History > 2007 > USA > Nature, Wildlife, Climate, Weather (I)

Honeybees Vanish,

Leaving Crops and Keepers in Peril

February 27, 2007
The New York Times
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

VISALIA, Calif., Feb. 23 — David Bradshaw has endured countless stings during his life as a beekeeper, but he got the shock of his career when he opened his boxes last month and found half of his 100 million bees missing.

In 24 states throughout the country, beekeepers have gone through similar shocks as their bees have been disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate, threatening not only their livelihoods but also the production of numerous crops, including California almonds, one of the nation’s most profitable.

“I have never seen anything like it,” Mr. Bradshaw, 50, said from an almond orchard here beginning to bloom. “Box after box after box are just empty. There’s nobody home.”

The sudden mysterious losses are highlighting the critical link that honeybees play in the long chain that gets fruit and vegetables to supermarkets and dinner tables across the country.

Beekeepers have fought regional bee crises before, but this is the first national affliction.

Now, in a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie, bees are flying off in search of pollen and nectar and simply never returning to their colonies. And nobody knows why. Researchers say the bees are presumably dying in the fields, perhaps becoming exhausted or simply disoriented and eventually falling victim to the cold.

As researchers scramble to find answers to the syndrome they have decided to call “colony collapse disorder,” growers are becoming openly nervous about the capability of the commercial bee industry to meet the growing demand for bees to pollinate dozens of crops, from almonds to avocados to kiwis.

Along with recent stresses on the bees themselves, as well as on an industry increasingly under consolidation, some fear this disorder may force a breaking point for even large beekeepers.

A Cornell University study has estimated that honeybees annually pollinate more than $14 billion worth of seeds and crops in the United States, mostly fruits, vegetables and nuts. “Every third bite we consume in our diet is dependent on a honeybee to pollinate that food,” said Zac Browning, vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation.

The bee losses are ranging from 30 to 60 percent on the West Coast, with some beekeepers on the East Coast and in Texas reporting losses of more than 70 percent; beekeepers consider a loss of up to 20 percent in the offseason to be normal.

Beekeepers are the nomads of the agriculture world, working in obscurity in their white protective suits and frequently trekking around the country with their insects packed into 18-wheelers, looking for pollination work.

Once the domain of hobbyists with a handful of backyard hives, beekeeping has become increasingly commercial and consolidated. Over the last two decades, the number of beehives, now estimated by the Agriculture Department to be 2.4 million, has dropped by a quarter and the number of beekeepers by half.

Pressure has been building on the bee industry. The costs to maintain hives, also known as colonies, are rising along with the strain on bees of being bred to pollinate rather than just make honey. And beekeepers are losing out to suburban sprawl in their quest for spots where bees can forage for nectar to stay healthy and strong during the pollination season.

“There are less beekeepers, less bees, yet more crops to pollinate,” Mr. Browning said. “While this sounds sweet for the bee business, with so much added loss and expense due to disease, pests and higher equipment costs, profitability is actually falling.”

Some 15 worried beekeepers convened in Florida this month to brainstorm with researchers how to cope with the extensive bee losses. Investigators are exploring a range of theories, including viruses, a fungus and poor bee nutrition.

They are also studying a group of pesticides that were banned in some European countries to see if they are somehow affecting bees’ innate ability to find their way back home.

It could just be that the bees are stressed out. Bees are being raised to survive a shorter offseason, to be ready to pollinate once the almond bloom begins in February. That has most likely lowered their immunity to viruses.

Mites have also damaged bee colonies, and the insecticides used to try to kill mites are harming the ability of queen bees to spawn as many worker bees. The queens are living half as long as they did just a few years ago.

Researchers are also concerned that the willingness of beekeepers to truck their colonies from coast to coast could be adding to bees’ stress, helping to spread viruses and mites and otherwise accelerating whatever is afflicting them.

Dennis van Engelsdorp, a bee specialist with the state of Pennsylvania who is part of the team studying the bee colony collapses, said the “strong immune suppression” investigators have observed “could be the AIDS of the bee industry,” making bees more susceptible to other diseases that eventually kill them off.

Growers have tried before to do without bees. In past decades, they have used everything from giant blowers to helicopters to mortar shells to try to spread pollen across the plants. More recently researchers have been trying to develop “self-compatible” almond trees that will require fewer bees. One company is even trying to commercialize the blue orchard bee, which is virtually stingless and works at colder temperatures than the honeybee.

Beekeepers have endured two major mite infestations since the 1980s, which felled many hobbyist beekeepers, and three cases of unexplained disappearing disorders as far back as 1894. But those episodes were confined to small areas, Mr. van Engelsdorp said.

Today the industry is in a weaker position to deal with new stresses. A flood of imported honey from China and Argentina has depressed honey prices and put more pressure on beekeepers to take to the road in search of pollination contracts. Beekeepers are trucking tens of billions of bees around the country every year.

California’s almond crop, by far the biggest in the world, now draws more than half of the country’s bee colonies in February. The crop has been both a boon to commercial beekeeping and a burden, as pressure mounts for the industry to fill growing demand. Now spread over 580,000 acres stretched across 300 miles of California’s Central Valley, the crop is expected to grow to 680,000 acres by 2010.

Beekeepers now earn many times more renting their bees out to pollinate crops than in producing honey. Two years ago a lack of bees for the California almond crop caused bee rental prices to jump, drawing beekeepers from the East Coast.

This year the price for a bee colony is about $135, up from $55 in 2004, said Joe Traynor, a bee broker in Bakersfield, Calif.

A typical bee colony ranges from 15,000 to 30,000 bees. But beekeepers’ costs are also on the rise. In the past decade, fuel, equipment and even bee boxes have doubled and tripled in price.

The cost to control mites has also risen, along with the price of queen bees, which cost about $15 each, up from $10 three years ago.

To give bees energy while they are pollinating, beekeepers now feed them protein supplements and a liquid mix of sucrose and corn syrup carried in tanker-sized trucks costing $12,000 per load. Over all, Mr. Bradshaw figures, in recent years he has spent $145 a hive annually to keep his bees alive, for a profit of about $11 a hive, not including labor expenses. The last three years his net income has averaged $30,000 a year from his 4,200 bee colonies, he said.

“A couple of farmers have asked me, ‘Why are you doing this?’ ” Mr. Bradshaw said. “I ask myself the same thing. But it is a job I like. It is a lifestyle. I work with my dad every day. And now my son is starting to work with us.”

Almonds fetch the highest prices for bees, but if there aren’t enough bees to go around, some growers may be forced to seek alternatives to bees or change their variety of trees.

“It would be nice to know that we have a dependable source of honey bees,” said Martin Hein, an almond grower based in Visalia. “But at this point I don’t know that we have that for the amount of acres we have got.”

To cope with the losses, beekeepers have been scouring elsewhere for bees to fulfill their contracts with growers. Lance Sundberg, a beekeeper from Columbus, Mont., said he spent $150,000 in the last two weeks buying 1,000 packages of bees — amounting to 14 million bees — from Australia.

He is hoping the Aussie bees will help offset the loss of one-third of the 7,600 hives he manages in six states. “The fear is that when we mix the bees the die-offs will continue to occur,” Mr. Sundberg said.

Migratory beekeeping is a lonely life that many compare to truck driving. Mr. Sundberg spends more than half the year driving 20 truckloads of bees around the country. In Terra Bella, an hour south of Visalia, Jack Brumley grimaced from inside his equipment shed as he watched Rosa Patiño use a flat tool to scrape dried honey from dozens of beehive frames that once held bees. Some 2,000 empty boxes — which once held one-third of his total hives — were stacked to the roof.

Beekeepers must often plead with landowners to allow bees to be placed on their land to forage for nectar. One large citrus grower has pushed for California to institute a “no-fly zone” for bees of at least two miles to prevent them from pollinating a seedless form of Mandarin orange.

But the quality of forage might make a difference. Last week Mr. Bradshaw used a forklift to remove some of his bee colonies from a spot across a riverbed from orange groves. Only three of the 64 colonies there have died or disappeared.

“It will probably take me two to three more years to get back up,” he said. “Unless I spend gobs of money I don’t have.”

Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Crops and Keepers in Peril, NYT, 27.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/business/27bees.html

Snow blamed for 7 deaths in Wis.,

closes roads in Plains

Updated 2/24/2007
10:00 PM ET
AP
USA Today

DENVER (AP) — A large, fast-moving snowstorm closed sections of major highways on the Plains on Saturday, dumped more than a foot of snow on the Upper Midwest and caused seven traffic deaths in Wisconsin.

The storms knocked out power to more than 145,000 customers, mostly in Iowa, where freezing rain coated trees, power and utility lines. Outages were also reported in Oklahoma and Nebraska.

"The snow is so wet it's sticking to power poles and power lines," said Bill Taylor of the National Weather Service office in North Platte, Neb.

As the massive system moved through the region, fierce winds tossed cars into trees, destroyed businesses and yanked mobile homes off the ground in southern Arkansas. At least 27 people were injured.

Earlier Saturday in Colorado, Interstate 70, a major cross-country route, was closed for about 400 miles in both directions from just east of Denver to Salina, Kan., because of blowing snow and slippery pavement.

Between Denver and the beginning of the highway closure, about 35 cars collided in a pileup in whiteout conditions on an icy section of I-70. No major injuries were reported.

The weather service reported wind gusts of 68 mph in the Denver area. In Kansas, winds whipped about 3 inches of snowfall into 7-foot drifts.

A number of other highways also were closed in Wyoming and Nebraska. But many roads reopened later Saturday, including most of Interstate 80 in Nebraska. More than 270 miles there had been closed.

The weather service posted blizzard and winter storm warnings for parts of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, northern Illinois and Wisconsin.

Between 15 inches to 18 inches of snow had fallen between Winona, Minn., and La Crosse, Wis., by Saturday evening, the National Weather Service reported.

Airlines canceled 230 arrivals and departures at Chicago's O'Hare International and 40 at Midway in anticipation of snow, sleet and freezing rain, said Wendy Abrams, Chicago's aviation department spokeswoman.

United Airlines planned to cancel all flights at O'Hare after 7 p.m., spokeswoman Robin Urbanski said.

Associated Press writers Oskar Garcia in Omaha, Steve Brisendine in Kansas City, Karen Hawkins in Chicago and Jon Gambrell in Dumas, Ark., also contributed to this report.

    Snow blamed for 7 deaths in Wis., closes roads in Plains, UT, 24.2.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/weather/stormcenter/2007-02-24-bigstorm_x.htm

Winter storm leaves

freezing temperatures,

mounds of snow behind

Updated 2/15/2007 2:24 PM ET
AP
USA Today

NORTHFIELD, Ohio (AP) — The monster snow and ice storm that hit the Midwest and Northeast blew out to sea, leaving behind huge snow piles, frigid temperatures, highway logjams Thursday. The storm was blamed for at least 15 deaths.

In Pennsylvania, National Guard vehicles loaded with food, water, baby supplies and fuel delivered help to hundreds of motorists stranded on Interstate 78 Wednesday night and Thursday morning while crews try clear up a 50-mile backup on the icy, hilly highway.

The Guard began helping the motorists at about 9 p.m. Wednesday and was still at it more than 12 hours later, said Lt. Col. Chris Cleaver, a Guard spokesman.

Utilities reported more than 95,000 homes and businesses without electricity early Thursday in Ohio, Kentucky, Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia and Delaware because of high wind and iced-up power lines.

The storm hit Wednesday, leaving up to 12 inches of snow across Pennsylvania, 15 inches in Cleveland, 19 inches in western Massachusetts and 42 inches in the southern Adirondacks in New York. Three feet of snow fell on parts of Vermont, good news for the state's beleaguered ski industry. Nearly 2 feet fell on parts of New Hampshire.

In parts of the Northeast, the snow was followed by up to several inches of ice, leaving motorists with a slippery commute Thursday morning. That is, if they could free their ice-entombed cars. And with gusty wind, some areas had morning wind chills below zero.

"You can't even shovel it," said Wes Velker, an electrician who had to dig out from a foot of snow so he could go to work fixing busted water pipes and furnaces in Toledo, Ohio. "You have to take it off in layers."

Many school districts, including many across upstate New York, which had canceled classes Wednesday, extended the unplanned vacation by an extra day.

Federal and local government offices were expected to open at their regularly scheduled times, but some employees were offered unscheduled leave.

Upstate New Yorkers woke up Thursday to sunny but frigid conditions a day after the big storm. Temperatures near or below zero combined with brisk wind drove the wind chill down to minus 10 to 20 degrees across the upstate region.

Amtrak canceled some service west of Albany on Thursday because blowing snow was interfering with switching and signals.

Businesses that closed during the snowy onslaught reopened Thursday morning, but customers were slow in coming. Professor Java's in Albany — normally buzzing with customers on weekday mornings — had only two men sipping coffee.

"We'll pick up again this weekend," said owner Frank Figliomeni. "We'll get skiers."

At least 15 deaths were blamed on the huge storm system: three in Nebraska; two each in Indiana, New Jersey and Delaware; and one each in Missouri, New York, Ohio and Virginia. A tornado on the southern side of the weather system killed one person in Louisiana. A motorist in New Hampshire was killed Thursday morning on icy I-93, the site of numerous accidents.

There were hundreds of accidents across the East on Wednesday. The Ohio State Highway Patrol alone handled more than 1,200, but injuries were few because most vehicle were moving slowly.

Hundreds of flights were canceled Wednesday at the New York City area's three major airports, with some passengers trapped on grounded planes for as many as 11 hours. Cancelations also were reported in Albany, N.Y.; Portland, Maine; Boston; Washington; Chicago; Philadelphia; Cincinnati; and Indianapolis. By Wednesday evening, all had reopened, though some Thursday flights were canceled.

Two teenagers in Windham, Maine, were trapped for about four hours Wednesday evening after a plow truck smashed the snow fort they had built in a church parking lot, authorities said. One of the boys was treated for hypothermia.

The winter blast was good news for outdoor enthusiasts and businesses who have felt cheated by Mother Nature for most of the until-now mild winter.

In Vermont, 25.7 inches fell Wednesday at Burlington International Airport, the second-highest total ever. That led the founder of Burton Snowboards in Burlington to give employees the day off Thursday.

"Nothing makes me happier than giving the people who work here the opportunity to experience the essence of a sport that they are making accessible and fun for so many others," Jake Burton said.

In Toledo, Ohio, Derrick Jones managed to deliver red roses and heart-shaped balloons even though authorities had ordered everyone but emergency workers to stay off the roads.

It earned him a $50 tip. "Rules are made to broken," he said, driving along a deserted downtown street. "Valentine's Day is a once-a-year event."

The icy weather got Maeve Hughes' Valentine wedding day off to a rocky start when her pickup skidded off Interstate 91 in Massachusetts. But she wasn't hurt, and went ahead with her civil ceremony to wed fellow musician Backa Niang in Northhampton.

"I consider the accident a test," she said. "How badly do I want this? I want this really badly. Nothing's going to stop me from getting married."

Contributing: Associated Press writers Adam Gorlick in Northampton, Mass.; Vicki Smith in Morgantown, W.Va.; Clarke Canfield in Portland, Maine; John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio; Rachel Hoag in Columbus, Ohio; James Hannah in Dayton, Ohio; and Thomas J. Sheeran in Cleveland contributed to this report.

    Winter storm leaves freezing temperatures, mounds of snow behind, UT, 15.2.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/weather/stormcenter/2007-02-15-snowstorm-recovery_x.htm

Severe Storm Adds to Troubles

in New Orleans

February 14, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 13 (AP) — A powerful storm overturned FEMA trailers and tore apart businesses early Tuesday, heaping more misery on neighborhoods still trying to recover from Hurricane Katrina. An 85-year-old woman who had nearly finished remodeling her hurricane-damaged home died in the storm.

Dozens of homes and buildings in New Orleans and across the river in Westwego were ripped apart by what appeared to have been a tornado, and about 30 people were reported injured, city and parish officials said.

“There is just so much destruction,” said Mayor Robert Billiot of Westwego.

The wind tore the roof off one Westwego hotel, collapsed homes and tossed around trailers supplied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In New Orleans, at least 10 to 15 buildings were destroyed, said James Ross, a spokesman for Mayor C. Ray Nagin.

Radar data provided “pretty convincing evidence there was a tornado,” said Robert Ricks of the National Weather Service.

Mike Wiener, a FEMA spokesman, said the agency had assessment teams in the areas affected by the storm. “Right now our concern is with the safety of the travel-trailer residents,” Mr. Wiener said. “We’re going to get them adequate housing as soon as possible, whether it be a hotel room or another trailer.”

Another storm hit south-central Louisiana, damaging buildings in New Iberia and on the outskirts of Breaux Bridge in St. Martin Parish, but it did less damage, and there were no reports of injuries.

In the Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans, the 85-year-old woman, Stella Chambers, died after winds slammed into her FEMA trailer, ripping apart the trailer and her newly renovated home and scattering debris over 200 feet.

Hellean Lewis, a neighbor of Ms. Chambers, said the woman’s daughter had banged on her door. “Her face and head were covered with blood,” Ms. Lewis said. “It was running down her side. She was crying and screaming, ‘Help me! I can’t find my mother!’ ”

Ms. Lewis said her son went through the debris and found Ms. Chambers, who at that point was still alive and crying for her daughter.

In Westwego, Tanya Clark, 38, sorted through the rubble that had been her home, looking for whatever she could salvage. Ms. Clark’s left arm was in a sling because her shoulder had been dislocated when the storm threw her 10 to 15 yards. Her son, Blaise, had a gash on his jaw. They had not been able to find their dog and two cats.

“I just hope I don’t find my pets under all of this,” she said.

    Severe Storm Adds to Troubles in New Orleans, NYT, 14.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/us/14tornado.html

Apparent tornado rips through

New Orleans area, killing one,

injuring 15

Updated 2/13/2007 11:56 AM ET
AP
By Kevin McGill, Associated Press Writer
USA Today

NEW ORLEANS — A powerful storm and likely a tornado hit the New Orleans area early Tuesday, killing an elderly woman, injuring at least 15 other people, and damaging dozens of business and homes in a region still trying to recover from Hurricane Katrina.

An 85-year-old woman died in the city's Gentilly neighborhood, one of the areas hit hardest by Katrina 18 months earlier.

Another storm cell hit south-central Louisiana, damaging buildings in New Iberia and on the outskirts of Breaux Bridge in St. Martin Parish, but it did less damage and there were no reports of injuries.

VIDEO: New Orleans hit by possible tornado

In the New Orleans area, FEMA trailers were tossed around, homes collapsed, and the wind tore the roof off a hotel across the river in Westwego. At least 10 structures were destroyed in New Orleans, said James Ross, a spokesman for Mayor Ray Nagin. Dozens of other homes and businesses were damaged in Westwego, Mayor Robert Billiot said.

"There is just so much destruction," Billiot said.

In New Orleans' Gentilly neighborhood, Stella Chambers died after the twister slammed into her FEMA trailer, ripping it and their newly renovated home apart and scattering debris about 200 feet to the Industrial Canal levee.

Neighbor Helean Lewis said Chambers' daughter banged on her door. "Her face and head were covered with blood. It was running down her side. She was crying and screaming, 'Help me! I can't find my mother!"' Lewis said.

Lewis said her son went through the debris and found Chambers, still alive and crying for her daughter.

"Her body was just all mangled," Lewis said.

In Westwego, Tanya Clark, 38, sorted through the pile of rubble that had been her home, looking for whatever she could salvage. Her left arm was in a sling because the shoulder was dislocated when the storm threw her 10 to 15 yards. Her son, Blaise, had a gash on his jaw. They hadn't been able to find their chihuahua and two cats.

"I just hope I don't find my pets under all of this," she said.

Clark said she and Blaise, 17, were asleep when the tornado hit. "The saddest part, I don't have any (homeowners) insurance any more. A single mom, and I couldn't keep it up in the past few months," she said.

At least one nearby house was also destroyed, and a barn had been thrown into the back of a brick apartment building. Huge twisted curlicues of corrugated tin — once roofs — lay here and there.

About 20,000 people were without power in New Orleans, Westwego, and Metairie, a spokesman for Entergy Corp. said. Public, private and parochial schools in Westwego closed for the day. Xavier University in New Orleans shut down for the day because it had no power, said spokesman Warren Bell.

Mike Wiener, spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said FEMA had assessment teams in the areas affected by the storm.

"Right now our concern is with the safety of the travel trailer residents," he said. "We're going to get them adequate housing as soon as possible, whether it be a hotel room or another trailer."

Kevin Gillespie's trailer in Westwego was pulled five feet and shoved next to his steps so he couldn't open the door. A FEMA trailer next door had been yanked from its moorings and flipped into his backyard, Gillespie said.

"My next-door neighbors, they had just moved back into their house from (Hurricane) Katrina. Now it's totaled out again," he said.

He didn't know how badly his own belongings were damaged; a crew had only just cut off the gas. But the storm removed every vehicle he owned: "My car, pickup, motorbike and trailer all went away."

Still, he said, as dawn arrived, "The more damage I see there, the more fortunate we are."

At one point, emergency workers in New Orleans' uptown neighborhood scrambled to clear a downed magnolia tree so an ambulance could get by.

John Carolan, 50, who lives in the neighborhood, said he was awakened by the storm and got up in time to get into a closet with his wife.

"Ten seconds and it was over," he said.

He said the storm blew the furniture from his porch into the street.

Radar data provides "pretty convincing evidence there was a tornado," said meteorologist Robert Ricks in the National Weather Service office in Slidell. He said the damage appeared to be from one storm cell that was behind a squall line moving east, he said.

"It should be an improving trend the rest of the day," Ricks said.

Contributing: Associated Press reporter Cain Burdeau and photographer Alex Brandon contributed.

    Apparent tornado rips through New Orleans area, killing one, injuring 15, UT, 13.2.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2007-02-13-new-orleans-tornado_x.htm

Sleet and Snow

Headed for the Northeast

February 13, 2007
The New York Times
By JOHN HOLUSHA

Cities in the Northeast braced today for a lashing of sleet, snow, winds and rain as a major winter storm moved across the Midwest and was expected to arrive in the New York area late this afternoon.

The major cities along the I-95 corridor from New York to Washington, D.C., were expected to get a mix of ice, rain and snow, which could bring down tree limbs and power lines, causing power failures and creating treacherous conditions on highways.

The coastal areas were expected to get less than the foot of snow predicted for the interior areas of Pennsylvania and New York State, but travel on Wednesday morning may be hazardous.

Meanwhile, powerful thunderstorms, apparently containing tornados, struck along the Gulf Coast early today, causing one death in the New Orleans area, multiple injuries and widespread property damage.

An 86-year-old woman was killed Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans, The Associated Press reported, an area hard hit by Hurricane Katrina a year and a half ago. The whole region is still struggling to recover from the effects of that storm and the flooding it caused.

Roofs were torn off houses and trailers occupied by people displaced by Katrina were tossed about.

In the Midwest, wind-driven snow fell on Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, forcing some schools to close and snarling travel. As much as a foot of snow fell over Indiana’s midsection.

The National Weather Service issued winter storm warnings and watches across the Ohio Valley and into New England as the storm moved eastward.

Pittsburgh and State College, Pa., and Buffalo, N.Y., were expected to get 14 to 18 inches of snow today while areas in a line stretching from Montreal through Vermont to Binghamton, N.Y., could get two feet of snow or more.

The storm snarled travel throughout the Midwest today, with over 400 flight canceled at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Scattered flights were also canceled at the Indianapolis and Cincinnati airports.

At the southern edge of the storm, including the coastal areas in the East, sleet and freezing rain were expected. Roads, trees and power lines could end up being coated with as much as a quarter inch of ice today.

    Sleet and Snow Headed for the Northeast, NYT, 13.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/13/us/13cnd-storm.html?hp&ex=1171429200&en=2c5be196c4499b0d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

8 Days, 10 Feet and the Snow Isn’t Done Yet

February 12, 2007
The New York Times
By MANNY FERNANDEZ and DAVID STABA

OSWEGO, N.Y., Feb. 11 — First the fire hydrants vanished. Then the tombstones. Then went the mailboxes, parked cars, front doors, stop signs and the bottoms of roadside billboards.

By the time the snow stopped falling this weekend over Oswego County in upstate New York, the streets were lined with snowbanks that obscured anyone walking behind them, shoveling crews were charging upward of $200 an hour to clear the tops of houses, and gawkers were driving in from hours away.

“This is the roof, right?” Mark Fahnestock, 27, asked his companion, Jessica Stiffler, 26, both of Lancaster, Pa., Sunday after he climbed a snowbank so tall that it merged with the roof of a church in Scriba. She took a photograph of him holding their 2-year-old daughter, Jazmine.

They had left home at 5:30 a.m. “We don’t get this kind of snow,” Ms. Stiffler said.

Oswego County, a rustic string of towns and villages on the southeastern rim of Lake Ontario, received 5 to 10 feet of snow over eight days. In one town, Redfield, the National Weather Service reported an unofficial total of 11 feet 8 inches, which would be a state record for snowfall from a single storm event. And the Weather Service said more snow was on the way.

By contrast, the New York City record, set exactly one year ago today, was 26.9 inches as measured in Central Park.

Life here took on an icy sort of absurdity. People posed for pictures on snowbanks as if they were atop Mount Everest. Someone turned a 25-foot mound of snow in the parking lot of Paul’s Big M supermarket in Oswego into a billboard for their snow-blowing service. Someone else painted a different sort of message next to it: a declaration of love, from Brian to Brooke.

A bouncer at Old City Hall bar in the city of Oswego cleared the steps outside by pouring salt from a beer pitcher. Workers at Novelis, an aluminum manufacturing plant, slept in an office to keep the factory running throughout the storm.

Homeowners dug zigzag mazes to their back doors, to their cars, to their porches. Some were for business, others for pleasure.

Tom Boney, 41, built one in his backyard to keep his three children entertained. “It’s good to get out of the house,” said Mr. Boney, who recently moved to Oswego from Wisconsin with his wife and children.

Last week, Gov. Eliot Spitzer declared a state of emergency for the area, sending in extra road-clearing crews and other help, and most of the major thoroughfares had been cleared by Sunday. The authorities said there had been some injuries related to snow removal in the county, but no deaths.

“We have, up to this point, considered ourselves very fortunate that the human-needs aspect has been minimal,” said Patricia Egan, Oswego County’s director of emergency management.

Considering their geography and past history of storms, the cities and towns near Lake Ontario were not unprepared. Anthony Leotta, Oswego’s longtime city engineer, said that its roads were built an average of about 50 percent wider than in other communities, to allow plows to navigate the streets easily and prevent snowbanks from stopping traffic.

Some residents shrugged off the snow the way San Franciscans shrug off earthquakes. They recited inch totals of previous lake-effect storms with pride, often recalling some time when it snowed harder.

Kevin Dwyer of Parish, who spent six hours carving a pathway to his back door out of five feet of snow, said he was not overly impressed by the storm. “This is the second-worst one,” he said, comparing it unfavorably to one a few years ago.

Still, the sheer quantity seemed to catch many others off guard. The State University of New York at Oswego, the alma mater of the television weatherman Al Roker and typically one of the last to give in to conditions, was forced to cancel classes for three days last week. “We don’t know that we have ever done that,” said Tim Nekritz, a college spokesman.

Armed with shovels and the phone numbers of roof clearers who advertised high on the lampposts, people went to work, plowing, blowing, scooping, pushing. On Sunday, a seven-man crew from Ithaca removed the snow from the roof of a house in the village of Mexico. They charged $215 an hour, for a three-hour job.

Others lent their labor. “Everybody pitches in,” said Steve Canale, 53, owner of the Press Box bar and restaurant on First Street in Oswego. “If somebody drives by with a plow, they’ll stop and help you.”

Restaurants, gas stations and supermarkets were doing a brisk business — slower than normal, merchants said, but steady.

Dipak Patel, the owner of a gas station in Parish, said he was running out of milk, bread and beer. Lori Lillie, who runs Lillie’s diner on Main Street in Parish, watched Sunday as table after table ordered bowl after bowl of cream of broccoli soup.

St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church on Cayuga Street also had a crowd. “A lot of people walked all the way across town just to get here,” said Phillip Kehoe, 51, a deacon.

Despite a reprieve for most of Sunday, forecasters said they expected more snow late last night as well as Monday and Tuesday.

A lake-effect snowstorm, in which cold, dry winds sweep across bodies of warmer lake water, was the cause of the powerful blast of snow, forecasters said, and is the usual cause of some of the area’s heaviest snowfall.

The official state record for snowfall from a single event is 10 feet 7 inches in Montague, in Lewis County, northeast of Oswego, from Dec. 26, 2001, to Jan. 1, 2002, said John Rozbicki, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Buffalo. He said that on Monday the Weather Service would begin a check of snowfall data from Redfield, including a review of radar results, before deciding whether the record had been broken.

“It could be that the snowfall total came from two separate events,” Mr. Rozbicki said. “We also have to check how often the person who took the measurements took the measurements, and how they were done.”

In Scriba, which received almost eight feet of snow, Joe Scozzari, 63, a lifelong resident, was clearing a path on the roof of his garage Sunday. “I’m retired,” he said with a shrug, holding his shovel. “The exercise will do me good.”

He worked happily, but quickly. “There’s more snow coming,” he said.

Trymaine Lee contributed reporting.

    8 Days, 10 Feet and the Snow Isn’t Done Yet, NYT, 12.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/nyregion/12snow.html?hp&ex=1171342800&en=2920cdd1992fce49&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Heavy Snow Continues to Bury N.Y. County

February 10, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:22 a.m. ET
The New York Times

MEXICO, N.Y. (AP) -- Ray DeLong took advantage of a break from the snow to use a blower to forge a path to his driveway as two contractors pushed streams of snow from the roof of his home. The brief reprieve Friday ended early Saturday as snow fell at a rate of 2 to 3 inches per hour, further burying a region already tested by nearly record snowfalls.

''Have to move fast. Want to at least get it off my roof,'' DeLong said, just hours before more flakes began to fall.

More than a week of bitter cold and slippery roads have contributed to at least 20 deaths across the northern quarter of the nation -- five in Ohio, four in Illinois, four in Indiana, two in Kentucky, two in Michigan, and one each in Wisconsin, New York and Maryland, authorities said. No deaths were reported in Oswego County, where Mexico is located, however.

By 9 p.m. Friday a heavy lake effect band started to intensify over the county, said Tony Ansuini, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Buffalo.

Officials expected up to 14 inches of snow overnight, a trend that would push the seven day total beyond 100 inches and continue through the weekend.

For DeLong and most of this village's 5,400 citizens, it has been exhausting.

''This is right up there with the best of them, almost as bad as the Blizzard of '66. But there ain't nothing good about this much snow,'' he grumbled as his snowblower clogged and stalled.

Located in upstate New York's snowbelt, Mexico residents every two or three years see a 5- or 6-foot snowfall. But even hardened locals are amazed at the scenes before them now, such as the site of parked SUVs noticeable only because their antennas or roof racks crack the snow's surface.

Persistent squalls have pounded Mexico and other Oswego County communities along eastern Lake Ontario since Sunday, leading Gov. Eliot Spitzer to declare a state disaster emergency in the county.

Unofficially, the snow measured 123 inches in Orwell and 122 inches in North Redfield, small hamlets in the county's eastern half.

Parish received 94 inches and Scriba reported 92 inches, according to the National Weather Service. Mexico Mayor Terry Grimshaw said his village was blanketed by seven feet.

Overnight, the lake effect band walloping Oswego was expected to move on to Lewis and Jefferson Counties.

Down the village's main street, 6-foot high snowbanks make the sidewalks look like mini-canyons.

With a day's reprieve, most of the village roads were cleared Friday, although schools were canceled for a fifth straight day.

The state transportation department has loaned several pieces of equipment to local municipalities as they work round the clock to remove snow from streets and sidewalks. The state was also expected to send workers to help in the removal effort.

Although authorities have reported few problems because of the snow, in Oswego, Fire Chief Ed Geers said his firefighters have had to help three ambulances that got stuck in the snow.

    Heavy Snow Continues to Bury N.Y. County, NYT, 10.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Cold-Weather.html

$25 Million to Encourage Cleaner Air

February 10, 2007
The New York Times
By JAMES KANTER

LONDON, Feb. 9 — Imagine a giant vacuum cleaner for the atmosphere.

The British billionaire Richard Branson and Al Gore, the former vice president, aimed for just that on Friday when they announced a $25 million prize to meet possibly the biggest challenge faced by humankind: to reduce the planet’s warming gases that have collected in the atmosphere since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

“We are now facing a planetary emergency,” said Mr. Gore, the author of the book “An Inconvenient Truth,” which formed the basis for an Oscar-nominated documentary film about global warming.

At a news conference here, Mr. Branson urged governments to match the prize money he offered. He spoke of past efforts to encourage leaps forward in technologies, like a competition sponsored by the British government that led to more accurate measurement of longitude, saving thousands of lives at sea.

Mr. Gore, who with Mr. Branson, will be one of six judges, said the prize was intended for a project that would be different from technologies currently under development that capture and store large amounts of carbon dioxide from heavy emitters like coal-fired electric plants.

Mr. Gore also said the winning project must be more than a stop-gap against global warming gases. “This is a very new and different way of thinking,” he said. Even so, experts in climate change said the prize money might be better spent on projects with more of a chance of success, like building cleaner engines for cars and ensuring that new technologies reach the marketplace.

“This project may hold particular appeal in the aviation industry as there really are no other viable, cleaner fuels in the pipeline,” said Steve Rayner, a professor of science and civilization at Oxford University.

Mr. Rayner said plans for a extraction device to clean carbon from the air had been developed by Klaus Lackner, a professor at Columbia University. But Mr. Lackner’s project never left the drawing board, Mr. Rayner said. Steve Howard of the Climate Group, a nonprofit organization that Mr. Branson said would help the judges with the deliberations, acknowledged that there were few technologies on the horizon. But he said he hoped the prize would encourage innovators to go to work.

Mr. Gore acknowledged that the prize was “highly speculative” and that it could be seen as a gimmick. But he said organizers should ensure that the prize was not “seen as a substitute or distraction from the main event which is to reduce the amount of CO2 which is being emitted.”

Air transport represented about 3.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in 1990 but that figure could grow to about 15 percent by 2050, according to United Nations figures, as cited by the Aviation Environment Federation in London.

The Virgin Group, owned by Mr. Branson, operates airlines.

    $25 Million to Encourage Cleaner Air, NYT, 10.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/10/business/worldbusiness/10climate.html

8 Feet of Snow in N.Y., and More Coming

February 10, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:35 a.m. ET
The New York Times

MEXICO, N.Y. (AP) -- Before weekend squalls add to the 8 feet of snow already on the ground, the communities along eastern Lake Ontario needed the dry respite they got Friday.

''Have to move fast. Want to at least get it off my roof,'' said Ray DeLong, 75, as he carved a path to his driveway with a snowblower and two contractors pushed streams of snow from the roof of his two-story home.

Snow squalls off Lake Ontario have dumped snow by the feet onto Oswego County communities since Sunday, leading Gov. Eliot Spitzer to declare a state disaster emergency.

Parish and Scriba had about 8 feet of snow since the squalls started, according to the National Weather Service. Mexico Mayor Terry Grimshaw said his village was blanketed by 7 feet.

On Friday, the squalls shifted south into Syracuse and stayed there, dropping 4 to 8 inches of snow.

But forecasters said heavy snow bands would return to Oswego County later Friday night and likely stall there again. The forecasts call for another 6 to 12 inches, pushing the seven-day total over 100 inches.

While residents enjoyed Friday's lull, snow plows were out in full force to clear roads. An advisory against any nonessential travel remained in effect for Oswego and three nearby counties. Snow banks tower nearly 10 feet tall and have narrowed roads.

Although authorities have reported few problems because of the snow, Oswego Fire Chief Ed Geers said his firefighters have had to help three ambulances that got stuck in the snow.

Schools were closed the entire week. Mexico Superintendent Nelson Bauersfeld said if the district exceeds its allotted six snow days, it would have to shorten its winter or spring breaks.

''We try not to get into vacations if we can help it. So lets just hope once this week is over we can get back to normal and be laughing about this come June,'' Bauersfeld said.

More than a week of bitter cold and slippery roads have contributed to at least 20 deaths across the northern quarter of the nation -- five in Ohio, four in Illinois, four in Indiana, two in Kentucky, two in Michigan, and one each in Wisconsin, New York and Maryland, authorities said. There have been no deaths in Oswego County related to the snow.

Tennessee and northern Alabama tasted a bit of winter weather Friday morning -- sleet and freezing rain iced over roadways, and some precipitation briefly turned to snow.

    8 Feet of Snow in N.Y., and More Coming, NYT, 10.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Cold-Weather.html

Below - Zero Temps Close Schools

February 5, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:56 a.m. ET
The New York Times

A bone-chilling Arctic cold wave with temperatures as low as 38 below zero shut down schools for thousands of youngsters Monday, halted some Amtrak service and put car batteries on the disabled list from the northern Plains across the Great Lakes.

The cold was accompanied by snow that was measured in feet in parts of upstate New York.

''Anybody in their right mind wouldn't want to be out in weather like this,'' Lawrence Wiley, 57, said at the Drop Inn Center homeless shelter where he has been living in Cincinnati. Monday lows in the area were in the single digits.

With temperatures near zero and a wind chill of 25 below, school districts across Ohio canceled classes. ''We have a lot of kids that walk to school. We didn't think it was worth the risk,'' Sandusky City Schools Superintendent Bill Pahl said.

With a temperature of 12 below zero and wind chill of 31 below, Wisconsin's largest school district, Milwaukee Public Schools, also shut down, idling some 90,000 children. In upstate New York 34,000 kids got the day off in Rochester because of near-zero temperatures. Schools also closed in parts of Michigan. Even in Minnesota, where February cold is the norm and people are accustomed to coping, some charter schools closed.

The temperature crashed to 38 below zero Monday morning at Hallock in northwestern Minnesota, and to 30 below at International Falls, the weather service said.

Veterinarian Wade Himes wasn't too concerned as he ate breakfast at the Shorelunch Cafe in International Falls.

''We get up and go to work, and people come and see us. I don't think anything changes that much. (You) just dress warm,'' said Himes, 69.

Grand Forks, N.D., also registered 30 below.

''For this time of year, this isn't that unusual, as far as temperatures go,'' said weather service meteorologist Bill Abeling in Bismarck. ''To get record temperatures this time of year in North Dakota, you've got to delve down in the 40-below region, so we're not even close.''

Hayward, Wis., fell to 27 below on Monday, with a wind chill of minus 36, and wind chills around the state dipped to nearly 40 below.

Amtrak shut down passenger service in parts of western and northern New York state, where the cold was accompanied by as much as 2 feet of snow fed by moisture from the Great Lakes near Buffalo and Watertown. Whiteout conditions and slippery pavement shut down a 38-mile stretch of the New York Thruway during the night.

At least 30 water main breaks were blamed on the cold in Detroit, city Water and Sewerage Department spokesman George Ellenwood told The Detroit News.

The cold also brought calls for help from car owners faced with dead batteries and frozen locks.

''During the weekend, 10,000 motorists called for assistance. And that's a record in recent years,'' Nancy Cain, spokeswoman for AAA Michigan, said Monday. ''This morning we've already had 300 calls for help.''

    Below - Zero Temps Close Schools, NYT, 5.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Arctic-Blast.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Bitter Cold Grips Northeast and Midwest

February 5, 2007
The New York Times
By JOHN HOLUSHA

The Northeast and Midwest regions of the country were gripped by bitter cold today, with wind chill factors prompting school closings for tens of thousands of children and disruptions of transportation.

In northern New York state, lake-effect snow and winds created whiteout conditions, which led authorities to close sections of the Thruway on Sunday night and led Amtrak to cancel all passenger train service west of Albany today.

School officials in Rochester cancelled classes for 34,000 children because of temperatures near zero and wind chills well below zero. In the northern part of the state, wind chills reached 25 degrees below zero; even in New York City, which is generally more balmy than upstate, wind chills were recorded as low as 11 degrees below zero this morning.

Portions of seven other states were also under wind-chill warnings today because of the dangerous cold. Schools in Milwaukee were closed because of wind chills of more than 20 degrees below zero, giving 90,000 children the day off; some smaller districts across the upper Midwest closed as well.

High temperatures are not expected to nudge much above 2 degrees today in Chicago, and the forecast high for New York City is 18 degrees. The cold was expected to persist for most of the week, forecasters said.

    Bitter Cold Grips Northeast and Midwest, NYT, 5.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/05/nyregion/05cnd-cold.html?hp&ex=1170738000&en=f3e86a375d07b7b3&ei=5094&partner=homepage

After the Destruction, Seeking a Time to Heal

February 5, 2007
The New York Times
By LYNN WADDELL

PAISLEY, Fla., Feb. 4 — The members of the First Baptist Church here clapped enthusiastically after their minister and fellow parishioners played “Turn, Turn, Turn,” the 1960s hit song by the Byrds. It was a lyrical sermon that resonated with those affected by the tornadoes that took 13 lives in the Paisley area of Central Florida.

“A time to kill, and a time to heal, a time to break down, and a time to build up,” the church’s drummer sang as the minister, the Rev. John Roszak, played the electric bass.

Mr. Roszak said he had fretted that the sermon would be a challenge but found the song’s lyrics, which come directly from Ecclesiastes, fitting.

“For those who were lost, I would like to say ‘hello’ from heaven,” Mr. Roszak said to applause from his congregation of about 150.

About 10 miles west of the church, the community of Lake Mack was the hardest hit by the tornadoes that ripped through early Friday, killing 13 people within one square mile. The landscape where homes once stood was left a stew of branches, boards, glass and clothing amid a cemetery of scalped trees, their skeletons holding mattresses, insulation and tin.

The tornadoes touched down in four counties, leaving a total of 20 dead, scores injured and more than 1,500 homes destroyed or uninhabitable. Nearly 1,200 of those homes were in the Villages, a newer retirement community more than 30 miles west of rural Lake Mack.

A pocket of Lady Lake, which borders the Villages, was also hit hard, reporting seven deaths. Gov. Charlie Crist attended church services on Sunday with the congregation of Lady Lake Church of God outside what was once their house of worship but is now a mangled clump of steel, insulation, church pews, tree limbs and other debris.

As some parishioners of First Baptist Church in Paisley sang and listened to music and the minister’s words on Sunday morning, across the hall other church members prepared boxed lunches and organized food, clothing and toiletries donated by community residents.

One of the church workers, Katlynn Grimes, 13, said she had lost her friend David Downing, who was killed along with his parents. She found out about his death from her school principal and said she had trouble accepting it.

“David was like a brother to me,” Katlynn said. “I cried Friday and Saturday, but not today, yet.”

Red-eyed and disheveled, Priscilla Smith and her mother, victims of the storm, nibbled on pizza as church workers brought out a gallon of sweet tea and boxes filled with food for them and their neighbors.

“A lot of people don’t want to leave their place because they think someone might steal their stuff,” Ms. Smith said, bracing her head with her hand as she leaned on the folding tables set up in the church’s fellowship hall. “My neighbor won’t leave. His son isn’t even talking. I had to make him go with me this morning so he could get a shower.”

Ms. Smith, who has lived on Lake Mack her entire life, said her family had fared better than most. The walls of their house are still standing, though the structure was moved from its foundation. The roof is gone, as is much of the furniture. Still, Ms. Smith said: “My neighbor has nothing. He’s staying out there in a makeshift shed. I was able to uncover an air mattress I had and gave it to him.”

Lake Mack Drive, a dead end, is tucked off a county road that borders the Ocala National Forest. About 200 people live around the lake that gives the community its name. Lots are one to three acres, and several neighbors had horses. A few chickens and a rooster still pecked for food in the wreckage on Sunday.

Like much of Lake County, the area is populated by natives and an influx of retirees and commuters seeking the serenity of rural life. Deland is only 15 miles to the east, and Lady Lake, about 35 miles to the west. “We’re kind of like a bedroom community to a bedroom community,” Mr. Roszak said.

The tornado left a relatively small pocket of devastation amid otherwise untouched landscape. Less than a half mile from where victims picked through flattened wreckage, others enjoyed a normal Sunday afternoon. A teenager raced his dirt bike next to an untouched home. Music could be heard through open doors. Horses grazed underneath giant live oaks dripping with Spanish moss.

Nevertheless, the entire community felt the storm’s impact.

At Forest Hills Store, where photos of hunters hang from the wall, residents talked of the tornadoes as they stood in line to buy six-packs. “Are they letting you back there yet?” Michael Farmer, a construction worker, asked. “I lived back there until six months ago, and I still have friends there I want to help.”

The country store’s clerk, S. M. Bari, who also lost a friend to the storm, said he had had a constant string of customers since the tornado, repair workers and residents coming in to buy supplies.

Down Lake Mack Drive, Marilynn Fischer gazed over what was once her home.

“We don’t know each other very well,” Ms. Fischer said of her neighbors. “But if we needed help they would come over. They did the other night.”

Two of her neighbors pulled her and her husband from the wreckage early Friday morning. She was in the bathtub, pinned under her husband, who was crushed beneath a washing machine.

“I still can’t believe it,” Ms. Fischer said. “It still really hasn’t sunk in. It probably won’t sink in until after we get it all cleaned up.”

    After the Destruction, Seeking a Time to Heal, NYT, 5.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/05/us/05storm.html

KILLER TORNADO:A SPECIAL REPORT

Dawn of devastation

Within an hour, storm leaves 19 dead or dying

February 3, 2007
Orlando Sentinel
Jeff Kunerth
Sentinel Staff Writer

The killer storm started in the Gulf of Mexico and began its grim journey across the state at 2:30 a.m. Friday.

While racing across Citrus County, it was relatively small. But that would change in Sumter County in less than 10 minutes. Paul Close, a forecaster at the National Weather Service in Tampa, was watching radar when the storm exploded.

"It went from a little hint of something to 'Oh, no!' " Close said.

He issued a tornado warning at 3:02 a.m. Just 13 minutes later, a twister struck trees near Wildwood and quickly knocked roofing off a nearby gas station.

From there, the tornado thrashed across rural landscape until it hit The Villages, the retirement mega-community that sprawls across Sumter and Lake counties. There, in the space of about 10 minutes, it killed at least six people in Lady Lake and 13 in the rural Paisley/Lake Mack communities about 25 miles to the northeast.

"Hell opened up, and half the demons came out," said Russell Timmons of Lady Lake.

Lake County Sheriff Gary Borders said all the victims lived in mobile homes. The deaths in Lady Lake were concentrated in two mobile-home parks, and the deaths in Lake Mack were in mobile homes on Cooter Pond Road. Even though there was significant damage to conventional housing in The Villages and Volusia County, there were no bodies found Friday.

It was the second-deadliest tornado outbreak in Florida history behind only the five twisters in February 1998 that killed 42 people in Central Florida and destroyed about 2,600 homes and businesses.

The weather service's preliminary estimates indicate the tornado was an F3 with winds of 140 mph to 160 mph, said meteorologist Dave Sharp of the service's office in Melbourne. And as it hopped and skipped across The Villages -- damaging or destroying 1,500 homes -- it showed awesome power.

"Everything just exploded," said Ralph Shifflett, a 62-year-old resident of The Villages who was awakened by a loud roar just minutes before the storm hit his house.

Shifflett said he dived for the floor as windows shattered, his back patio splintered and pictures from his neighbor's house zinged through his window like large bullets. Shifflett said he tried to get to a closet, but there was no time.

An interior wall moved, sending a hallway door shooting through his house. Gaping holes were punched through the roof, wood beams exploded and vacuum cleaners, golf clubs and luggage flew through the air.

Outside, Shifflett saw that his neighbor's house was half-demolished. A car thrown into the front of the house had trapped the 80-year-old man inside. Shifflett said he pulled him out through a window in the back.

The storm flattened houses and mobile homes, downed trees and overturned cars from Lady Lake to Ponce Inlet, from Umatilla to New Smyrna, while four other powerful thunderstorms swept the rest of the region with gusty winds and heavy rains. The wind blew so hard across Interstate 4 that it picked up a tractor-trailer and tossed it atop another semi, stalling traffic for hours.

Within the span of one hour, the storm damaged or destroyed an estimated 2,000 homes, caused more than $80 million in damage, injured at least 50 people, left 7,800 people without power late Friday and delivered tragedy to the families of the 19 killed.

"The most dangerous tornado scenario is a threat for killer tornadoes at night, and that was the case," said Sharp, the weather-service meteorologist.

Dog Trixie saves lives

A mixed-breed poodle named Trixie saved Nellie Byrd's life.

The tornado, moving at 65 mph, had just ripped through The Villages at Lady Lake at 3:19 a.m. and was minutes from tearing apart Byrd's double-wide mobile home in Lake Mack.

Byrd was in her bed, asleep, like many of those who died Friday morning. Asleep until Trixie bounded onto the bed.

"She was jumping up and licking us and trying to get us awake," said Byrd, 75.

Byrd got up, turned on the radio and heard weather forecasters say a tornado was headed for Paisley on the eastern edge of Lake County.

She awakened her husband, Edd, and her sister Marylou Lawing, visiting from New Jersey, just before the winds arrived. The house began to shake. Things became airborne inside the house.

Byrd, her husband and sister huddled on the floor in the hallway, surrounding themselves with pillows. She shielded Trixie with a pillow from the items flying and falling all around them.

Then the mobile home started coming apart. The wind lifted her sister from the floor. It ripped up part of the floor like the top of a cereal box. Byrd grabbed one of the support beams through the hole in the floor. The wind lifted her off the floor three times.

And then the storm took away Trixie. The dog disappeared into the wind and the rain and the darkness.

"The wind took her. She got blowed out," Byrd said.

Daughter rouses mom

The storm moved on, passing through DeLand at 4:02 a.m.

Minutes earlier, a phone call saved Jose Villoch and Susan Sullivan. They were awakened in their Hawthorne Hills mobile home in DeLand by a ringing phone. It was Sullivan's daughter calling from DeBary to warn them about the storm headed their way.

When Sullivan got up to answer the phone, Villoch followed her into the hallway. At that moment, the storm ripped away the roof of their bedroom.

"If she hadn't called, we would have been hurt," said Sullivan, 56.

The couple escaped injury except for Villoch's hand when it got caught in a kitchen door slammed shut by the wind.

"I thought my fingers were gone," he said. "I thought they were going to find my fingers on the other side of the door."

At the same moment, on New Hampshire Avenue, June Gearhart woke up screaming to the sound of roaring wind and the sight of clothes flying around her bedroom.

"It was the scariest thing in the world," Gearhart said. Her porch was separated from the foundation, and a tree landed in her bedroom. "We're OK physically. Mentally we're a mess."

Between Lady Lake and DeLand, 532 lightning bolts were recorded by the weather service. As the storm pushed toward the coast, its intensity lessened. Between DeLand and Ponce Inlet, where the storm passed into the Atlantic Ocean at 4:27 a.m., meteorologists counted 75 lighting bolts.

'Help us! Help us!'

In its wake, the super cell of wind, lightning and rain left behind the dead and the living. As daylight broke, stunned survivors and rescuers ventured out to survey the results of the storm's wrath.

The storm had no historical rival in Lake County for death and destruction, Commissioner Welton Cadwell said as he toured the devastation. "We've never had anything like this. Not this many dead," he said.

"It looked like a bomb went off on some of these homes, and it breaks your heart to see that," Gov. Charlie Crist said after arriving by helicopter at Lake Mack.

Crist declared a state of emergency for Lake, Volusia, Sumter and Seminole counties and requested assistance from the White House and Federal Emergency Management Agency. Seminole was included only because state forecasters had tracked the system over the county. There was minimal damage, county spokesman Steve Olson said.

Near Eustis, Jo Henson checked out the wreckage on her 10 acres of land at Lake Yale. A 5,000-square-foot building caved in. A mobile home imploded. About 50 trees were mangled and jumbled. Her horse stalls were turned into toothpicks. A fishing boat ended up in pieces.

Henson described the devastation as "like a bomb blew up. This isn't like you see in a big hurricane. This is like what you see when a tornado goes through the Midwest -- everything is flat."

Henson said she is grateful that her son and his wife had moved out of the mobile home just before Christmas.

"It's unbelievable," she said. "If it picks you, it picks you."

In Lake Mack, Carl Vines was reliving a morning he will never forget. After the storm passed, he burst from his trailer at a mobile-home park on Spencer's Loop and yelled into the darkness, "Is everyone all right?"

"Help us! Help us!" a woman shouted back. "Our daughter is missing!"

A tree had buried the woman's trailer, squashing it like a soda can.

Vines, 36, fired up a chain saw and sliced at tree limbs while his 16-year-old stepson, Justin Hays, began yanking them clear. Other neighbors joined in.

Then, Vines said, he saw a girl's hand.

"I just wanted her to be alive," he said.

She wasn't.

As the darkness passed and the sun began to rise, the survivors stumbled across what looked more like a war zone than a mobile-home park. Trees were twisted like dish towels. Two-by-fours were sticking from the sides of cars and trailers like broken spears. Cars were overturned.

And all that was left of Nellie Byrd's double-wide was its foundation and a pile of debris.

Byrd began looking for the little black mutt who saved her life. By 10 a.m., she found her dog -- alive in a hole she was hiding in.

On a day of disaster, when all around her the world looked like ruin, Nellie Byrd sat on a dining-room chair dressed in a red housecoat. There was blood on her bandaged left hand and on her clothing.

In her lap sat Trixie.

Rich McKay, Kevin Spear, Mark Matthews, Susan Jacobson, Christine Dellert, Etan Horowitz, Ken Ma, Kristin Reed, Robert Sargent, Nin-Hai Tseng and Gary Taylor of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report. Information from The Associated Press also was used.

    Dawn of devastation, OS, 3.2.2007, http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/weather/orl-mstormmain0307feb03,0,1032678.story?coll=orl-home-headlines

Endangered Cranes Killed in Fla. Storms

February 3, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:08 a.m. ET
The New York Times

MILWAUKEE (AP) -- All 18 endangered young whooping cranes that were led south from Wisconsin last fall as part of a project to create a second migratory flock of the birds were killed in storms in Florida, a spokesman said.

The cranes were being kept in an enclosure at the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge near Crystal River, Fla., when violent storms moved in Thursday night, said Joe Duff, co-founder of Operation Migration, the organization coordinating the project.

''The birds were checked in late afternoon the day before, and they were fine,'' he said Friday.

The area of the enclosure was unreachable by workers at night, and all the birds were found dead, Duff said. He speculated that a strong storm surge drew the tide in and overwhelmed the birds. The official cause of the deaths was not immediately known, but he said it may have been drowning.

The thunderstorms and at least one tornado that hit central Florida caused widespread damage and killed at least 19 people.

For the past six years, whooping cranes hatched in captivity have been raised at the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in central Wisconsin by workers who wear crane-like costumes to keep the birds wary of humans.

Ultralight aircraft are used to teach new groups of young cranes the migration route to Florida. From then on, the birds migrate north in the spring and south in the fall on their own.

Duff described the loss as an ''unavoidable disaster'' for the whooping cranes project that ironically followed a milestone.

For the first time in six years, an entire group of young birds reared at the Necedah refuge had made it to the Florida refuge without the loss of a single crane.

The project's previous losses all involved individual birds killed by predators or fatally injured in accidents.

''It's a fluke. It's an unforeseen thing,'' Duff said. ''So many birds and they were such good birds. It was our hardest migration and our most difficult one to fund.''

The various groups and agencies working on the project had seen the size of the flock grow to 81 birds with the latest arrivals, but the loss of the young cranes drops the total back to 63, and there may have been additional losses.

Duff said there was no way of knowing whether other whooping cranes that winter in the area had survived the storm.

Operation Migration is part of the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership. Partnership officials and Duff said the work would continue.

Members of the whooping crane recovery team were meeting in Louisiana when the Florida storm occurred, going over the past year's progress and setting goals for this year, when they learned what had happened, Duff said.

After the initial shock, ''it just reinforced the support and determination to get this done,'' he said.

The whooping crane, the tallest bird in North America, was near extinction in 1941, with only about 20 left.

The other wild whooping crane flock in North America has about 200 birds and migrates from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast. A non-migratory flock in Florida has about 60 birds.

------

On the Net:

Operation Migration: http://operationmigration.org/index.html

Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership: http://www.bringbackthecranes.org

    Endangered Cranes Killed in Fla. Storms, NYT, 3.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Whooping-Cranes.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


 

Severe thunderstorms, and possibly tornados, ripped through central Florida early today,
killing at least 14 people and tearing up houses, trees and power lines and blowing tractor-trailers off Interstate 4.

Alan Youngblood/Star-Banner

Twisters Hit Central Florida, Killing at Least 19        NYT        3.2.2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/03/us/03florida.html?hp&ex=
1170565200&en=a1b39b5638945609&ei=5094&partner=homepage


 

Twisters Hit Central Florida, Killing at Least 19

February 3, 2007
The New York Times
By ABBY GOODNOUGH

PAISLEY, Fla., Feb. 2 — At least 19 people died when thunderstorms and tornadoes devastated parts of Central Florida before dawn Friday, flattening hundreds of homes and leaving thousands of residents who had little or no warning of the storms in grim shock.

Rescue workers combed what remained of toppled houses for survivors, and Gov. Charlie Crist, who declared a state of emergency in Lake, Volusia, Sumter and Seminole Counties, said federal aid would arrive soon.

“It looked like a bomb went off on some of these homes and it breaks your heart to see that,” Mr. Crist said after arriving by helicopter at Lake Mack, near Paisley in rural Lake County, where most of the dead were found.

The worst of the storms touched down north of Orlando between 3 and 4 a.m., jolting people from sleep with a noise some compared to a jumbo jet. Though a tornado watch had been posted for many Florida counties late Thursday, the National Weather Service issued warnings just minutes before the twisters hit in the middle of the night, when hardly anyone was watching or listening for them.

At a trailer park in Lady Lake, about 30 miles west of Paisley, Marie Magana said her daughter Brittany May, 17, died when an oak tree crashed into her room at the height of the storm. As evening fell, Ms. Magana was picking Brittany’s porcelain dolls and award ribbons for horseback riding out of the rubble where her bedroom had been.

Ms. Magana said she had turned on her television in the middle of the night and seen the tornado warning, grabbed her 5-year-old daughter, ran into the bathroom and called for Brittany. It was not until 4 a.m., after neighbors had arrived to help clear felled trees with chain saws, that they found her.

“We found her hand,” Ms. Magana said. “And we weren’t able to get a pulse.”

At least one other teenager died, officials said. They had not released the names of the other victims as of Friday night.

Joseph Demar, who said he huddled with his son while a tornado ripped the walls and ceiling off their mobile home outside Paisley, said tornadoes were common in the region and he had not expected anything disastrous when he went to sleep Thursday night.

“They usually go north of us,” said Mr. Demar, 57, whose recliner and television remained intact but whose other possessions were broken and strewn around his yard. “Ain’t much you can do about it but grit your teeth and clean it up and start over.”

Forecasters said El Niño weather conditions helped create the deadly tornadoes, which originated as thunderstorms over the Gulf of Mexico and resembled a string of tornadoes that hit the region in February 1998. Those killed 42 people over two days, damaging or destroying more than 2,500 homes and businesses.

“Unfortunately, again, we’ve seen what Mother Nature can do without warning,” Craig Fugate, the state’s emergency operations director, told reporters in Tallahassee.

Unlike in parts of the Midwest where lethal tornadoes strike regularly, warning sirens for tornadoes are almost nonexistent in Central Florida, officials said.

“We get all these sudden, different weather patterns,” said Christopher Patton, a spokesman for Lake County, where all of the confirmed deaths occurred. “I wouldn’t say they’d be useless, but it would be tough to have some kind of threshold on whether you’d sound them off or not.”

About 4,000 customers remained without power Friday night, but crews had restored it to about 40,000 others. Dozens of people were treated for broken limbs, lacerations and other injuries at local hospitals, and dozens more showed up at emergency shelters for the night.

Although no comprehensive damage estimate was available Friday night, officials said at least 400 homes were destroyed in the Villages, a retirement community that sprawls across parts of three counties, and nearly 500 in Lady Lake, a town of 13,000 in Lake County about 50 miles northwest of Orlando.

In Volusia County, where parts of De Land and New Smyrna Beach were battered, officials estimated damage at $80 million, including roughly 350 homes that were damaged or destroyed.

Gia Crawford, 31, of De Land, was in tears as she described how her 2-year-old son had woken her by hitting her face as a tornado approached in the pitch dark.

“It just seemed like it was never going to end,” Ms. Crawford said, describing how her brick home shook and things fell off the dressers when the storm hit.

In Lady Lake, where at least six people died, Alan Berryhill, 17, said he grabbed his sister and hid in the bathroom after debris started pounding their door and he heard a noise like a train.

“We got on our hands and knees and started praying in the shower,” he said. “At some point I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t cry in front of my sister.”

Linda Blickenstaff, 56, clutched her medicine and a few belongings as she stared at what little was left of her home in Lady Lake.

“I was petrified,” she said. “I got up from my bed and stopped in the middle of my trailer and laid down on the floor over my dog, Little Bit, and I prayed.”

Many people wondered whether and how soon the Federal Emergency Management Agency would send help. Some were still incensed that the agency denied a request for assistance after three tornadoes tore through parts of Central Florida on Christmas Day. Mr. Crist has appealed the decision.

Many of the structures destroyed Friday were mobile homes, but sturdier and more expensive homes were damaged, too. The destruction was widespread, but concentrated in pockets; one neighborhood in Lady Lake was in tatters, but less than a mile away, people were golfing on a pristine course Friday afternoon.

The Lady Lake Church of God, built to withstand winds up to 150 miles per hour and used as a shelter in past storms, was leveled.

“That is just the building,” said Larry Lynn, the church’s minister. “The people are the church, and we will be back bigger and stronger.”

For now, he said, Sunday services will take place on the empty lot.

Terry Aguayo, Dennis Blank, Amy Green, Christine Jordan Sexton and Lynn Waddell contributed reporting.

    Twisters Hit Central Florida, Killing at Least 19, NYT, 3.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/03/us/03florida.html?hp&ex=1170565200&en=a1b39b5638945609&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Severe Storms Strike Central Florida

February 2, 2007
The New York Times
By JOHN HOLUSHA

Severe thunderstorms, and possibly tornados, ripped through central Florida early today, killing at least 14 people and tearing up houses, trees and power lines and blowing tractor-trailers off Interstate 4.

The Lake County spokesman, Christopher Patton, confirmed the death toll, according to The Associated Press. Dozens more were hospitalized, and 20,000 customers were said to be without power. Interstate 4 was shut down for several hours, before being re-opened.

The city of Lady Lake in Lake County was one of the hardest hit, and emergency crews were searching the area as daylight broke, seeking additional victims or survivors.

The storms, which hit at about 3:15 a.m., flattened the Sunshine Mobile Home Park and Lady Lake Mobile Home Park, according to the Lake County Sheriff’s spokesman, Sgt. Christie Mysinger.

She said there had been reports of several deaths in the DeLand area in Voklusia County.

Mobile and manufactured house were heavily damaged in Lake, Sumter, Volusia and Marion Counties, with television images showing roofs ripped off some structures and others entirely demolished. But even conventionally-built houses suffered damage.

Officials opened emergency shelters in the affected areas to house people displace by the storms.

The storms were expected to move east and south later today, and the National Weather Service issued tornado warnings for Orange and Seminole Counties.

Officials said that 30 people were taken to hospitals from The Villages community which is located in Lake, Sumter and Marion Counties.

Contributing was Austin L. Miller in Lady Lake, Fla.

    Severe Storms Strike Central Florida, NYT, 2.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/us/02cnd-storm.html?hp&ex=1170478800&en=646208a71a7e5e15&ei=5094&partner=homepage

13 pct of Americans not heard of global warming: report

Mon Jan 29, 2007 11:44 AM ET
Reuters



OSLO (Reuters) - Thirteen percent of Americans have never heard of global warming even though their country is the world's top source of greenhouse gases, a 46-country survey showed on Monday.

The report, by ACNielsen of more than 25,000 Internet users, showed that 57 percent of people around the world considered global warming a "very serious problem" and a further 34 percent rated it a "serious problem."

"It has taken extreme and life-threatening weather patterns to finally drive the message home that global warming is happening and is here to stay unless a concerted, global effort is made to reverse it," said Patrick Dodd, the President of ACNielsen Europe.

People in Latin America were most worried while U.S. citizens were least concerned with just 42 percent rating global warming "very serious."

The United States emits about a quarter of all greenhouse gases, the biggest emitter ahead of China, Russia and India.

Thirteen percent of U.S. citizens said they had never heard or read anything about global warming, the survey said.

Almost all climate scientists say that temperatures are creeping higher because of heat-trapping greenhouse gases released by burning fossil fuels.

The study also found that 91 percent of people had heard about global warming and 50 percent reckoned it was caused by human activities.

A U.N. report due on Friday is set to say it is at least 90 percent probable that human activities are the main cause of warming in the past 50 years.

People in China and Brazil were most convinced of the link to human activities and Americans least convinced.

The survey said that people living in regions vulnerable to natural disasters seemed most concerned -- ranging from Latin Americans worried by damage to coffee or banana crops to people in the Czech Republic whose country was hit by 2002 floods.

In Latin America, 96 percent of respondents said they had heard of global warming and 75 percent rated it "very serious."

Most industrial nations have signed up for the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, which imposed caps on emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly from factories, power plants and vehicles.

President George W. Bush pulled the United States out of Kyoto in 2001, but said last week that climate change was a "serious challenge."

    13 pct of Americans not heard of global warming: report, R, 29.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2007-01-29T164419Z_01_L29194410_RTRUKOC_0_US-GLOBALWARMING-SURVEY.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-domesticNews-2

On Snowbound Plains, Grim Fight to Save Calves

January 24, 2007
The New York Times
By KIRK JOHNSON

TOWNER, Colo., Jan. 17 — The temperature outside was 10 degrees and falling as calf No. 207, just one hour old, lay on the floor of the warming shed, wheezing and fighting for life.

Born underweight and premature to a cow stressed by successive blizzards and brutal cold over the last month here in southeast Colorado, the baby Black Angus might yet live if it could clear its lungs of fluid and get to its feet by morning. If not, No. 207 would take its place in the dead pile, the grim place in the barn on the Butler ranch where many of the 25 or so calves already lost this winter lay frozen and twisted.

Calving season on the High Plains will be harder and more costly than any year in at least a decade, ranchers and agricultural officials say. More than 3,000 adult animals have been confirmed dead so far in Colorado alone, and ranchers say many more remain uncounted, buried under drifts four feet to six feet deep. Thousands of other farm and ranch animals across the state remain unaccounted for.

With new storms, agriculture and disaster relief officials are still counting the costs from those that struck over two consecutive weeks beginning on Dec. 18. The biggest concern now, said the state’s agriculture commissioner, John Stulp, is the persistence of the snow that cannot melt because of the cold that will not relent. Calving has just started on most ranches and will peak in late February and early March, and the Butlers have lost about one calf in six so far — more than three times the ranch’s average death rate.

“The pregnant cows are stressed, and dropping down below zero is very hard on the newborns,” said Mr. Stulp, a rancher himself in southeast Colorado.

But the birth cycle on the ranch exposes tangled emotions and ambivalent impulses that go far beyond the elements. Ranch owners see profit in their animals, but being human, they mostly also cannot resist the bonds that form, and the instinct to preserve life.

So to see a calf falling from the womb in the dead of this particular winter — steaming on the frozen ground, its body illuminated by a circle of headlights as people stand ready to help, if they can — is to see ranch life at its most tenuous and vulnerable, for the cattle and the people alike.

“Nothing we’ve done in the last three weeks has been fun,” said Dale Butler, who grew up on a ranch five miles away before starting his own place here in the 1970s just west of the Kansas border. “It’s a fight every day.”

Mr. Butler, who is 51, knelt on the cement floor of the warming shed and held No. 207’s head in his hands, blowing puffs of air into its lungs. He had been too busy trying to save the animal to even check its sex.

“Come on, bud, I’ve got a bet with Marty we’re going to keep you alive,” he said softly, referring to his business partner on the ranch, Marty Neugebauer.

Even the instinct of a cow to mother its calf can be weakened in a season like this, ranchers say. When a cow is depleted of energy by lack of food or by cold, or when a calf rescue like the one for No. 207 is necessary and the baby is taken away, mothers can become uninterested, focused more, perhaps, on their own survival than on that of their offspring.

“There’s less mothering — and when it gets like this, you’ve got to have a good mom,” said Mr. Neugebauer, 41, who has done night calving duty on recent evenings when the wind chill, he said, was 25 below.

The trouble with No. 207, however, was not the result of maternal failure. She licked the baby fiercely and protected it so that a pitchfork had to be waved in her face to force her away before Mr. Butler could seize the calf and run for his truck with it in his arms.

But the calf’s small size — about 50 pounds, compared with 80 or 85 pounds on average — and its early delivery, about a month before the veterinarian had predicted, probably reflected the impact of the mother’s near-starvation and cold during the pregnancy, Mr. Neugebauer said.

Many of the 900 cattle on the Butler and Neugebauer ranches could not be reached for days after the storms. One group of several dozen was put into a barn four miles from the ranch house for shelter on the eve of the second blizzard on Dec. 28, with the idea that someone would be back the next day to bring food and water. It took five days before anyone could make it.

“We’re in it for the money, that’s the biggest impact,” Mr. Butler said. “But I’m attached to the animals too, and I do everything I can to try to keep them, and it’s really disheartening to see them dead. I love to see them born, and get up — it’s just a different feeling.”

The struggle to save each calf is also a personal fight, Mr. Butler added. “I hate to lose,” he said. “You’re at the mercy of forces and doing everything you can to save them, and when you’re not successful, it gets at you.”

Calf 207’s problems were probably compounded by its becoming stuck for a few minutes half in and half out of its mother during the birth — exposed to the bitterly cold air but still connected by the umbilical cord, and thus unable to breathe properly.

“I’m not sure why, but that really takes it out of them,” Mr. Butler said.

In the warming shed, after bouncing back from the corral with the calf on the floor of his truck, Mr. Butler laid No. 207 on a burlap bag and rubbed it with a blanket. He tickled the calf’s ears and nose, trying to provoke a sneeze that might clear the lungs. He picked it up by the hind legs and dangled it, hoping gravity would help the draining.

Mr. Neugebauer stood by, watching. “I don’t think this one is going to make ’er,” he said.

Mr. Butler glanced up. “Yeah he is,” he said, and kept working.

But the calf — a female, as Mr. Butler later discovered — did not survive. Sometime between his rounds through the ranch at 2 a.m. and Mr. Neugebauer’s return an hour later, the gasping wheeze had fallen still.

    On Snowbound Plains, Grim Fight to Save Calves, NYT, 24.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/24/us/24calves.html?hp&ex=1169701200&en=9b43db37d2a41849&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Winter weather results in 11 traffic fatalities; more snow for the Southwest

Updated 1/22/2007 11:37 AM ET
USA Today
From staff and wire reports

Arizonans, stunned and in large part delighted by a rare snow over the northern parts of the state, are bracing for another round today while Colorado digs out from yet another winter storm system in the nation's midsection.

Although the heaviest snowfall in Arizona on Sunday was in the north, snow also fell in downtown Phoenix and Tucson, which received up to 1 ½ inches, according to the National Weather Service.

Danita D'Water said there were huge snowflakes in her neighborhood in far northeast Phoenix.

"The children are running up and down the street, riding their scooters in the snow," she said. "The kids are pretty excited but the adults were out taking pictures."

Jerry Grucky, 45, stood outside his car with his hands trying to feel the wet snowflakes drop as they fell Sunday.

"It's great. It's fun. I have lived here all my life and have only seen snow twice," he said.

The National Weather Service said it hasn't snowed at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport since 1998, and the last measurable amount of snow recorded there was four-tenths of an inch on Dec. 21 and 22, 1990.

The weather service says a winter storm warning remains in effect and could bring an additional 3 inches of snow today.

The storm system is bringing less delight to Denver and eastern Colorado, which is digging out from at least the third winter storm this season.

A blizzard warning is in effect for much of eastern and northeastern Colorado, and the State Patrol advises against unnecessary travel.

Wind up to 60 mph piled the snow into drifts as high as 3 feet in some parts of the state, the National Weather Service said.

The latest storm in Colorado came only a day after another system spread heavy snow across parts of the Plains on Saturday, limiting visibility and creating hazardous driving conditions.

That storm was blamed for at least 11 traffic deaths: six in Kansas, four in Nebraska and one in Oklahoma.

Several states are reeling from the latest storm, or still digging out from the last ones:

•In Kansas, an accumulation of 8 inches was reported in several communities before the snow stopped falling early Sunday.

•In Missouri, more than 45,000 people remain in the dark from the same storm.

•Authorities in Oklahoma's Pittsburg and McIntosh counties implemented a nighttime curfew after reports of break-ins and the theft of generators set up to power railroad crossing guards.

While Oklahoma was largely spared more heavy snow this weekend, utilities report about 30,000 homes and business are still without power because of an ice storm one week earlier.

A pickup carrying radioactive materials used in pipeline scanning equipment was swept from a bridge and disappeared in a swollen creek in Oklahoma's Pittsburg County, said Undersheriff Richard Sexton.

The truck's two occupants escaped unharmed, but efforts to locate the truck and its radioactive cargo were suspended after dark. He said officials hope the creek's level will fall enough on Monday to reveal the truck's whereabouts. A container with the material is bolted to the truck.

"The radioactive materials are still in the truck, and that's what we're worried about," Sexton said.

Winter weather has also hit hard on the East Coast, bringing snow, sleet and freezing rain to Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Maryland and making roads treacherous.

Contributing: The Arizona Republic

    Winter weather results in 11 traffic fatalities; more snow for the Southwest, UT, 22.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/weather/stormcenter/2007-01-22-nation-snow_x.htm

New winter storm stalks Southern Plains

Updated 1/20/2007 12:51 AM ET
By Alicia A. Caldwell, Associated Press
USA Today

MUSKOGEE, Okla. — A storm carrying the threat of more snow and ice moved across the Southern Plains on Friday as more than 100,000 homes and businesses remained in the dark from earlier blasts of cold, wet weather.

Winter storm warnings covered much of New Mexico and parts of Texas and Oklahoma, with a half-foot to more than a foot of snow and sleet expected. In Texas, 90 National Guard members were activated.

At a plaza in El Paso, where large crowds usually gather near bus stops and restaurants, only a few people braved the biting wind.

"We prepared, getting all our winter clothes out, but it's difficult because the bus is late," said Alicia Lozano, 62, who wrapped a purple scarf around her head.

In tiny Oaks in northeastern Oklahoma, carpenter and rancher Garland Whorton has been without power for a week. He spent three days using a chain saw to cut a path through the ice to his barn so he could reach his horses and mules.

"When that snow hits, it's going to finish us off," said Whorton, 59.

The latest winter blast has led to reports of at least 74 deaths in nine states in the past week, including 25 in Oklahoma, 14 in Missouri and 12 in Texas. Many of the deaths were caused by car wrecks or carbon monoxide poisoning from portable generators.

More than 77,000 Missouri homes and businesses remained without power, mainly in the state's southwestern section.

Eastern Oklahoma, including the hard-hit cities of McAlester and Muskogee, still had nearly 60,000 homes in the dark after ice snapped hundreds of power poles and transmission lines.

About 1,000 people remained in shelters set up by the American Red Cross, and at homeless shelters. Gloves and blankets were already in short supply after the first ice storm.

"We're packed to the gills," said the Rev. Steve Whitaker, executive director of the John 3:16 Mission in Tulsa. "This has been a tough ride for the homeless."

Along with the fatalities in Oklahoma, Texas and Missouri, the wave of storms was blamed for eight deaths in Iowa, four each in New York and Michigan, three in Arkansas, two in North Carolina and one each in Maine and Indiana.

Associated Press writers Justin Juozapavicius in Muskogee, Okla., and Marcus Kabel in Springfield, Mo., contributed to this report.

    New winter storm stalks Southern Plains, UT, 20.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2007-01-19-okla-storm_x.htm

Vermont Journal

Warm Days and Hard Times in Snowmobile Land

January 20, 2007
The New York Times
By KATIE ZEZIMA

CHESTER, Vt., Jan. 18 — For 24 winters, Bev and Butch Jelley, owners of the B&B Mobil station here, have provided legions of snowmobilers with fuel and chili. But this year the kitchen is quiet, and the snowmobiles are nowhere to be found.

Snowmobile clubs and the businesses that cater to them are having their second bad year in a row in many parts of New England, as warm weather has turned flakes to wet blobs and left trails a grassy, rocky mess.

Conditions are improving for clubs in Northern Maine, which received a foot of snow this week, and are getting better in parts of the Northeast Kingdom in Vermont and the North Country of New Hampshire, both of which received snow this week.

But elsewhere, snowmobile clubs are seeing memberships decline, meaning a drop in the dues used for trail maintenance. The lack of riders is severely affecting restaurants and gas stations like the Jelleys’, which laid off much of its winter staff and is closing on Sundays to save money.

“It’s horrible. We’ve been here 24 years and have never closed on a Sunday,” Mr. Jelley said. “We need snow for snowmobilers. That’s what we depend on in the winter; it’s 99 percent of our business.”

Pat Budnick, owner of the Motel in the Meadow, has a sign saying “Think Snow” in the reception area.

“I’m down $3,000 from last year in January, and so far that’s just 18 days,” Ms. Budnick said. “We haven’t had one snowmobiler, because the trails aren’t open.”

Ann Shangraw, president of the Vermont Association of Snow Travelers, which oversees local clubs and distributes money for grooming trails, said fewer than 5,000 memberships had been sold so far this season. The association, known as VAST, normally sells about 30,000 memberships annually, Ms. Shangraw said.

“Our budget is membership-driven,” she said, adding that the association distributes about $800,000 annually to clubs. “We are a wealthy association until the end of this year. We are by no means folding, but at the end of this season we will be thinking about programs and services to cut.”

Ms. Shangraw said snowmobiling brought $553 million annually to Vermont, according to the association’s last economic impact study.

Local associations are also trimming their budgets. Dick Jewett, president of the Chester Snowmobile Club, said that all of the club’s trails had closed and that he had not had occasion to use its snow-grooming machine, which sits in his garage. The club, he said, gets $10 from VAST for every mile of trail it grooms.

Mr. Jewett said that the club had 489 members last year, and that as of Sunday, only 110 riders had joined so far this year. Because of budget concerns, the club will probably do away with two scholarships it gives out, he said, and look for other ways to trim its budget.

“It’s the second year with light snowfall,” Mr. Jewett said. “In order to survive, we’ll have to make cuts.”

In Maine, registrations were down by a quarter, said Bob Myers, executive director of the Maine Snowmobile Association, but the state just received snow, and people plan to snowmobile this weekend, Mr. Myers said.

Bill Cost, owner of Inn by the River in The Forks, Me., said he and other business owners were trying to salvage the season. Mr. Cost, who helps maintain trails, said the region recently got about a foot of snow, roughly one-third of what it takes for good snowmobiling conditions. He expects heavy use this weekend.

“It’s been devastating, absolutely devastating. It has a huge trickledown effect,” said Mr. Cost, who had to lay off four employees because business was slow this year and last. “We’re holding our breath, hoping the cold and snow continue.”

Here in Chester, Benny’s Power, which services cars and sells snowmobiles, has three years of unsold stock out back.

Chris Gansz of Full Throttle Motor Sports in Warren, N.H., and a member of the Asquamchumauke Snowmobile Club, said he could not get rid of his inventory of used snowmobiles.

“No one is buying sleds. I couldn’t sell a used sled to save my life right now,” Mr. Gansz said. The club, he said, is worrying about money.

“We’re all scratching our heads wondering how we’re going to pay for the groomer this year,” he said. “Our checkbook is taking a pretty good hit right now.”

John Plante, president of the Sno-Bees Snowmobile Club in Barre, Vt., has not given up hope.

“We’re waiting, praying, for snow,” he said.

    Warm Days and Hard Times in Snowmobile Land, NYT, 20.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/20/us/20snow.html

Oranges are covered with ice this week at a farm in Fresno, Calif.

By Justin Sullivan, Getty Images

Freeze puts squeeze on citrus prices        UT        18.1.2007
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2007-01-18-citrus-usat_x.htm

Freeze puts squeeze on citrus prices

Posted 1/18/2007 11:14 PM ET
USA Today
By Barbara Hagenbaugh

WASHINGTON — Americans will pay twice as much, if not more, for oranges and possibly other fruit and vegetables in coming weeks after a freeze in California destroyed millions of dollars of crops.

Prices paid to farmers for oranges have doubled, and in some cases, tripled, in just the last week, says Steven Cochrane, an economist who focuses on the California economy at Moody's Economy.com. Price increases of the same magnitude are likely to hit grocery store shelves soon, he says.

"The difficulty here is that there really isn't a good substitute for (California) table oranges," Cochrane says, noting that more oranges may be imported from Mexico. But crops aren't ripe in other orange-producing parts of the world, he says.

Other citrus fruits, such as lemons, as well as avocados, strawberries, lettuce, broccoli and other crops are also damaged, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture. It's unclear if actual shortages may occur.

"Basically, we are going to have poor-quality product and very high prices," says Toni Spigelmyer, spokeswoman at Sysco, the largest food service marketer and distributor in North America. The company is talking to its backup suppliers, some of whom are outside the USA, to line up produce.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in 10 California counties Tuesday after below-freezing temperatures hit the state starting last weekend. Damage to the state's crops could amount to more than $1 billion, with nearly three-quarters of the losses coming from the citrus industry, according to the state government.

One-quarter of California's navel orange crop had been harvested before the freeze. Of the fruit still on trees, three-quarters likely was destroyed, says Claire Smith, spokeswoman for Sunkist Growers, a cooperative of 6,000 growers in California and Arizona. Other varieties, such as mandarin oranges, tangerines and tangelos, are also at risk, she says.

California provides the bulk of the domestically grown oranges eaten in the USA, while most oranges grown in Florida are squeezed into juice. Prices for orange juice, which have risen in recent months, are unlikely to increase much more because of the California freeze, says Tom Jackson, agricultural economist at Global Insight.

The freeze means more than higher food bills, says Wells Fargo agricultural economist Michael Swanson.

"People will not only be paying higher prices, but they will be seeing blemishes and other defects," he says, noting that doesn't mean the oranges won't taste good. But "normally these products would have been culled and left out of the box."

    Freeze puts squeeze on citrus prices, UT, 18.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2007-01-18-citrus-usat_x.htm

Bills on Climate Move to Spotlight in New Congress

January 18, 2007
The New York Times
By FELICITY BARRINGER and ANDREW C. REVKIN

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 — The climate here has definitely changed.

Legislation to control global warming that once had a passionate but quixotic ring to it is now serious business. Congressional Democrats are increasingly determined to wrest control of the issue from the White House and impose the mandatory controls on carbon dioxide emissions that most smokestack industries have long opposed.

Four major Democratic bills have been announced, with more expected. One of these measures, or a blend of them, stands an excellent chance of passage in this Congress or the next, industry and environmental lobbyists said in interviews.

Many events have combined to create the new direction — forsythia blooming in lawmakers’ gardens in January, polar bears lacking the ice they need to hunt and Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” along with pragmatic executives seeking an idea of future costs and, especially, the arrival of a Democratic-controlled Congress. There was evidence of the changed mood all over Washington this week.

On Wednesday, leading scientists and evangelical pastors jointly declared their intention to fight the causes of climate change and the public confusion on the subject. Cheryl Johns, a professor at the Church of God Theological Seminary, called that problem “nature deficit disorder.”

Another news conference on Wednesday featured executives of the heavily regulated electric utility industry embracing Senators Dianne Feinstein of California and Thomas R. Carper of Delaware, both Democrats. The senators were offering separate bills to add regulations, including a cap on carbon dioxide emissions.

One sign of the Democrats’ determination to move on climate bills occurred when a Democratic Congressional aide confirmed that Speaker Nancy Pelosi wanted to create a special committee on climate, apparently an end run around Representative John D. Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. Dingell, through an aide, Jodi Seth, said Wednesday that such committees were “as relevant and useful as feathers on a fish.”

Mr. Dingell’s firm support of the automobile industry, a leading source of carbon dioxide emissions, and his earlier lack of enthusiasm for climate measures have made him suspect among advocates of strong climate laws.

To add excitement, the man of the moment, Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, lent his name to the best-known brand in climate-change legislation, a measure by Senators John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut.

That means that two of the three sponsors, Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain, are leading presidential contenders in 2008.

Neither party is united around any one position. And for all the flurry of news conferences and proffered solutions, the big unanswered question was what will President Bush do?

A tantalizing hint came from James L. Connaughton, chairman of the president’s Council on Environmental Quality, in an interview on Tuesday.

“There are a number of pathways for getting to a shared goal, and we should explore all of them,” Mr. Connaughton said.

He added, “Part of that, by the way, is learning about some of the flaws in the design of the economywide cap-and-trade approach, which, if corrected, might make it a workable tool.”

That suggests that some version of an emissions cap may eventually win White House support. Persistent rumors that the president might support an emissions cap, circulating in Washington and Europe, were rejected Tuesday by his press secretary, Tony Snow.

But White House aides have hinted for months that Mr. Bush was planning a dramatic announcement on the subject in his annual address. Last year, the president said, “America is addicted to oil,” and stimulated a debate over dependence on foreign oil that has overlapped with environmental groups’ calls for cleaner-burning domestic fuels.

The mechanism that Mr. Snow ruled out is the basis for most of the Democratic measures, capping carbon dioxide emissions and then giving or selling to companies allowances, effectively permits to create a certain level of emissions.

Cleaner factories or utilities could then sell the allowances and gain a new revenue source. Factories with higher than allowable emissions would have to buy the permits they need.

Such a market, already in effect in Europe, in theory would set a price for a ton of carbon dioxide emissions, and the market would stimulate innovation in technologies that would reduce emissions or produce goods or power without the same high emissions common today.

Diplomats and environmental groups speculated in Washington this week that the Bush administration would look at other mandatory actions, perhaps not an emissions cap but rather expanding the decision to increase marginally fuel-economy standards for light trucks.

A similar move for passenger vehicles, coupled with a call for sharp increases in ethanol and other renewable fuels plus new money for research into clean-energy technologies would be a bouquet approach that would expand policies Mr. Bush has put forward.

European allies have been trying to nudge Mr. Bush toward their cap-and-trade model. The White House says that would shift jobs, and emissions from one country to another without slowing worldwide growth in emissions.

The president’ s opposition to mandatory caps retains strong support on Capitol Hill.

Jim Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, the trade group of the utility industry, said Wednesday: “Everything is different, but it’s also the same in some ways. You still need 60 votes to get something big done in the Senate. And there are still many complex, thorny issues that stand in the way of enactment.”

The Democratic bills announced in the last two weeks cover a broad range. A proposal by Senator Jeff Bingaman, the New Mexico Democrat who is chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, would decrease the rate of emissions growth before capping emissions and would build in a “safety valve,” freeing industries from the caps in certain circumstances.

Groups like Environmental Defense say the safety valve would undermine market mechanisms.

In an interview, Mr. Bingaman said, “The way I look at it it’s a question of what we can get agreement on.”

Less draconian than that proposal is the Lieberman-McCain approach. It would tighten controls more gradually and include subsidies for nuclear power. An emissions cap for just utilities is the centerpiece of yet another bill, by Ms. Feinstein.

Some scientists and economists have expressed concern in recent weeks that the discussions here is overly focused on emissions caps, with too little attention on what they say is an essential need, greatly expanded government-financed research on nonpolluting energy technologies.

Richard G. Richels, a climate expert and an economist at the Electric Power Research Institute, an organization in Palo Alto, Calif., that conducts energy studies for the utility industry, said a carbon dioxide cap would mainly prompt industry to deploy existing cleaner technologies that provide gains, but fail to come close to solving the climate problem.

Mr. Richels added that it would not spur long-term investments seeking breakthroughs like new ways to store intermittent power from windmills.

Felicity Barringer reported from Washington and Andrew C. Revkin from Portland, Ore. Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting from Washington.

    Bills on Climate Move to Spotlight in New Congress, NYT, 18.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/washington/18climate.html?hp&ex=1169182800&en=9599292dce4cf75b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush readies speech on climate change

Wed Jan 17, 2007 8:57 AM ET
Reuters
By Chris Baltimore

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush's annual speech to Congress next week is likely to call for a massive increase in U.S. ethanol usage and tweak climate change policy while stopping short of mandatory emissions caps, sources familiar with White House plans said on Tuesday.

Bush's annual State of the Union address is expected to touch on key energy policy points, after Bush made the surprise pronouncement during last year's address that the United States is addicted to Middle East crude oil supplies.

A rising focus on "energy security" by both the Bush administration and Congress has added momentum to efforts to employ home-grown fuel sources like ethanol to reduce U.S. dependency on oil imports.

Following that theme, Bush is likely to call for more U.S. usage of home-grown supplies of ethanol, the sources told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Iowa, which grows more corn than any other U.S. state, is also a key stop for candidates in the upcoming 2008 presidential elections. Ethanol is made from agricultural products like corn.

One source briefed by White House officials said Bush's speech on January 23 could call for over 60 billion gallons a year of ethanol to be mixed into U.S. gasoline supplies by 2030.

That would be a massive increase from the 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol use by 2012 required by current U.S. law.

"I think it's going to be a big number," the source said on condition of anonymity. "It's in the ballpark of even above 60 billion (gallons) by 2030."

A White House spokesman declined to comment on the details of the speech.

POLICY ON GLOBAL WARMING

The White House on Tuesday confirmed that Bush's speech will outline a policy on global warming, but said Bush has not dropped his opposition to mandatory limits on heat-trapping greenhouse-gas emissions.

Some industry officials and media reports speculated that Bush would agree to mandatory emissions caps in an effort to combat global warming, reversing years of opposition to mandatory caps. But the White House denied this.

"If you're talking about enforceable carbon caps, in terms of industry-wide and nationwide, we knocked that down. That's not something we're talking about," White House spokesman Tony Snow said at Tuesday's media briefing.

Delaware Democrat Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the panel's senior Republican, introduced a nonbinding resolution calling for the United States to return to international negotiations on climate change.

"It is critical that the international dialogue on climate change and American participation in those discussions move beyond the disputes over the Kyoto Protocols," Lugar said in a statement.

Britain's "The Observer" newspaper reported on Sunday that unnamed senior Downing Street officials said Bush was preparing to issue a changed climate policy during the State of the Union.

U.S. allies like Britain and Germany have pressed for a new global agreement on climate change to replace the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012. Bush withdrew the United States from the protocol in 2001, saying its targets for reducing carbon emissions would unfairly hurt the U.S. economy.

The speech is a moving target and White House officials are known to make last-minute tweaks.

Last year, White House political advisors added the "addicted to oil" remarks hours before Bush spoke.

Investors hope Bush will embrace biofuels in his speech.

"I would like him to set a very aggressive target for renewable fuels," top Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla told the Reuters Global Biofuel Summit on Tuesday.

(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan in Washington and Mary Milliken in Los Angeles)

    Bush readies speech on climate change, R, 17.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-01-17T135618Z_01_N16234366_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-ENVIRONMENT.xml&src=011707_1106_DOUBLEFEATURE_weather

Savage winter storm leaves 54 dead, thousands powerless across USA

Updated 1/17/2007 8:33 AM ET
By Justin Juozapavicius, Associated Press Writer
USA Today

McALESTER, Okla. — Hundreds of people hunkered down in emergency shelters and thousands stuck it out in darkened homes after a winter storm that left 54 dead in nine states.

About 320,000 homes and businesses in several states were still without electricity late Tuesday after a storm that brought ice, snow, flooding and high winds to a swath of the country from Texas to Maine.

At the First Baptist Church in McAlester, Okla., where most of the city's 18,000 residents have lacked power for four days, residents huddled under blankets and in front of space heaters.

"If it wasn't for the shelter, I don't know where we'd be," said Tara Guzman, 38, while playing board games with her four children. "We're tough; we lasted when the power went out until (Monday). We brought mattresses out in the living room and cuddled."

Subfreezing temperatures were expected to continue in the state Wednesday, with little sunshine to aid in melting the ice until Thursday or Friday, said National Weather Service meteorologist Kevin Brown.

Gov. Brad Henry on Wednesday planned to visit McAlester and other hard-hit areas of Oklahoma, where 92,000 homes and businesses remained without power.

"I want to see the damage firsthand and make sure we are doing everything possible to help the people there," Henry said.

Josh and B.J. Medley elected to stay in their dark home on Tuesday, noting they had electrical generators, a gas stove and propane heaters. B.J. Medley also had $100 worth of groceries cooling on her front porch.

"It's hard to keep milk, because milk freezes and goes bad," she complained.

The storm had largely blown out of New England by Tuesday, but forecasters expected more freezing rain to hit parts of Texas on Wednesday night, said Dennis Cook of the National Weather Service's Austin-San Antonio office. Gusty winds were forecast to make the Northeast bone-chilling through Wednesday night before warming Thursday.

Eighty-five shelters across Missouri were expected to accommodate more than 3,600 people Tuesday night, according to the State Emergency Management Agency. About 163,000 homes and businesses still had no electricity.

In the town of Buffalo — population 2,800 — nearly all stores, gas stations and restaurants were closed Tuesday.

"There are no services," Mayor Jerry Hardesty said. "I've talked to residents who have lived here 50 years and nobody can remember it ever being this bad."

The town lost all its power by Saturday. Water towers ran dry Sunday, and water service was restored only late Monday, after the National Guard hooked a generator up to a pumping station.

On Tuesday, ice, sleet and snow forced Texas officials to move the governor's inauguration ceremony indoors for the first time in five decades. Gov. Rick Perry's inaugural parade was canceled and part of Interstate 35 near the University of Texas campus was shut down.

Numerous schools and universities, as well as some local and state government offices, were also closed across the region.

More than 200,000 customers in Michigan also lost power at some point, and 24,000 were still blacked out early Wednesday. New York state and New Hampshire also reported thousands of customers without power.

Waves of freezing rain, sleet and snow since Friday have been blamed for at least 20 deaths in Oklahoma, nine in Missouri, eight in Iowa, four in New York, five in Texas, three in Michigan, three in Arkansas and one each in Maine and Indiana.

Elsewhere, Washington state's Puget Sound area, known for drizzle rather than its recent freezing weather, was hit by another round of snow Tuesday, snarling traffic and closing schools for more than 380,000 students. The Oregon Legislature delayed hearings and sessions until afternoon because of the weather.

In California, three nights of freezing weather have destroyed up to three-quarters of the state's $1 billion citrus crop, prompting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to ask the federal government on Tuesday for disaster aid. Other crops, including avocados and strawberries, also suffered damage.

"This is not just about the crop this year. It could also have a devastating effect next year," Schwarzenegger said.

Contributing: Associated Press writers Marcus Kabel in Springfield, Mo., and Jeff Carlton in Dallas contributed to this report.

    Savage winter storm leaves 54 dead, thousands powerless across USA, UT, 17.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/weather/stormcenter/2007-01-16-ice-storm_x.htm

Schwarzenegger sees $1 bln crop losses from frost

Wed Jan 17, 2007 8:25 AM ET
Reuters



SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California's citrus crop has been devastated by a freeze, but Florida promises to make up some of the shortfall.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger estimated on Tuesday that a series of unusually cold nights would cause total state crop losses of $1 billion, including oranges and other fruits and vegetables.

"The financial losses to the agricultural industry will likely reach $1 billion," Schwarzenegger said in a letter to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns.

"These extreme weather conditions have had a devastating impact on California's agricultural industry, exacting catastrophic losses on our citrus, avocado, vegetable and strawberry crops," the governor wrote.

California normally supplies the majority of fresh oranges to grocery shelves in the country, but the losses there will be made up for by oranges from Florida, the main growers' group in the Sunshine State pledged.

Michael Sparks, chief executive of Florida Citrus Mutual, said in a statement late Tuesday its members are "in a position to help fill the vacuum that will be created by the absence of California citrus."

Florida is the biggest citrus producer in the U.S. but most of its fruit is processed into juice.

Schwarzenegger had written to ask the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide aid for farmers who suffered heavy losses after several cold nights which froze crops.

The celebrity governor visited a citrus farm in Fresno on Tuesday and also declared a state of emergency in 10 counties: Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Merced, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Tulare and Ventura.

"In many cases, only a small percentage of the crops were harvested when the freeze began, with the result being that some California growers are reporting a complete loss of their crop," Schwarzenegger said in his letter. "With freeze conditions expected to continue, there is little hope for many of these growers."

A.G. Kawamura, secretary of California's Department of Food and Agriculture, said this week that loss for the California citrus fruit industry would likely be worse than the $700 million loss suffered in 1998.

Michael Wootton, a vice president at Sunkist Growers, a cooperative of about two thirds of California's citrus growers, estimated the likely loss at $800 million of the total $1.3 billion citrus crop.

    Schwarzenegger sees $1 bln crop losses from frost, R, 17.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2007-01-17T132521Z_01_N16245202_RTRUKOC_0_US-CALIFORNIA-FREEZE.xml&src=011707_1106_DOUBLEFEATURE_weather

Cold Raises Fear in California Citrus Industry

January 16, 2007
The New York Times
By JESSE McKINLEY and DAVID KARP

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 15 — Farmers braced for the worst on Monday, as a persistent cold snap seemed likely to deal a serious blow to the billion-dollar California citrus industry.

State officials said there was no clear way of knowing at this point how much damage had been done by the freeze, which has sent temperatures plunging into the teens and 20s from Eureka in the north to near the Mexican border for several nights.

Farmers in some sections of the Central Valley, the 400-mile-long agricultural engine, and farther south reported near complete losses of fields of oranges, lemons and other citrus.

The state’s food and agriculture secretary, A. G. Kawamura, said the damage appeared even more widespread than that from a freeze in December 1998 that cost growers $700 million.

“These numbers will very likely surpass that,” Mr. Kawamura, said by telephone from Ventura County, a citrus-rich region northwest of Los Angeles. “It’s a little bit early, in many cases, to know for sure. But in the case of certain growers in certain areas, 100 percent of what’s on the tree has been lost.”

In particular, agricultural officials said they were concerned about low-lying areas where cold pockets have exposed trees and fruit to lengthy periods of subfreezing temperatures.

California is the top state in producing lemons and eating oranges, and the Food and Agriculture Department estimates the value of the crop still on the trees at $960 million.

Citrus was not the only crop prompting worries. Farmers along the coast, where temperatures rarely dip below freezing, kept a close eye on avocados and strawberries.

In the southern regions, lettuce and other leafy greens were at risk.

Each crop meant different worries, including blossoms frozen on avocado trees that would hurt the harvest next year and lettuce, cabbage and celery’s starting to seed, a natural defense that renders many plants unmarketable.

Mr. Kawamura and others said freeze damage would not come close to the damage wreaked in 1990, when an extended statewide freeze killed thousands of trees.

This time, farmers seemed to have anticipated the cold weather, a top story on newscasts, which led to snowfall in zones as low as 1,000 feet altitude in San Diego County.

A spokesman for the California Farm Bureau, Dave Kranz, said farmers stayed up all night trying to keep crops warm, using warm-water irrigation, wind machines and helicopters to try to circulate warm air to ground level.

“If they can increase the temperature two to five degrees, oftentimes that’s enough,” Mr. Kranz said.

Larry Peltzer, 48, works 1,500 acres of citrus in and near Ivanhoe, 40 miles southeast of Fresno. On Saturday night, the coldest recent night in many areas, Mr. Peltzer drove to his orchards, turning on irrigation pumps and some of his 125 wind machines.

Just before dawn, the temperature in his groves averaged 22 degrees. Fruits that Mr. Peltzer cut to sample were slushy inside, indicating that ice crystals had formed. That fruit, worthless for the fresh market, might be salvaged for juice, he said.

“We’ll continue fighting,” he added. “But we have all this energy and money put into protecting this crop, and to lose it all at once is devastating.”

Shirley Batchman, director of industry relations for California Citrus Mutual, a trade group, said that about a fourth of the crop had been harvested before the freeze and that growers have been rushing to pick as much as they could, leaving about 10 days’ inventory in the pipeline.

County agricultural commissioners and packing houses started emergency inspections. Citrus picked beginning on Friday will be tagged and set aside to ensure that damaged fruit does not reach the market. Packing houses can sort damaged fruit, which floats in water.

Ms. Batchman said farmers had been particularly pleased with the orange crop this year. She said it was smaller than normal but had higher quality.

“We were humming right along,” she added.

The freeze is the latest hardship for the state’s $32 billion agricultural industry, including spring floods, a summer heat wave and an E. coli scare that financially crippled spinach growers along the Central Coast.

Agricultural officials said they thought that the freeze would break on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. But it may be days or weeks before the total damage is known.

“We believe the worst of the freeze is over,” Mr. Kawamura said. “But it’s still a lot of sleepless nights for a lot of producers.”

Jesse McKinley reported from San Francisco, and David Karp from Ivanhoe, Calif.

    Cold Raises Fear in California Citrus Industry, NYT, 16.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/us/16freeze.html

Storm Blacks Out Parts of Northeast; Toll Hits 46

January 16, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:03 p.m. ET
The New York Times

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) -- Power lines were down, highways were treacherous and spring-like temperatures were only a memory Tuesday in parts of the Northeast in the wake of the storm that earlier had plastered the Midwest and Plains with a heavy shell of ice.

The death toll from the storm was at least 46 in seven states.

The weight of the ice snapped tree limbs, shorted out transformers and made power lines sag, knocking out current to about 145,000 customers in New York state and New Hampshire on Monday, though service had been restored for roughly half of them by Tuesday morning.

''If you live here long enough, you just know the power's going to go out twice a year, at least. You don't worry about it,'' said Scott Towne, owner of Rondac Pet Services near Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where portable generators provided light and heat for about two-dozen dogs. ''You make all the plans in advance that you can.''

Scores of schools canceled classes or opened late Tuesday in New Hampshire and upstate New York in the Northeast and Oklahoma and Texas on the southern Plains.

The storm had largely blown out of New England by Tuesday morning, leaving up 10 inches of snow in western Maine.

A wave of arctic air trailed the storm, dropping temperatures into the single digits as far south as Kansas and Missouri. The 7 a.m. temperature Tuesday at Kansas City, Mo., was just 2 degrees, while Bismarck, N.D., had a reading of 16 below zero, with a wind chill of 31 below, the National Weather Service reported.

Cold air also was moving into the East, where temperatures have been far above normal in recent weeks and the ground has been bare of snow. Instead of skiers, the unseasonable weather has drawn out golfers and bicyclists.

Icy roads cut into Martin Luther King Jr. holiday observances from Albany, N.Y., to Austin, Texas, where officials in both states canceled gubernatorial inauguration parades Tuesday.

More power outages were possible in New Hampshire as wind battered ice-laden branches. ''We are restoring some and adding more,'' Public Service Co. spokeswoman Mary-Jo Boisvert said Tuesday morning. Some New York customers might have to wait until Thursday, the utility National Grid estimated.

In hard-hit Missouri, the utility company Ameren said it would probably not have everyone's lights back on until Wednesday night. As of Tuesday morning, about 215,000 homes and businesses still had no electricity.

The White House said Tuesday that 34 Missouri counties and St. Louis had been declared a major disaster area, making federal funding available. A similar federal disaster declaration was approved Sunday for Oklahoma.

About 100,000 homes and businesses were still waiting for power Tuesday in Oklahoma, some of them waiting since the storm's first wave struck on Friday. Ice built up by sleet and freezing rain was 4 inches thick in places. The Army Corps of Engineers assigned soldiers to deliver 100 emergency generators to the McAlester area.

Customers in some rural parts of Oklahoma might have to wait until next week for service, said Stan Whiteford of Public Service Co. of Oklahoma. ''There are a lot of places where virtually everything is destroyed. In some cases, entire electric services will have to be rebuilt,'' he said.

More than 200,000 customers in Michigan also lost power and about 86,000 of them were still blacked out Tuesday.

Waves of freezing rain, sleet and snow since Friday had been blamed for at least 17 deaths in Oklahoma, eight in Missouri, eight in Iowa, four in New York, five in Texas, three in Michigan and one in Maine.

Elsewhere, Washington state's Puget Sound area, known for off-and-on drizzle rather than freezing winter weather, was hit by another round of snow Tuesday, snarling traffic and closing schools for more than 380,000 students. The Oregon Legislature delayed hearings and sessions until afternoon because of the weather.

In California, three nights of freezing weather had destroyed up to three-quarters of the state's $1 billion citrus crop, according to an estimate issued Monday. Other crops, including avocados and strawberries, also suffered damage.

''This is one of those freezes that, unfortunately, we'll all remember,'' said A.G. Kawamura, secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

Associated Press writers April Castro in Austin, Texas; Betsy Taylor in St. Louis; Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City; and Timberly Ross in Omaha, Neb., contributed to this report.

    Storm Blacks Out Parts of Northeast; Toll Hits 46, NYT, 16.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Winter-Blast.html?hp&ex=1169010000&en=73a10a79a3449b0a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

A Powerful Storm Ices Six States and Kills Dozens of People

January 16, 2007
The New York Times
By JIM ORSO

ST. LOUIS, Jan. 15 —An icy storm has caused the deaths of at least 41 people in six states since Friday, including seven Mexicans in a van in Oklahoma apparently traveling in search of jobs.

The storm, which has downed countless limbs and power lines and knocked out electricity to hundreds of thousands of people, has now expanded its reach from Texas to the Northeast.

The single biggest loss of life took place early Sunday morning in Elk City, Okla., when, the police said, a van carrying 12 people on icy roads crossed into oncoming traffic and collided with a tractor trailer. Immigration officials and local authorities were sorting through the pieces Monday to learn more about the victims.

“With there being so many in the minivan, they had to be migrant workers,” said Lt. Rick Weedon of the Oklahoma State Police. “What else would they be doing than going somewhere to work? The majority were headed to North Carolina, and some to Detroit.”

Lt. Pete Norwood, public information officer for the Oklahoma State Highway Patrol, said the driver of the truck would be cited for driving too fast for conditions.

The victims were ages 16 to 56, the authorities said.

“There were people laying all over the highway,” said John Thompson, a paramedic with the Elk City Fire Department who helped transport the injured to Great Plains Regional Medical Center in Elk City. “I don’t think anybody could have been wearing seat belts.”

Lieutenant Weedon said one of the men injured in the van was in the custody of Immigration and Naturalization Service officers, who picked him up Monday at a hotel in Sayre, Okla., not far from the stretch of Interstate 40 where the accident occurred. Two of the other occupants remained hospitalized.

Lieutenant Weedon said state officials were trying to reach Mexican officials in Dallas to discuss the case.

In all, at least 15 people were killed on Oklahoma roads during a three-day ice storm that moved east early Monday. About 120,000 customers were without power in Oklahoma, and an additional 300,000 in Missouri, where hundreds of thousands of people lost power in December in a major snowstorm.

The Army Corps of Engineers dispatched soldiers to deliver 100 emergency generators to the McAlester area of Oklahoma, The Associated Press reported, and 50 generators were being sent by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Gov. Brad Henry of Oklahoma declared most of the state a disaster area and asked President Bush to declare the state a federal disaster emergency because of property damage caused by falling limbs.

With a wave of arctic air trailing the storm and expected to push temperatures into the single digits in some areas, Oklahoma officials were strongly discouraging travel, The A.P. said. Officials said the frigid weather would refreeze slush and water on roads.

Residents in Oklahoma and Missouri were still having to cut paths through many streets made impassible by tree limbs.

Road conditions in Missouri were less severe than in Oklahoma, because the temperature stayed just above freezing in the central and eastern parts of the state. Among the weather-related deaths reported in Missouri was that of a Bonne Terre man who died when floodwaters swept his car off a bridge and into a swelling creek.

Dozens of warming shelters were set for people ill-equipped to deal with the cold because of loss of power or poorly insulated homes. In parts of Missouri, the National Guard went door to door, checking on residents and helping clear roads.

Waves of freezing rain, sleet and snow since Friday have been blamed for 17 deaths in Oklahoma, 8 in Missouri, 8 in Iowa, 4 in New York, 3 in Texas and one in Maine.

In western and upstate New York on Monday, more than 110,000 customers lost power and highways were closed, The A.P. reported. As much as half an inch of ice coated trees, power lines and roads. Three people were killed when a car slid into a dump truck in Sennett, outside Syracuse.

About 95,000 customers of National Grid were without power as of Monday afternoon. More than 17,000 Rochester Gas and Electric customers were without power in the morning, though most had their power restored by evening.

More snow and ice were being forecast for much of western New York.

The storm interfered with observances planned for Martin Luther King’s Birthday across the country, The A.P. reported.

In Texas, officials canceled Gov. Rick Perry’s inauguration parade, planned for Tuesday, after forecasters predicted more ice. More than 160 flights were canceled at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, and the University of Texas was closed.

    A Powerful Storm Ices Six States and Kills Dozens of People, NYT, 16.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/us/16storm.html

330,000 Lose Power After Mo. Storm

January 15, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:50 p.m. ET
The New York Times

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- The death toll from a powerful winter storm rose to 36 across six states Monday as utility crews labored to restore service to hundreds of thousands of Missouri households and businesses enduring cold weather without electricity for heat and lights.

The crews hoped to take advantage of moderate weather expected Monday -- with only a few lingering snow showers and flurries -- before temperatures plunged back to the single digits Monday night.

However, some people won't be back online until late Wednesday, said the utility Ameren.

Power outages spread to other states Monday as the remains of the storm system streamed across New England.

Ice-covered roads cut into Martin Luther King Jr. holiday observances from New York to Texas, where officials canceled Gov. Rick Perry's inauguration parade scheduled for Tuesday

Even in Maine, more accustomed to winter weather, a layer of sleet and snow on roads Monday shut down numerous businesses, day care centers and schools.

Waves of freezing rain, sleet and snow since Friday had been blamed for at least 15 deaths in Oklahoma, eight in Missouri, five in Iowa, three in Texas and four in New York and one in Maine.

Seven of the Oklahoma deaths occurred in one accident, in which a minivan carrying 12 people slid off an icy highway Sunday and struck an oncoming truck, the Highway Patrol said. All of the van's occupants were adult residents of Mexico, who were traveling from Arizona to North Carolina, Highway Patrol Capt. Chris West said.

About 330,000 homes and businesses had no electricity Sunday night in Missouri. State officials did not have a new estimate Monday morning, but Ameren's share of those outages had dropped from 130,000 to 98,000, spokeswoman Susan Gallager said. However, that figure included about 13,000 new outages in central Missouri.

Most of the Missouri power outages were caused by the weight of ice snapping tree branches and dropping them onto power lines, officials said. In New Hampshire, outages also were caused by vehicles sliding into utility poles.

Missouri National Guardsmen went door to door checking on the health and safety of residents in the hardest hit parts of the state and helping to clear slick roads. The St. Louis temperature hovered just above the freezing mark Monday morning, and the wind chill was 24 degrees, the weather service said.

As the storm blew across the lower Great Lakes and northern New England on Monday, a layer of ice up to a half-inch thick knocked out power to more than 50,000 customers in northern New York and was blamed for dozens of traffic accidents, authorities officials said.

A King holiday appearance in Albany, N.Y., by Gov. Eliot Spitzer was canceled because the weather prevented him from flying or driving north from New York City.

The ice accumulation also blacked out at least 4,500 customers in New Hampshire, but in the northern part of the state ski areas were celebrating their first significant snowfall of the season.

The weather and the need to de-ice aircraft prompted the cancellation of 100 scheduled departures Monday morning at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, DFW Airport spokesman Ken Capps said. More than 400 flights were canceled there Sunday.

About 122,000 customers were blacked out in Oklahoma as of Sunday night, the state Department of Emergency Management said. Authorities said it could be up to a week before power is fully restored.

Late Sunday, President Bush declared a federal disaster for Oklahoma because of the storm.

Elsewhere, a weekend cold snap that had worried citrus growers and other farmers in California produced rare freezing temperatures Monday in southern Arizona. The 8 a.m. reading in Phoenix was 29, the weather service said.

Associated Press writers Ben Dobbin in Rochester, N.Y.; Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City and Timberly Ross in Omaha, Neb., contributed to this report.

    330,000 Lose Power After Mo. Storm, NYT, 15.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Winter-Blast.html?hp&ex=1168923600&en=f6e7a81eb7a74bbe&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Huge Avalanche Buries Cars in Colorado

January 7, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:58 a.m. ET
The New York Times

DENVER (AP) -- A huge avalanche knocked two cars off a mountain pass Saturday on the main highway to one of the state's largest ski areas, shortly after crowds headed through on the way to the lifts, authorities said.

Eight people were rescued from the buried vehicles and all were taken to area hospitals, said state Patrolman Eric Wynn. Details of their conditions were not available.

''Our crews said it was the largest they have ever seen. It took three paths,'' Stacey Stegman of the transportation department said of the massive slide on U.S. 40 near 11,307-foot Berthoud Pass, about 50 miles west of Denver on the way to Winter Park Resort.

Wynn said crews were probing the area for other vehicles but they believe all have been found.

Members of Oakwood Road Church in Ames, Iowa, who on a ski trip were among those swept away by the avalanche, including Darren Johnson, said his father, Don Johnson.

Darren Johnson's vehicle was the only one of the church's four-car caravan hit by the snow, his father said.

Don Johnson said his son was treated and released from a Denver hospital, while a passenger in his car, Peter Olsen of Nevada and a sophomore at Iowa State University, was being treated for a broken rib.

The avalanche hit between 10 a.m. and 10:30 and was about 200 to 300 feet wide and 15 feet deep, Wynn said. The area usually has slides 2 to 3 feet deep because crews trigger them before more snow can accumulate, said Spencer Logan of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.

Despite three snow storms in as many weeks, the area of the avalanche hasn't been hit as hard as eastern parts of the state that got up to 4 feet of snow, Logan said. But the pass did get up to 10 inches in the past few days, he said.

Logan said authorities haven't had time to test all slide areas, and he blamed 30 mph wind, with gusts up to 60 mph Saturday morning, for the avalanche conditions. The danger was expected to increase with the prediction of 70 mph wind gust in the evening.

''This is a tremendous amount of snow to come down the mountain for us,'' Stegman said.

Michael Murphy and his friends were heading up to the backcountry and to Winter Park ski resort Saturday when their path was blocked by the avalanche, which he estimated came down minutes before they got to the scene. One friend's father was about 10 minutes ahead of them, caught on the other side of the avalanche.

''Initially we couldn't get in cell phone contact with him so we were pretty nervous,'' said Murphy, 20, of Boulder.

Murphy's party and other motorists used avalanche probes and shovels to search for any cars that might have been trapped but didn't find anyone. He said the two cars that were swept off the road were pushed down about 150 to 200 feet into trees off the highway.

Mile Cikara, who was headed to Winter Park to ski, told KMGH-TV in Denver that he joined others furiously digging out victims. ''I along with 30 other people grabbed shovels and started digging to get people out. I had a shovel but people were using their hands, skis, ski poles, whatever, to dig out,'' until rescue teams arrived, he said.

The timing meant most traffic headed to the ski area had already passed through.

''Good thing it didn't happen a couple of hours earlier,'' said Darcy Morse, a Winter Park spokeswoman. On an average January weekend day, the resort draws more than 10,000 skiers and snowboarders, with lifts opening at 8:30 or 9 a.m.

The pass was closed after the avalanche but reopened Saturday night.

Colorado has been digging out for the past three weeks after back-to-back blizzards and more snow falling Friday.

The Denver area was blanketed with up to 8 inches of snow Friday, while nearly a foot fell in the foothills west of the city before the storm moved into New Mexico.

Crews in Colorado have worked around the clock to clear roads so residents could get to stores for food and medicine.

Agriculture officials also were trying to determine how to deal with the carcasses of thousands of livestock that were killed in last week's blizzard or starved afterward.

Associated Press Writer David Pitt contributed to this report from Des Moines, Iowa.

    Huge Avalanche Buries Cars in Colorado, NYT, 7.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Colorado-Avalanche.html

72-Degree Day Breaks Record in New York

January 7, 2007
The New York Times
By MANNY FERNANDEZ

Hundreds of tourists and locals packed the ice-skating rink at Rockefeller Center yesterday, pretending that it really was a cold, snowy day in early January as they circled the ice beneath the giant Christmas tree. In Brooklyn, eight members of a cold-water-braving organization known as the Coney Island Polar Bear Club walked toward the waves, some wearing nothing but swim trunks.

The only thing that ruined this winter imagery was the temperature, which in the middle of the afternoon in Central Park yesterday reached a record-breaking 72 degrees.

And so the make-believe winter collided with reality: People wore T-shirts as they ice-skated on the wet and slushy rink at Rockefeller Center, and the Polar Bears held a moment of silence, turned their backs on the Atlantic and headed toward the boardwalk, a protest, albeit an underdressed one, against global warming, they said.

Louis Scarcella, 55, a former homicide detective and president of the Coney Island club, said the weather has been so mild that he is considering canceling the group’s winter swimming season, which usually runs from November to April. A club season has not been canceled since the group was founded 104 years ago.

“I have not made the decision yet,” Mr. Scarcella said gravely. “I have to meet with my board.

“It’s a possibility,” he added. “It’s not the extreme sport that we love. It’s a very easy swim.”

The unseasonably warm spell shattered records around the city and the state as well as throughout New Jersey and Connecticut. In Central Park, the high temperature at 1:37 p.m. — 72 degrees — broke the date’s previous high of 63 degrees in 1950, the National Weather Service reported.

It tied the highest temperature recorded in the park in January since record-keeping began in the late 1800s, sharing that distinction with a 72-degree high on Jan. 26, 1950.

The difference between the old and new records was even greater in Bridgeport, Conn., the weather service said, where the high of 68 was 15 degrees above the previous record, in 1949. In Newark, the high of 72 was 11 degrees over the old mark, from 1950.

Although global warming is a popular theory for the Northeast’s warm winter, the Weather Service cited a specific meteorological cause. “We have a mild air mass that we’re in right now, kind of tropical in nature,” said John Murray, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Upton, N.Y. “The cold air masses in Canada have stayed up there.”

At the Rockefeller Center rink yesterday, it was hard to find anyone in the mood to complain. Susan Berardesca, who was visiting the city from Pennsylvania, brought her son and two daughters, because yesterday seemed as perfect a day for ice-skating as any other, she said.

“It is what it is,” she said of the weather. “I’m just enjoying it. The snow will be here soon enough, then everyone will be complaining.”

The nearby ice-skating rink in Bryant Park, behind the New York Public Library, was not as lucky. Managers kept it closed because the chilling system could not keep the ice on the top layer of the rink frozen in the warm weather.

Scattered puddles dotted the rink as people stood around glumly, snapped photographs and rearranged their schedules.

“I just bought new skates,” said Aileen Kwok, 18, a student at New York Institute of Technology, who stood with her friends and her Bauer ice skates at the padlocked door. “I guess now I have to go shopping.”

The rink was scheduled to reopen today, with temperatures expected to be in the low 50s.

The Weather Service said that there was a “slight chance of snow showers” on Tuesday, and that the low temperature by Tuesday night was expected to fall to 29 degrees.

In Times Square yesterday, one street performer was rejoicing in the seasonal flip-flop: Robert Burck, a k a the Naked Cowboy, who trolls for cash wearing nothing but his cowboy hat, underwear, boots and guitar. Business was brisk. “This is like a $1,000 day instead of a $50 or $100 day in the winter,” he said.

    72-Degree Day Breaks Record in New York, NYT, 7.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/nyregion/07heat.html

Editorial

The Senate’s Task on Warming

January 6, 2007
the New York Times

Here are a few bulletins from planet Earth:

Dec. 12 — Exhaustive computer simulations carried out at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., suggest that the Arctic Ocean will be mostly open water in the summer of 2040 — several decades earlier than expected. Scientists attribute the loss of summer ice largely to the buildup of carbon dioxide and other man-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Dec. 14 — Experts at NASA’s Goddard Institute predict that 2006 will be the fifth-warmest year since modern record-keeping began, continuing a decades-long global warming trend caused, again, by the buildup of man-made carbon dioxide.

Dec. 27 — The Interior Department proposes adding polar bears to the list of threatened species because of the accelerating loss of the Arctic ice that is the bears’ habitat. The department does not take a position on why the ice is melting, but studies supporting the proposed listing identify greenhouse gases as the main culprit, adding that if left unchecked these gases will create ice-free Arctic summers in three decades.

But we knew that.

One can only assume that the Senate’s new Democratic leadership is paying attention. California’s Barbara Boxer is the new chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, replacing James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who regards global warming as an elaborate hoax drummed up by environmentalists and scientists in search of money. Ms. Boxer has already scheduled hearings, and there will be no shortage of legislative remedies to consider. All share one objective, which is to attach a cost to carbon dioxide through a cap on emissions.

The underlying logic is that if people and industries are made to pay for the privilege of pumping these gases into the atmosphere, they will inevitably be driven to developer cleaner fuels, cleaner cars and cleaner factories.

This is the path most developed countries have chosen. Europe has imposed caps on industrial emissions, and European companies have begun investing in new technologies and cleaner factories in places like China, partly as a way to meet their own obligations to cut emissions and partly as a way to lead China to a greener future.

These hearings need to be conducted in a thoughtful manner. There has been enough noise, from the Inhofe right and from the doomsayers who see each hurricane as a sign the apocalypse is upon us. But it is also important that Ms. Boxer and her colleagues not lose sight of a fundamental reality: Saturating the atmosphere with greenhouse gases is loading the dice in a dangerous game.

    The Senate’s Task on Warming, NYT, 6.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/opinion/06sat1.html

Colorado, Still Recovering From 2 Storms, Is Hit With a 3rd

January 6, 2007
The New York Times
By KIRK JOHNSON

DENVER, Jan. 5 — Another winter storm bore down on snow-weary Colorado on Friday, complicating the recovery from back-to-back blizzards in December and raising fears that livestock losses would continue to mount.

At least 1,000 head of cattle were confirmed dead, most of them smothered by drifts when they bunched together along fence lines.

“This is far from over,” said Don Ament, the state’s agriculture commissioner.

The latest storm was a pallid reflection of the two holiday-week behemoths that brought as much as four feet of snow between them to parts of the Denver area and shut down Denver International Airport for two days during the peak travel period just before Christmas.

But even an additional six to eight inches of snow, predicted through early Saturday, was a reminder of how wildly divergent the nation’s weather has become this winter, with East Coast residents in shirtsleeves and sandals while people here and across the Plains and Southwest are overwhelmed by reminders of the season’s potential for havoc.

A spokeswoman for the Colorado Division of Emergency Management, Polly White, said the biggest concern in the state’s hard-hit southeast corner on Friday was wind. Across an eight-county area, 25 percent of the roads were still impassable a week after the last storm, Ms. White said, and gusts up to 35 miles per hour were predicted from the new one.

Bad weather grounded Colorado National Guard flights that had been dropping hay to cattle stranded by drifts as high as 15 feet in places like Prowers County on the Kansas border, Ms. White said. Relief efforts were continuing on Friday using tractors and four-wheel-drive trucks.

“We’re hoping that the winds predicted in the southeast don’t blow the snow back over and cover the roads,” Ms. White said. “Then we’re starting over.”

But the pictures on television of buried cars, collapsed roofs, disgruntled travelers and worried farmers also belie the mixed impact of the weather.

The snow cost Denver’s airport as much as $11 million, according to preliminary estimates by airport administrators, mainly for cleanup and lost revenue from canceled flights. But many Denver hotels had their best December in years as stranded travelers and downtown office workers took shelter.

Cattle losses could rise into the tens of millions of dollars, farm experts said, perhaps even approaching the estimated $28 million in farm-animal deaths in a blizzard in 1997. But winter wheat farmers, whose lands have been parched by years of drought, were exulting. The deep snows, they say, will almost certainly produce the best crop in years.

Ski resort operators said that thousands of visitors were kept away from the slopes during the storms by the closed airport and the bad roads, but that news coverage of Denver’s plight during those same snowbound hours had also proved to be the kind of advertising money cannot buy, prompting a surge of reservations and telephone calls.

The Aspen Skiing Company, which operates four resorts around Aspen in central Colorado, had 3,000 to 4,000 fewer skier-days through the Christmas week than expected, with each skier-day worth $50 to $75, said Jeff Hanle, a company spokesman.

“But the reservation center had some of the busiest days ever,” Mr. Hanle added. “It gave us a real blip for February and March bookings.”

And the storms also revealed, residents and local officials say, how much the political and demographic pattern of the West continues to evolve.

Agriculture, while still important to Colorado’s economy, is increasingly dwarfed by the clout of Denver and its suburbs, which swallowed up most of the available snow-removal equipment and worsened the trouble on ranches and farms.

Since 1997, when the last great blizzard hit cow-country Colorado, the number of cattle statewide has fallen by 25 percent, to around three million from about four million, according to the State Agriculture Department.

“A lot of the equipment isn’t available to go out to the rural areas because it’s contracted to the cities,” said Barry Cooper, the president and chief executive of Farm Credit of Southern Colorado, a bank in Colorado Springs that specializes in agriculture.

Insurance concerns have compounded the disparity, Mr. Cooper said, since municipalities have the resources to protect snow-removal contractors from liability, while rural areas with lots of private ranch roads mostly do not.

But life was grinding back to normal, even in the snowiest spots.

Jason Dittburner, 33, who drives a 150-mile-a-day route through Southeast Colorado in a Hostess-Wonder Bread van, delivering supplies to grocers, was back on the job on Wednesday, the first day roads were clear enough to make his route since Dec. 29, and Dorothy Grano, for one, was happy to see him.

“The shelves were getting pretty empty,” said Ms. Grano, the assistant manager of the Rocky Ford Mini-Mart, about two-and-a-half hours south of Denver, as Mr. Dittburner walked in with his racks of bread, snack cakes and fruit pies.

Ranchers say the next worry on the horizon is calving season, which is just beginning.

Dale Butler, who manages about 700 head of cattle near the Kansas border for himself and a partner, said in a telephone interview that his cows were expecting about 350 calves between now and early April, and that he had lost six so far in the cold snap that followed the snows.

“It was so cold they wouldn’t try to get up to nurse,” Mr. Butler said.

Dennis Carroll contributed reporting from Rocky Ford, Colo.

    Colorado, Still Recovering From 2 Storms, Is Hit With a 3rd, NYT, 6.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/us/06blizzard.html

Crews seek to restore power after storm

Updated 1/2/2007 9:06 AM ET
AP
USA Today

DENVER (AP) — Pilots in a dozen planes flew over parts of Colorado and Kansas on Monday to look for snowbound travelers following a blizzard that dumped nearly 3 feet of snow and piled some of it in drifts 15 feet high.

As the aircraft soared above the frozen landscape, utility crews struggled to restore electrical service to tens of thousands of homes and businesses that lost power.

The storm, which struck on Thursday, dwindled to a line of heavy rain Monday along the East Coast, but a few roads in southeastern Colorado and western Kansas were still choked by snow.

"Life and safety are still the No. 1 priorities. We need to get the roads open so people can get out and deal with the situation," said Dick Vnuk, chief of operations for the Colorado Division of Emergency Management.

The huge storm was blamed for at least 12 deaths in four states. It was the region's second blizzard in as many weeks.

The Civil Air Patrol sent six planes into the air Monday over Colorado's Kit Carson County, where there had been reports of people snowbound along Interstate 70, even though that highway reopened Sunday.

Several of the planes were equipped with infrared heat-sensing equipment to help spot stranded livestock. Authorities were considering using C-130 cargo planes and snowmobiles to get hay to snowbound animals. They wanted to avoid a repeat of a 1997 blizzard that killed up to 30,000 head of livestock at a cost of $28 million.

In Kansas, six other planes conducted a similar search for snowbound travelers.

Some roads in southeast Colorado were choked by snow drifts that measured 10 feet high. Fifteen-foot drifts were piled up in western Kansas.

Sections of a few Kansas state highways were still closed Monday. "We're chipping away at it," said Ron Kaufman, spokesman for the Kansas Department of Transportation. Sunshine and warmer temperatures helped, he said.

There was no way into or out of the western Kansas town of Sharon Springs on Monday, but the community of 835 people did not lose electricity, said Bill Hassett, manager of the town power plant.

"We're snowed under," Hassett said. "We're just in the process of digging out. We had total 36 inches of snow. Thank God we kept the lights on."

However, about 60,000 homes and businesses elsewhere in western Kansas were still in the dark, and utility officials said it could take more than a week to restore service.

Kansas National Guard troops had been out delivering generators, fuel and supplies to assisted living centers and shelters.

By Monday, utility crews in the Oklahoma Panhandle had restored power to several towns blacked out by the storm, but up to 4,500 customers still had no electricity, mostly in rural areas.

Ten traffic deaths were blamed on the storm in Colorado, Texas and Minnesota. A tornado spawned by the same weather system killed one person in Texas, and a Kansas man was reported dead in a rural home where a generator apparently was in use during the blackout.

    Crews seek to restore power after storm, UT, 2.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/weather/stormcenter/2006-12-31-snowstorm_x.htm