA certification of SpaceX’s crew transportation system allows the agency to regularly fly astronauts to the space station, ending sole reliance on Russia for space station access.

For almost 20 years, humans have continuously lived and worked aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge and demonstrating new technologies that enable us to prepare for human exploration to the Moon and Mars.

NASA is enabling economic growth in low-Earth orbit to open access to space to more people, more science, and more companies than ever before.

CLEARLAKE, Calif. – A Clearlake man who posted bail after being arrested for a shooting earlier this week has been arrested again, with his bail raised at the request of prosecutors.

David Glenn Ford Jr., 25, was taken into custody again on Thursday, according to a report from Sgt. Ryan Peterson of the Clearlake Police Department.

Peterson said that at approximately midnight on Tuesday, officers responded to the 3200 block of Park Street for a report of a gunshot victim.

Based on the investigation it is believed that Ford, along with another person got into an argument with subjects near the 3300 block of 10th Street in Clearlake late on Monday night. Peterson said Ford and the other person then followed the subjects he was in an argument with to a residence in the 3200 block of Park Street, where the argument continued.

The resident of the home, a 54-year-old male, exited the house and confronted Ford. During this confrontation, Peterson said it is believed that Ford shot the resident and fled the scene with the other person whom he was with back to his residence on 10th Street.

Peterson said the shooting victim was transported to an out-of-county medical facility for treatment. As of this time, he is reported to be in stable condition.

Detectives from the Clearlake Police Department Investigations Bureau responded to the scene, Peterson said.

Peterson said detectives obtained a search warrant and during the execution of the search warrant, they ultimately arrested Ford on probable cause for attempted murder and assault on a person with a firearm.

He was booked into the Lake County Jail with his bail set at $250,000. Ford bailed from the Lake County Jail prior to any court proceedings, Peterson said.

After further review of the investigation, Peterson said the Lake County District Attorney’s Office requested a warrant for Ford’s arrest through the Lake County Superior Court with an increased bail set at $1,500,000.

On Thursday afternoon, Peterson said Clearlake Police officers located Ford in the area of Sixth Street in Clearlake, placed him under arrest for the warrant and booked him into the Lake County Jail.

As of Saturday, Ford remained in custody pending further court proceedings, which his booking sheet indicated will take place on Tuesday.

The investigation is ongoing and anyone with information is asked to contact Det. Leo Flores at 707-994-8251.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Sheriff’s deputies have arrested a young Clearlake man who is charged with shooting another man following an argument.

Isreel Otter Sloan, 18, of Clearlake was arrested several hours after the incident occurred on the morning of Saturday, Aug. 8, according to Lt. Rich Ward of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.

Ward said that at 12:44 a.m. Aug. 8, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office responded to the 17000 block of Holly Way in Spring Valley, east of Clearlake Oaks, for a report of several subjects having a party where suspected gunfire was heard.

While en route, Central Dispatch advised deputies a gunshot victim was being transported in a white Honda to Adventist Health in Clearlake, Ward said.

Deputies located the white Honda and gunshot victim near the intersection of Highway 20 and Spring Valley Road. Ward said medics were on scene treating a male adult for a suspected gunshot wound to their leg.

The victim was transported by medics to Adventist Health and later transported via air ambulance to an out-of-county trauma center, he said.

Ward said deputies obtained statements from the driver of the Honda and victim. Deputies learned the shooting took place at a residence in the 2600 block of River View Road in Clearlake Oaks.

The son of the Honda driver and several of his friends arrived at the residence in a dark-colored Jeep. Ward said the victim was involved in an argument with the subjects in an attempt to get them to leave.

While walking back into the residence, the victim heard a single gunshot and was struck in the leg. Ward said the subjects in the Jeep fled the scene, damaging a wooden fence post near the front of the residence.

Deputies responded to the residence on River View Road and processed the scene. They obtained additional statements from residents and neighbors as well as potential identifying information regarding the subjects who fled in the dark-colored Jeep, Ward said.

He said the deputies obtained an address for one of the suspects in the 14000 block of Uhl Avenue in Clearlake.

Deputies responded to the Uhl Avenue address and located a blue-colored Jeep Cherokee associated with the residence. Ward said the deputies noticed damage to the Jeep and white paint transfer, which caused them to suspect the Jeep was involved in damaging the Clearlake Oaks address fence post where the victim was shot.

The residents advised deputies the individuals they were looking for were inside the basement of the home. Deputies located and spoke with several subjects who admitted being at the River View Road residence where the shooting occurred. They also admitted to leaving in the Jeep Cherokee, Ward said.

The deputies also located two firearms, one of which had the serial numbers removed, according to Ward’s report.

After speaking with several of the subjects and parties associated with the Jeep, deputies developed probable cause to arrest Sloan, Ward said.

Ward said Sloan was transported to the Hill Road Correctional Facility where he was booked for discharge of a firearm from a vehicle, willful discharge of a firearm in a negligent manner, assault with a firearm on a person, battery on a person causing serious bodily injury, changing, altering or removing serial numbers from a firearm and obstructing, and resisting or delaying a peace officer in the performance of their duties.

Sloan’s bail was set at $50,000 and he later was released, according to jail records.

This investigation is ongoing and the Lake County Sheriff’s encourages anyone with information pertaining to this case to contact Det. Sgt. John Gregore at Central Dispatch nonemergency line, 707-263-2690, or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

The California Transportation Commission on Friday allocated more than $1.6 billion for transportation projects throughout the state, including about $1.3 billion for State Highway Operation and Protection Program projects, Caltrans’ “fix-it-first” program aimed at preserving the condition of the State Highway System.

Also included in the list is a $9.5 million allocation for safety improvements on Highway 20 near Witter Springs Road in Lake County.

“Our maintenance and construction crews remain hard at work improving California’s transportation infrastructure,” said Caltrans Director Toks Omishakin. “The $1.6 billion allocated will allow the department to continue with critical repairs and upgrades to roads and highways, and will support thousands of jobs that are essential for our economy.”

In addition to the Lake County project, other District 1 funding allocations include:

– Approximately $24 million for roadway rehabilitation on U.S. Highway 101 from south of the Fields Landing Overhead Bridge to north of the Herrick Avenue Overcrossing near Eureka in Humboldt County.
– Approximately $15.5 million for safety improvements on Highway 299 from east of Cedar Creek Road to a mile west of the Highway 96 junction in Humboldt County.
– Approximately $13.8 million for wastewater improvements along U.S Highway 101 at the Moss Cove Safety Roadside Rest Area near Laytonville in Mendocino County.

The California Transportation Commission also approved more than $118 million in funds for rail and mass transit projects, including freight, intercity rail and bus services. This allocation expands access to public transportation and helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions and traffic congestion.

This investment includes $77 million for the Trade Corridor Enhancement Program, which is dedicated to projects that enhance the movement of goods along corridors with high freight volume by making improvements to state highways, local roads, freight rail systems, port facilities and truck corridors.

In addition, the California Transportation Commission approved nearly $14 million for 17 projects that will improve bicycle and pedestrian overcrossings, repair sidewalks and bike lanes, and provide safer routes to school for children.

Project funding is derived from federal and state gas taxes, including $1.2 billion from Senate Bill (SB) 1, the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017. The state’s portion of SB 1 funds are used for the ongoing maintenance and rehabilitation of the State Highway System.

By 2027, these funds will enable Caltrans to fix more than 17,000 lane miles of pavement, 500 bridges, 55,000 culverts, and 7,700 traffic operating systems that help reduce highway congestion, such as ramp meters, traffic cameras and electric highway message signs.

For details on SB 1, visit Rebuilding California - Senate Bill 1.

A special type of aurora, draped east-west across the night sky like a glowing pearl necklace, is helping scientists better understand the science of auroras and their powerful drivers out in space.

Known as auroral beads, these lights often show up just before large auroral displays, which are caused by electrical storms in space called substorms.

Previously, scientists weren’t sure if auroral beads are somehow connected to other auroral displays as a phenomenon in space that precedes substorms, or if they are caused by disturbances closer to Earth’s atmosphere.

But powerful new computer models combined with observations from NASA’s Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms – THEMIS – mission have provided the first strong evidence of the events in space that lead to the appearance of these beads, and demonstrated the important role they play in our near space environment.

“Now we know for certain that the formation of these beads is part of a process that precedes the triggering of a substorm in space,” said Vassilis Angelopoulos, principal investigator of THEMIS at the University of California, Los Angeles. “This is an important new piece of the puzzle.”

By providing a broader picture than can be seen with the three THEMIS spacecraft or ground observations alone, the new models have shown that auroral beads are caused by turbulence in the plasma – a fourth state of matter, made up of gaseous and highly conductive charged particles – surrounding Earth.

The results, recently published in the journals Geophysical Research Letters and Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, will ultimately help scientists better understand the full range of swirling structures seen in the auroras.

“THEMIS observations have now revealed turbulences in space that cause flows seen lighting up the sky as of single pearls in the glowing auroral necklace," said Evgeny Panov, lead author on one of the new papers and THEMIS scientist at the Space Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. “These turbulences in space are initially caused by lighter and more agile electrons, moving with the weight of particles 2000 times heavier, and which theoretically may develop to full-scale auroral substorms.”

Mysteries of auroral beads formation

Auroras are created when charged particles from the Sun are trapped in Earth’s magnetic environment – the magnetosphere – and are funneled into Earth’s upper atmosphere, where collisions cause hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen atoms and molecules to glow.

By modelling the near-Earth environment on scales from tens of miles to 1.2 million miles, the THEMIS scientists were able to show the details of how auroral beads form.

As streaming clouds of plasma belched by the Sun pass Earth, their interaction with the Earth’s magnetic field creates buoyant bubbles of plasma behind Earth.

Like a lava lamp, imbalances in the buoyancy between the bubbles and heavier plasma in the magnetosphere creates fingers of plasma 2,500 miles wide that stretch down towards Earth. Signatures of these fingers create the distinct bead-shaped structure in the aurora.

“There's been a realization that, all summed up, these relatively little transient events that happen around the magnetosphere are somehow important,” said David Sibeck, THEMIS project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We have only recently gotten to the point where computing power is good enough to capture the basic physics in these systems.”

Now that scientists understand the auroral beads precede substorms, they want to figure out how, why and when the beads might trigger full-blown substorm.

At least in theory, the fingers may tangle magnetic field lines and cause an explosive event known as magnetic reconnection, which is well known to create full-scale substorms and auroras that fill the nightside sky.

New models open new doors

Since its launch in 2007, THEMIS has been taking detailed measurements as it passes through the magnetosphere in order to understand the causes of the substorms that lead to auroras. In its prime mission, THEMIS was able to show that magnetic reconnection is a primary driver of substorms.

The new results highlight the importance of structures and phenomenon on smaller scales – those hundreds and thousands of miles across as compared to ones spanning millions of miles.

“In order to understand these features in the aurora, you really need to resolve both global and smaller, local scales. That's why it was so challenging up to now,” said Slava Merkin, co-author on one of the new papers and scientist at NASA’s Center for Geospace Storms headquartered at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “It requires very sophisticated algorithms and very big supercomputers.”

The new computer simulations almost perfectly match THEMIS and ground observations. After the initial success of the new computer models, THEMIS scientists are eager to apply them to other unexplained auroral phenomena. Particularly in explaining small-scale structures, computer models are essential as they can help interpret what happens in between the spaces where the three THEMIS spacecraft pass.

“There’s lots of very dynamic, very small-scale structures that people see in the auroras which are hard to connect to the larger picture in space since they happen very quickly and on very small scales,” said Kareem Sorathia, lead author on one of the new papers and scientist at NASA’s Center for Geospace Storms headquartered at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. “Now that we can use global models to characterize and investigate them, that opens up a lot of new doors.”

Mara Johnson-Groh works for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

CLEARLAKE, Calif. – The Clearlake Police Department said an elderly man died on Thursday night after he was hit by a vehicle on Lakeshore Drive.

Sgt. Ryan Peterson said officers responded to the report of a crash involving a pedestrian and a vehicle at approximately 9:13 p.m. Thursday in the 15000 block of Lakeshore Drive near Old Highway 53.

The pedestrian, a male in his 80s, was found in the roadway and transported by air ambulance to an out-of-county medical facility, Peterson said.

Peterson said the man later succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced deceased by out-of-county medical staff.

The driver of the vehicle remained at the scene and was cooperative with the investigation, according to Peterson’s report.

Traffic Officer Michael Perreault responded to the scene and took over the investigation, Peterson said. The roadway was closed while the scene was reviewed and evidence was collected.

Peterson said preliminary indications are that the pedestrian was crossing the roadway outside of a crosswalk and was struck by a vehicle.

This case is pending further investigation and review for final determination and cause, he said.

The identity of the pedestrian is being withheld pending notification of next of kin. “Our thoughts are with his family in this difficult time,” Peterson said.

Anyone with information regarding this case is encouraged to contact Officer Perreault at 707-994-8251, Extension 519.

CLEARLAKE, Calif. – The lack of enough candidates for the three Clearlake City Council seats up for election in November will leave the current council members to look at options for filling that remaining seat in a special meeting next week.

Administrative Services Director/City Clerk Melissa Swanson said incumbent Joyce Overton and David Claffney, who serves on the city’s marketing committee, have qualified to run.

The seats up for election currently are held by Overton, who will be seeking a fifth term; Phil Harris; and Russel Perdock.

Harris had indicated he wasn’t planning to run and so didn’t file by the Aug. 7 deadline, which caused the deadline to be extended to 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Last week, City Manager Alan Flora told Lake County News that Perdock, along with Overton, had filed to seek reelection.

However, on Thursday Swanson reported that only Overton and Claffney had qualified for the November ballot.

She said Perdock failed to submit enough valid signatures to qualify.

To qualify, council candidates have to be nominated by not less than 20 nor more than 30 registered voters.

The same thing happened with Lakeport City Council incumbent Tim Barnes, as Lake County News has reported.

However, while Lakeport’s council has four candidates for the general election, Clearlake is now short by one.

“This is very unusual. I have talked to many clerks today and no one I have talked to has had this happen,” Swanson told Lake County News. “It can be common to appoint members, but there are always enough members who file.”

Swanson suggested that the pandemic’s impacts on civic engagement – including the lack of meetings for many community groups – has created “a very different election process this year.”

The council will consider options for filling the seat when it holds a special meeting at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 19.

Swanson reported that pursuant to California Elections Code Section 10229, if there are not more candidates than offices to be elected then the council can either appoint those candidates who have been nominated, appoint an eligible voter who hasn’t been nominated or go forward with holding an election.

In August 2018, when the filing deadline had closed for the Lakeport City Council, only incumbents Stacey Mattina and Mireya Turner had filed to run. Since they were unopposed, the council decided to forgo the expense of an election and appointed them to fill the seats for another term, as Lake County News has reported.

The Clearlake City Council could take similar action this time, based on election code.

The lack of enough candidates comes despite a discussion brought forward by Harris at last week’s meeting to raise the council’s monthly stipend, which currently is $300.

Harris said the raise – which the council reached consensus to have staff bring back as an ordinance at its next regular meeting later this month – is meant to draw more people to serve on the council.

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.