LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – An early Saturday morning structure fire resulted in two people being flown out to regional trauma centers for the treatment of burns.

The fire in the 7200 block of Liberty Street in Nice was first reported just before 3:20 a.m. Saturday, according to radio reports.

Northshore Fire personnel arriving at the scene minutes later reported finding a fully involved mobile home with multiple other structures threatened.

Incident command reported that the home’s residents said that everyone was out of the home and accounted for, based on radio traffic.

Firefighters found one person with third-degree burns on both hands and another with smoke inhalation. Incident command requested an air ambulance respond for the burn victim.

A short time later, Cal Fire dispatch reported receiving a request from another unit at the scene for a second air ambulance due to locating a second burn victim.

The air ambulances landed at the Sutter Lakeside Hospital’s helipad, first one from CalStar followed by one from REACH, according to radio reports.

The Northshore Fire ground ambulance with the two burn patients arrived at the landing zone just before 4:30 a.m., just head of incident command reporting that the fire had been knocked down.

Incident command estimated that firefighters would need to do a few hours of mop up.

Also responding to the scene were the Northshore Fire Support Team and Pacific Gas and Electric, according to radio traffic.

Incident command requested Red Cross respond to provide assistance for five adults and two children.

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.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – In June 2019, 31 Upward Bound Program seniors from Lower Lake and Upper Lake High Schools walked across the graduation stage having accomplished their four-year goal: College.

The students began the Upward Bound program as freshmen and participated in the college preparation program and elective class for all four years of high school.

These low-income, emerging first-generation college students learned how to turn their dreams into a reality.

In fact, 87 percent of the 2019 Upward Bound seniors enrolled in college by August 2019 as college freshmen, with 55 percent being accepted to and attending four-year universities.

Upward Bound is a federally-funded outreach and student services program in the United States designed to identify and provide services for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The services are administered, funded and implemented by the U.S. Department of Education.

Sonoma State was awarded this federal funding and administers the grant program in Lake County.

The Upward Bound Program in Lake County has undoubtedly changed the college-going percentage at Lower Lake and Upper Lake High Schools.

Upward Bound began at Lower Lake High School in 2008 and, since and, since then, has impacted eight graduating classes.

Program participants are tracked for six years following high school graduation and are expected to earn a degree in that time. In 2019, the first two cohorts of Upward Bound graduated from LLHS had reached that six-year mark.

While only 49 percent of low-income students complete their degree nation-wide (PELL recipients), 57 percent of these Upward Bound students had completed a degree. Program leaders said this is remarkable for Lake County, where the average degree completion rate is 16 percent.

After graduating from schools such as UC Santa Barbara and UC Merced, many students from the 2011 and 2013 cohorts have returned to Lake County as successful social workers, teachers and accountants.

The first cohort of Upward Bound graduates from Upper Lake High School will reach their six-year mark in 2020.

Upward Bound has high expectations for its newest graduates, class of 2019, who are attending schools such as UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Merced, Sacramento State, Chico State and many more including local community colleges.

Upward Bound program alumni and staff are working to create a nonprofit organization to give scholarships to Upward Bound seniors, for whom the finances of college are a serious barrier.

“These students have worked incredibly hard for four years to be accepted to a four-year university, and we do not want to see a lack of funds hold them back from achieving their dream,” said Program Director Shannon Smith.

For additional information or to donate to the Lake and Mendocino Upward Bound Scholarship fund, please contact Shannon Smith at 707-245-7972 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

MENDOCINO NATIONAL FOREST, Calif. – The Mendocino National Forest offers several fee-free days throughout the year at Forest Service managed campgrounds and the Red Bluff Recreation Area boat launch.

The fee waiver does not apply to campsites at Lake Pillsbury that are operated under concessionaire through PG&E, Sycamore Grove Campground at Red Bluff Recreation Area and Pine Mountain Lookout on the Upper Lake District.

The 2020 fee-free dates are:

– Feb. 17: President’s Day;
– June 13: National Get Outdoors Day;
– Sept. 26: National Public Lands Day;
– Nov. 11: Veterans Day.

“The Mendocino National Forest offers nearly one million acres to camp, hike, bird-watch and ride off-highway vehicles, just a three-hour drive north of Sacramento and San Francisco. We welcome families and friends to come and explore the Mendocino National Forest on these fee-free days,” Mendocino National Forest Supervisor Ann Carlson said.

In addition, all Mendocino National Forest offices (except for the Stonyford Work Center) will close Monday, Feb. 17, in observance of President’s Day and will resume regular business hours at 8 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 18.

The Stonyford Work Center will close Tuesday, Feb. 18, for the holiday and open at 8 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 19.

To prepare for a trip to the Mendocino, tell a friend or relative where you are going and when you are returning.

Carry emergency equipment and appropriate maps in your vehicle and remember that food, gas, and lodging are not available on the forest road network or within forest boundaries.

Roads are not plowed and cell phone coverage is not reliable in many areas of the forest.

For more information about the forest, please call 530-934-3316 or visit the website.

The Breakthrough Listen Initiative on Friday released data from the most comprehensive survey yet of radio emissions from the plane of the Milky Way Galaxy and the region around its central black hole, and it is inviting the public to search the data for signals from intelligent civilizations.

At a media briefing in Seattle as part of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or AAAS, Breakthrough Listen principal investigator Andrew Siemion of the University of California, Berkeley, announced the release of nearly two petabytes of data, the second data dump from the four-year old search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI.

A petabyte of radio and optical telescope data was released last June, the largest release of SETI data in the history of the field.

The data, most of it fresh from the telescope prior to detailed study from astronomers, comes from a survey of the radio spectrum between 1 and 12 gigahertz. About half of the data comes via the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia, which, because of its location in the Southern Hemisphere, is perfectly situated and instrumented to scan the entire galactic disk and galactic center.

The telescope is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility, owned and managed by the country’s national science agency, CSIRO.

The remainder of the data was recorded by the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, the world’s largest steerable radio dish, and an optical telescope called the Automated Planet Finder, built and operated by UC Berkeley and located at Lick Observatory outside San Jose, California.

“Since Breakthrough Listen’s initial data release last year, we have doubled what is available to the public,” said Breakthrough Listen’s lead system administrator, Matt Lebofsky. “It is our hope that these data sets will reveal something new and interesting, be it other intelligent life in the universe or an as-yet-undiscovered natural astronomical phenomenon.”

“For the whole of human history, we had a limited amount of data to search for life beyond Earth. So, all we could do was speculate. Now, as we are getting a lot of data, we can do real science and, with making this data available to the general public, so can anyone who wants to know the answer to this deep question,” said Yuri Milner, the founder of Breakthrough Listen.

Very Large Array joins SETI search

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory, or NRAO, and the privately-funded SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, also announced today an agreement to collaborate on new systems to add SETI capabilities to radio telescopes operated by NRAO.

The first project will develop a system to piggyback on the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, or VLA, in New Mexico and provide data to state-of-the-art digital backend equipment built by the SETI Institute.

"The SETI Institute will develop and install an interface on the VLA, permitting unprecedented access to the rich data stream continuously produced by the telescope as it scans the sky,“ said Siemion, who, in addition to his UC Berkeley position, is the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute. “This interface will allow us to conduct a powerful, wide-area SETI survey that will be vastly more complete than any previous such search."

"As the VLA conducts its usual scientific observations, this new system will allow for an additional and important use for the data we're already collecting," said NRAO Director Tony Beasley. “Determining whether we are alone in the universe as technologically capable life is among the most compelling questions in science, and NRAO telescopes can play a major role in answering it.”

Earth transit zone survey

In releasing the new radio and optical data, Siemion highlighted a new analysis of a small subset of the data: radio emissions from 20 nearby stars that are aligned with the plane of Earth’s orbit such that an advanced civilization around those stars could see Earth pass in front of the sun (a “transit” like those focused on by NASA’s Kepler space telescope).

Conducted by the Green Bank Telescope, the Earth transit zone survey observed in the radio frequency range between 4 and 8 gigahertz, the so-called C-band.

The data were then analyzed by former UC Berkeley undergraduate Sofia Sheikh, now a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University, who looked for bright emissions at a single radio wavelength or a narrow band around a single wavelength. She has submitted the paper to the Astrophysical Journal.

“This is a unique geometry,” Sheikh said. “It is how we discovered other exoplanets, so it kind of makes sense to extrapolate and say that that might be how other intelligent species find planets, as well. This region has been talked about before, but there has never been a targeted search of that region of the sky.”

While Sheikh and her team found no technosignatures of civilization, the analysis and other detailed studies the Breakthrough Listen group has conducted are gradually putting limits on the location and capabilities of advanced civilizations that may exist in our galaxy.

“We didn't find any aliens, but we are setting very rigorous limits on the presence of a technologically capable species, with data for the first time in the part of the radio spectrum between 4 and 8 gigahertz,” Siemion said. “These results put another rung on the ladder for the next person who comes along and wants to improve on the experiment.”

Sheikh noted that her mentor, Jason Wright at Penn State, estimated that if the world’s oceans represented every place and wavelength we could search for intelligent signals, we have, to date, explored only a hot tub’s worth of it.

“My search was sensitive enough to see a transmitter basically the same as the strongest transmitters we have on Earth, because I looked at nearby targets on purpose,” Sheikh said. “So, we know that there isn't anything as strong as our Arecibo telescope beaming something at us. Even though this is a very small project, we are starting to get at new frequencies and new areas of the sky.”

Beacons in the galactic center?

The so-far unanalyzed observations from the galactic disk and galactic center survey were a priority for Breakthrough Listen because of the higher likelihood of observing an artificial signal from that region of dense stars.

If artificial transmitters are not common in the galaxy, then searching for a strong transmitter among the billions of stars in the disk of our galaxy is the best strategy, Simeon said.

On the other hand, putting a powerful, intergalactic transmitter in the core of our galaxy, perhaps powered by the 4 million-solar-mass black hole there, might not be beyond the capabilities of a very advanced civilization. Galactic centers may be so-called Schelling points: likely places for civilizations to meet up or place beacons, given that they cannot communicate among themselves to agree on a location.

“The galactic center is the subject of a very specific and concerted campaign with all of our facilities because we are in unanimous agreement that that region is the most interesting part of the Milky Way galaxy,” Siemion said. “If an advanced civilization anywhere in the Milky Way wanted to put a beacon somewhere, getting back to the Schelling point idea, the galactic center would be a good place to do it. It is extraordinarily energetic, so one could imagine that if an advanced civilization wanted to harness a lot of energy, they might somehow use the supermassive black hole that is at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.”

Visit from an interstellar comet

Breakthrough Listen also released observations of the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov, which had a close encounter with the sun in December and is now on its way out of the solar system. The group had earlier scanned the interstellar rock ‘Oumuamua, which passed through the center of our solar system in 2017. Neither exhibited technosignatures.

“If interstellar travel is possible, which we don't know, and if other civilizations are out there, which we don't know, and if they are motivated to build an interstellar probe, then some fraction greater than zero of the objects that are out there are artificial interstellar devices,” said Steve Croft, a research astronomer with the Berkeley SETI Research Center and Breakthrough Listen. “Just as we do with our measurements of transmitters on extrasolar planets, we want to put a limit on what that number is.”

Regardless of the kind of SETI search, Siemion said, Breakthrough Listen looks for electromagnetic radiation that is consistent with a signal that we know technology produces, or some anticipated signal that technology could produce, and inconsistent with the background noise from natural astrophysical events. This also requires eliminating signals from cellphones, satellites, GPS, internet, Wi-fi and myriad other human sources.

In Sheikh’s case, she turned the Green Bank telescope on each star for five minutes, pointed away for another five minutes and repeated that twice more. She then threw out any signal that didn’t disappear when the telescope pointed away from the star. Ultimately, she whittled an initial 1 million radio spikes down to a couple hundred, which she was able to eliminate as Earth-based human interference. The last four unexplained signals turned out to be from passing satellites.

Siemion emphasized that the Breakthrough Listen team intends to analyze all the data released to date and to do it systematically and often.

“Of all the observations we have done, probably 20 percent or 30 percent have been included in a data analysis paper,” Siemion said. “Our goal is not just to analyze it 100 percent, but 1000 percent or 2000 percent. We want to analyze it iteratively.”

Breakthrough Listen, based at UC Berkeley, is supported by a $100 million, 10-year commitment from the Breakthrough Initiatives, founded in 2015 by Yuri and Julia Milner to explore the universe, seek scientific evidence of life beyond Earth and encourage public debate from a planetary perspective.

Robert Sanders writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – In an effort to gauge how it’s working with the community and those who live, work and visit there, the Lakeport Police Department is launching a new survey.

Chief Brad Rasmussen said the survey’s key points are community policing, law enforcement and procedural justice, or how police treat people and show concern.

The Lakeport Police Department is partnering with the Lakeport Economic Development Advisory Committee, or LEDAC, and Mendocino College Lake Center Police Community Relations class in rolling out the survey.

The online survey, available in both English and Spanish, can be found here.

For those who wish to print the survey out and fill it out on paper, it can be downloaded here.

Paper surveys also can be picked up and dropped off at the Lakeport Police Station, 2025 South Main Street, or at Lakeport City Hall, 225 Park St. Completed paper surveys can be faxed to 707-263-3846 or scanned and emailed to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The survey will be available at a town hall meeting on community policing to be held at Lakeport City Hall from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 5.

It’s not just for Lakeport residents and property owners. Rasmussen asks that people across the county take part, as he says that most residents come to Lakeport – the county seat – at some point for services or other reasons.

“The end goal is to try to get community feedback and better refine our community policing effort,” he said.

“We can’t get better without having feedback from the public to know how they think things are going,” Rasmussen added, noting that the community can offer valuable suggestions and share information about issues of which police aren’t yet aware.

“We know how we think we’re doing but we don’t necessarily know how the community thinks we’re doing in all areas of community policing,” Rasmussen said.

He estimated the last time the department did such a community survey was about 15 years ago, around the time his predecessor, Kevin Burke, took over as chief.

Increased emphasis on community policing

While it’s not a new idea, in recent decades there has been an increasing emphasis on community policing both locally and across the nation, Rasmussen said.

That effort has been guided in part by the United States Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, which issues educational materials and COPS grants that help fund officer positions.

In July, the Lakeport Police Department formally began additional community policing programs based on receiving a US Department of Justice COPs grant.

Rasmussen defines community policing as how the police department integrates and works within the community itself – building relationships with citizens, businesses, community service organizations and other government agencies, with common goals of promoting safety and welfare.

The more police can succeed at that kind of integration, the better they’ll be at solving crimes, he said.

“We’ve been practicing community policing forever, we just didn’t call it that,” Rasmussen said of his department.

Rasmussen hearkened back to Sir Robert Peel, a British prime minister who founded the Metropolitan Police Service and today is known as the father of modern British policing.

Peel summed up how police should act this way: “To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police.”

Rasmussen said it's a view that he and his officers share.

Community policing has become more formalized over the past decade, and it’s included events like National Night Out and the forming of more Neighborhood Watch groups in Lakeport.

Many survey participants wanted

The survey is adapted from one created by the US Department of Justice COPS office, Rasmussen explained.

Rasmussen said the survey, which should take about five minutes to complete, will ask participants about how officers treat people, and if they are fair, respectful, responsive and trustworthy.

The more trust the community has for the police, the better they’ll be able to provide public safety, Rasmussen said, as it will mean community members will be willing to work with the department and its officers.

Through the survey, Rasmussen said they’re hoping to reach every aspect of the community including groups they’ve not had as much contact with traditionally, such as the Hispanic community. The department now has Spanish-speaking officers on staff.

Rasmussen said the survey will be out for about six weeks, or until the start of April.

They need a minimum of 500 responses to have a valid survey. Rasmussen said he’s hoping to get about 1,000.

As the surveys come in, the 11 students in the criminal justice class will help in a variety of ways. Rasmussen said they will input paper surveys into the system and analyze the data as it arrives.

Rasmussen said Bill Eaton, a member of LEDAC and an expert in statistical analysis, will use his software to extract and analyze the data for the purpose of putting it into a report.

The criminal justice class, which will get real-world experience in a community policing project, will write a research paper on the survey before their term ends in the middle of May, Rasmussen said.

“We do plan to release all of this information to the public once it’s done,” he said.

He encourages people to fill out the survey and for them to ask others to do so, too.

“It’s their police department, we really need their input on how they think we’re doing,” he said.

For more information about this project, contact Chief Rasmussen by telephone at 707-263-9650 or email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – The First 5 Lake Commission received a report on its 2019 Kindergarten Entry Developmental Profile study at its January meeting, and the results show that a book gifting program founded by country music legend Dolly Parton is helping children get ready for school.

The report was written and presented by evaluation consultant, Crystal Duarte of Social Entrepreneurs Inc. in Reno, Nevada.

Lake County’s Kindergarten Entry Developmental Profile, or KEDP, is a joint effort with Lake County Office of Education and involves a structured process whereby teachers observe the students in their classroom during the first few months of the new school year and then rate each child’s developmental level according to 15 indicators across five skill areas.

Those areas are social/interpersonal, language comprehension and expression, cognitive competence, math skills and literacy skills.

The study has been conducted annually since 2008 and reports are published on the First 5 Lake website and presented at a regular meeting of the First 5 Lake Commission as a way of tracking the school readiness of incoming students and to help guide investments.

In 2019, 12 schools participated in the KEDP with 31 kindergarten and transitional kindergarten, or TK, teachers completing assessments of their students, for a total of 637 children, or 74 percent of all children enrolled in TK and kindergarten in Lake County.

One key finding from the 2019 KEDP was the correlation of increased school readiness with previous participation in the Imagination Library.

The Imagination Library program, founded by Parton in 1990, distributes one free book per month to children from birth to their fifth birthday, regardless of income.

First 5 Lake County has been a major funder of this program for several years in an effort to increase early literacy and provide opportunities for parents to read and bond with their children.

In 2019, 106 of the 520 assessed kindergartners were known to be participating in this program. The study shows that the percentage of developmental indicators rated as “school ready” for students participating in Imagination Library are higher across all five skill areas than those for students who did not participate in the program.

The report cautions that the study’s findings cannot be used to attribute causation, “Although children who participate in Imagination Library had higher percentages of developmental indicators rated as ‘school ready,’ families that are interested in enrolling their children in the program may also be more likely to enroll their children in other activities or engage in more educational activities at home.”

Additional comparisons were made in the report based on previous early childhood education experiences, age, ethnicity, gender, language and school district.

The 2019 ratings continued the trend seen in 2018 with increases in percentages of school readiness across virtually all skill areas for both kindergarten and TK students.

With the highest areas of readiness being Math (65%) and Literacy (58%), and Social/Interpersonal (53%) as the area of least readiness.

The full KEDP report and the presentation slides shared by Social Entrepreneur’s Inc. can be read and downloaded at http://www.firstfivelake.org/reports.php.

While the Imagination Library books are mailed free to children, there is an associated cost to the Lake County Office of Education of $25 per child, per year.

Administered by LCOE, this program is funded by donations from local businesses, community organizations and individuals.

To learn more about enrolling a child in the Imagination Library or supporting the program with your donations, go to https://www.lakecoe.org/Imagination_Library.

CLEARLAKE, Calif. – Clearlake Animal Control is offering several new dogs to those looking for their four-legged Valentines this week.

The kennels also have many dogs that need to be reunited with their owners. To find the lost/found pet section, click here.

The following dogs are ready for adoption.

‘Barkley’

“Barkley” is a male American Pit Bull Terrier mix with a short red coat.

He is dog No. 3528.

‘Blue’

“Blue” is a female Staffordshire Bull Terrier with a short blue and white coat.

He has been neutered.

He is dog No. 2420.

‘Blue’

This dog, also named “Blue,” is a male pit bull terrier mix with a short white and brindle coat.

He has been neutered.

He is dog No. 3539.

‘Bonbon’

“Bonbon” is a male pit bull terrier mix with a red coat and white markings.

He is dog No. 3606.

‘Duchess’

“Duchess” is a female Chihuahua mix puppy with a short tan coat and white markings.

She is dog No. 3618.

‘King’

“King” is a male purebred Staffordshire Bull Terrier with a short brindle coat.

He has been neutered.

He is dog No. 3034.

‘Lola’

“Lola” is a female pit bull terrier mix with a short red and white coat.

She has been spayed.

She is dog No. 3337.

‘Mack’

“Mack” is a male Labrador Retriever mix with a short black coat and white markings.

He has been neutered.

He is dog No. 3570.

‘Phoebe’

“Phoebe” is a female American Pit Bull Terrier mix with a short black and white coat.

She is dog No. 3483.

‘Roxy’

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

She has been spayed.

She is dog No. 3545.

‘Savannah’

“Savannah” is a female Rhodesian Ridgeback mix with a short brindle coat.

She has been spayed.

Savannah is dog No. 3625.

‘Woodrow’

“Woodrow” is a male Staffordshire Bull Terrier with a black and white coat.

He is dog No. 3281.

Clearlake Animal Control’s shelter is located at 6820 Old Highway 53, off Airport Road.

Hours of operation are noon to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. The shelter is closed Sundays, Mondays and major holidays; the shelter offers appointments on the days it’s closed to accommodate people.

Call the Clearlake Animal Control shelter at 707-273-9440, or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to inquire about adoptions.

Visit Clearlake Animal Control on Facebook or at the city’s Web site.

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.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – The four candidates seeking to win the District 5 supervisorial seat in the March primary will take part in a public forum next week.

The event, hosted by Lake County News, will take place beginning at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 19, in the Board of Supervisors chambers on the first floor of the Lake County Courthouse, 255 N. Forbes St. in Lakeport.

Four candidates are seeking to succeed longtime District 5 Supervisor Rob Brown, who chose not to seek reelection.

Running for the seat are Kevin Ahajanian of Cobb; retired pharmacist Bill Kearney of Kelseyville; Jessica Pyska, an educator from Cobb; and Lily Woll, an English as a second language and Spanish teacher, from Kelseyville.

During the forum, they will answer a round of at least 10 questions.

Community members may submit questions at the event or by emailing moderator Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The forum also will be recorded and posted online.

In the span of 141 years of climate records, there has never been a warmer January than last month, according to scientists at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

What’s more, the temperature departure from average was the highest monthly departure ever recorded without an El Niño present in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

January 2020 marked the 44th consecutive January and the 421st consecutive month with temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th-century average.

NOAA’s January global climate report found that the global land and ocean surface temperature was the highest on record at 2.05 degrees F (1.14 degrees C) above the 20th-century average. This surpassed the record set in January 2016 by 0.04 of a degree F (0.02 of a degree C).

The four warmest Januaries documented in the climate record have occurred since 2016; the 10 warmest have all occurred since 2002.

Breaking the month down by hemispheres, the Northern Hemisphere also had its warmest January on record, at 2.70 degrees F (1.50 degrees C) above average.

The Southern Hemisphere had a departure of 1.40 degrees F (0.78 of a degree C) above average – its second-warmest January on record after January 2016.

Mapping released with the report showed that it was the fifth-warmest January recorded for the contiguous 48 states, all of which had higher-than-average temperatures, while Alaska was colder.

More notable climate events in the January report:

– Lots of regional heat to go around. Record-warm temperatures were seen across parts of Scandinavia, Asia, the Indian Ocean, the central and western Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, and Central and South America. No land or ocean areas had record-cold January temperatures.

– Polar sea ice coverage remained smaller than normal. Arctic sea ice extent (coverage) was 5.3 percent below the 1981-2010 average, tying with 2014 as the eighth-smallest January extent in the 42-year record. Antarctic sea ice coverage during January was 9.8 percent below the average and tied with January 2011 as the 10th smallest.

– Snow cover was lacking. Northern Hemisphere snow coverage was below the 1981-2010 average, having the 18th-smallest January snow cover in the 54-year record.

For a map of the world noting some of the most significant weather climate events that occurred during January 2020, visit here.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – Middletown High School clinched top honors on Wednesday during the eighth annual Lake County Mock Trial Competition.

Middletown edged Upper Lake in the event, held at the Lake County Superior Court.

Middletown High now advances to the state finals in Los Angeles March 20 to 22.

During the Mock Trial, the teams take turns prosecuting and defending a fictional court case.

The Constitutional Rights Foundation, the organization that founded the Mock Trial, reported that this year’s case, “People v. Matsumoto,” concerns the trial of Bailey Matsumoto, the founder of a technology start-up that develops autonomous, or self-driving, trucks.

The fictional court case trial brief explains: “Bailey is charged with the murder of Bailey’s spouse, Taylor Matsumoto. The prosecution alleges that after Taylor’s son Michael died in a tragic accident using one of Bailey’s malfunctioning autonomous scooters, Taylor founded an organization called Parents Against Autonomous Driving (PAAD). Taylor’s involvement in PAAD began to financially impact Bailey’s autonomous truck company. The prosecution further argues that Bailey’s and Taylor’s relationship rapidly deteriorated. Just days before Taylor was set to testify in Washington, D.C., in support of a bill titled National Moratorium on Autonomous Technologies, Taylor was found dead, face down in Taylor’s bathtub. The prosecution claims that Bailey murdered Taylor with premeditation in order to prevent Taylor from testifying and to stop PAAD from succeeding.”

While the prosecution claimed that Bailey provided an already inebriated Taylor with alcohol, then hit Taylor on the head with a golf club – later found in Bailey’s car – causing Taylor to fall into the bathtub and drown, the defense argued that Taylor’s death was not a murder but was instead an unfortunate accident.

In the lead up to Wednesday’s county competition, both teams took part in a Mock Trial Scrimmage in mid-January against Mendocino County teams, according to Beth Hampson of the Lake County Office of Education.

On Wednesday, 35 students from Middletown and Upper Lake high schools participated.

Along the way, teachers and coaches have helped them prepare arguments and evidence, and practice their presentations for the county competition through Mock Trial classes at their schools, Hampson said.

For Middletown, teacher coach Lee Hoage and attorney coaches Jon Hopkins and Janina Hoskins have guided students, with teacher coaches Alex Stabiner and Anna Sabalone, and attorney coach Judy Conard helping the Upper Lake team.

Hampson said this year’s competition was made possible with the support of volunteer Judge J. David Markham, who heard the arguments, and volunteer attorney scorers Daniel Flesch, Megan Lankford and Kaly Rule.

Individual recognition was given to the following students for outstanding performances in the Mock Trial. They include:

– Outstanding Prosecution Pretrial Motion Attorney: Alana Sanchez, Upper Lake High School.
– Outstanding Defense Attorney: Erica Kinsel, Middletown High School.
– Outstanding Prosecution Attorney: Henry Fenk, Middletown High School.
– Outstanding Defense Witness: Jasmine Haro, Upper Lake High School.
– Outstanding Prosecution Witness: Richard Guaydacan, Upper Lake High School.
– Outstanding Clerk/Bailiff: Richard Perez, Upper Lake High School.

The Lake County Bar Association and Lake County Friends of Mendocino College are supporting Middletown High’s trip to Los Angeles for the state event.

Lake County’s Mock Trial competition is run in partnership with the Constitutional Rights Foundation, Superior Court of California, Lake County, and Lake County Office of Education.

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.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The latest numbers from a countywide survey of people experiencing homelessness conducted last month shows an increase in the numbers.

The Point In Time Count, which took place on Jan. 27, counted 572 homeless individuals, according to the Lake County Continuum of Care.

That’s compared to 372 homeless individuals reported in 2019.

Other past PIT count numbers had the following totals, according to previous reports to Lake County News: 2018, 618 homeless; 2017, 450 homeless; 2016, 332 homeless; 2015, 170 homeless; 2014, full count not conducted; and 2013, 188 homeless.

Of the 572 individuals who were reported to be homeless in the January count, 295 were male, 199 were female and 20 refused to identify their gender or were reported as “other.”

In an age breakdown, 99 were older than 55 years of age, 316 were ages 25 to 55, 38 were age 18 to 24, and 29 were under age 18, the count found.

The oldest person the count found to be homeless was 94, a fact which Shannon Kimbell-Auth, Adventist Health Clear Lake’s manager for community integration, said was a finding that broke her heart. The youngest was 5 months old, based on the report.

Kimbell-Auth said the number of children reported as homeless is the lowest they have ever seen in doing the PIT counts and is not at all consistent with McKinny-Vento reporting from the school district.

The report did not give specific numbers for the various communities, but based on a graph the report included, the largest number of homeless, about 240, were reported in Clearlake, followed by 100 in Lakeport, more than 80 in Lucerne, more than 40 in Middletown, more than 30 each in Clearlake Oaks and Upper Lake, less than 20 each in Kelseyville and Nice, and less than 10 in Lower Lake.

The individuals included in the count reported living an average of nearly 18 years in Lake County. Those who said they had family in Lake County totaled 207, with 50 reported experiencing homelessness due to domestic violence, 82 had been served by foster care and 182 said they were homeless for the first time.

Kimbell-Auth said in past years the average length of time the individuals surveyed reported as having lived in Lake County was between 12 and 16 years.

“For the average time to be 18 years shows that while some of the homelessness is transitory, it is predominantly a homegrown problem,” she said. “Likewise 207 people reporting they have family here is startling.”

Forty-one people surveyed in the county reported they are veterans. Kimbell-Auth said that is good news for the purpose of pursuing vouchers through the HUD-VASH Program, which offers rental assistance for homeless veterans and their families with case management and clinical services provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs at its medical centers. Clearlake is home to a VA Clinic.

Of the 572 individuals counted, 130 reported ongoing health problems: diabetes, 25; heart disease, 22; cancer, nine.

Of those surveyed, 177 reported having been made homeless by one of Lake County’s wildland fires.

Out of that group, 107 identified specific fires responsible for their homelessness: Mendocino Complex, 38; Valley fire, 33; Sulphur fire, 18; Clayton fire, seven; Rocky/Jerusalem, six; Pawnee, one; other (Santa Rosa, Camp fire), four.

The count surveyors asked participants, “Where did you sleep last night?

They received the following answers:

– 348: A place not meant for habitation, which includes tents, cars, abandoned or red-tagged buildings, trailers or RVs without power or water, in a bush, etc.
– 10: Emergency voucher.
– 1: Hospital.
– 2: Halfway house.
– 3: Hotel, no voucher.
– 14: Transitional housing.
– 2: Host home.
– 70: Friends, temporary.
– 11: Friends, permanent.
– 42: Family, temporary.
– 2: Family, permanent.
– 6: Other.

The count’s numbers don’t match with another dataset provided by Partnership HealthPlan of California, which Kimbell-Auth had presented to the Clearlake City Council last month during its discussion of supporting the Hope Center project.

Partnership HealthPlan of California reported that 3,370 individuals who have its insurance and sought medical care in Lake County from January through November of 2019 identified their address as homeless, camping, living in a car or on the streets.

“The Partnership Health Plan numbers are so far greater than what we are able to capture tells me that the urgency to solve the lack of adequate affordable housing cannot be denied,” Kimbell-Auth said.

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.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – A Glenhaven man was seriously injured Tuesday in a motorcycle crash on Highway 20 in Clearlake Oaks.

Karl Pentz, 57, sustained major injuries in the wreck, which occurred just before 8 p.m. Tuesday, according to the California Highway Patrol’s Clear Lake Area office.

The CHP said that Pentz was driving a red 2001 Harley Davidson motorcycle westbound on Highway 20, just west of Island Drive in Clearlake Oaks.

Pentz was within the westbound lane, traveling at an unknown speed, when his motorcycle crossed over the double yellow lines. The CHP said he crossed the eastbound lane of Highway 20 before the motorcycle ran into a raised brick and rock wall bordering the south road edge.

After hitting the wall, Pentz was thrown from the motorcycle and sustained major injuries, the CHP said.

The motorcycle continued sliding westbound on Highway 20 and came to rest within the westbound lane, according to the CHP report.

The CHP said Pentz, who was wearing a helmet, was life-flighted to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital for treatment of his injuries.

Neither drugs nor alcohol are suspected of being factors in the crash, the CHP said.

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.