LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Winter is officially less than a week away but the cold winter weather already is here, and forecasters are urging county residents to be prepared.

The National Weather Service issued a freeze watch that's in effect from 4 to 10 a.m. Sunday.

A hard freeze is defined as minimum temperatures at or below 28 degrees for at least three to five hours.

Temperatures are predicted to drop in the middle and upper 20s for several hours, the agency said.

Such low temperatures can kill plants and crops, and harm animals and livestock.

While the watch is only in effect for several hours on Sunday morning, the specific forecast for Lake County predicts very low temperatures on Saturday night as well.

On Saturday night it's forecast to be in the low 20s in the Lakeport area and around 27 in the Middletown and Clearlake areas.

The Kelseyville forecast puts Saturday night's temperature at 25 degrees, with 24 degrees in Upper Lake.

In the coming week, temperatures are expected to range between the mid and high 30s at night and the from the low 40s to mid 50s during the daytime, with mostly clear and sunny conditions.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – The man responsible for a June hit-and-run that injured a child has been sentenced to state prison.

Andrew James Gravlee, 28, of Nice, received a five-year state prison sentence in Lake County Superior Court from Judge Andrew Blum on Monday.

Deputy District Attorney Ed Borg said Gravlee reached an agreement to plead guilty to assault likely to produce great bodily injury and a special allegation of personal infliction of great bodily injury. Gravlee originally had been charged with hit and run and reckless driving with bodily injury.

On June 26, Gravlee drove a 2015 GMC U-Haul pickup that hit a 2002 Honda Accord parked on the side of Highway 20 in Lucerne, as Lake County News has reported.

The crash caused the Honda to roll forward and hit a girl who was standing in front of the vehicle. Authorities said that the crash broke both of her legs and left her with lacerations.

Borg said that, after the wreck, witnesses saw Gravlee get out of the truck and look at the girl before he got back in the pickup and fled the scene. The injured girl later was flown by air ambulance to UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland.

The California Highway Patrol would conduct an extensive search by ground and with the aid of an agency helicopter for Redding before finding the pickup – loaded with appliances and furniture – later that day in the hills north of Lucerne.

The CHP said its officers would develop information that led them to conclude Gravlee was a person of interest in the crash.

Gravlee was arrested the following day after an alert CHP officer encountered him riding as the passenger in a vehicle that the officer had pulled over during a routine enforcement stop.

On Monday, the injured girl's grandmother gave a “pretty intense” victim impact statement to the court in which she recounted what her granddaughter has endured as a result of the crash, Borg said.

Borg said the grandmother explained that the girl has undergone surgery to repair a compound fracture, has suffered scarring about which she is self-conscious, and appears to be suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and agoraphobia.

Ultimately, despite what the family has endured, Borg said the girl's grandmother indicated that she has forgiven Gravlee.

Borg said Gravlee had a history of criminal violations primarily committed in Washington state, including a felony trafficking conviction. At the time of the June crash he was on felony probation.

Until this case, Gravlee had no strikes. However, Borg said the special allegation of personal infliction of great bodily injury makes the main charge of assault likely to produce great bodily injury a violent felony and therefore a strike.

Gravlee must serve 85 percent of the five-year prison sentence before becoming eligible for parole, Borg said.

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Boron has been identified for the first time on the surface of Mars, indicating the potential for long-term habitable groundwater in the ancient past.

"No prior mission to Mars has found boron," said Patrick Gasda, a postdoctoral researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory. "If the boron that we found in calcium sulfate mineral veins on Mars is similar to what we see on Earth, it would indicate that the groundwater of ancient Mars that formed these veins would have been 0-60 degrees Celsius [32-140 degrees Fahrenheit] and neutral-to-alkaline pH."

The temperature, pH, and dissolved mineral content of the groundwater could make it habitable.

The boron was identified by the rover's laser-shooting Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument, which was developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in conjunction with the French space agency.

Los Alamos' work on discovery-driven instruments like ChemCam stems from the Laboratory's experience building and operating more than 500 spacecraft instruments for national defense.

Boron is famously associated with arid sites where much water has evaporated away--think of the borax that mule teams once hauled from Death Valley. However, environmental implications of the boron found by Curiosity are still open to debate.

Scientists are considering at least two possibilities for the source of boron that groundwater left in the veins: It could be that the drying out of part of Gale lake resulted in a boron-containing deposit in an overlying layer, not yet reached by Curiosity. Some of the material from this layer could have later been carried by groundwater down into fractures in the rocks.

Or perhaps changes in the chemistry of clay-bearing deposits and groundwater affected how boron was picked up and dropped off within the local sediments.

The discovery of boron is only one of several recent findings related to the composition of Martian rocks. Curiosity is climbing a layered Martian mountain and finding rock-composition evidence of how ancient lakes and wet underground environments changed, billions of years ago, in ways that affected their favorability for microbial life.

As the rover has progressed uphill, compositions trend toward more clay and more boron. These and other variations can tell us about conditions under which sediments were initially deposited and about how later groundwater moving through the accumulated layers altered and transported ingredients.

Groundwater and chemicals dissolved in it that appeared later on Mars left its effects most clearly in mineral veins that filled cracks in older layered rock. But it also affected the composition of that rock matrix surrounding the veins, and the fluid was in turn affected by the rock.

"There is so much variability in the composition at different elevations, we've hit a jackpot," said John Grotzinger, of Caltech, Pasadena, Calif. As the rover gets further uphill, researchers are impressed by the complexity of the lake environments when clay-bearing sediments were being deposited and also by the complexity of the groundwater interactions after the sediments were buried.

"A sedimentary basin such as this is a chemical reactor," Grotzinger said. "Elements get rearranged. New minerals form and old ones dissolve. Electrons get redistributed. On Earth, these reactions support life."

Whether Martian life has ever existed is still unknown. No compelling evidence for it has been found. When Curiosity landed in Mars' Gale Crater in 2012 the mission's main goal was to determine whether the area ever offered an environment favorable for microbes.

Four recent drilling sites, from "Oudam" this past June through "Sebina" in October, are spaced about 80 feet apart in elevation. This uphill pattern allows the science team to sample progressively younger layers that reveal Mount Sharp's ancient environmental history.

"Variations in these minerals and elements indicate a dynamic system," Grotzinger said. "They interact with groundwater as well as surface water. The water influences the chemistry of the clays, but the composition of the water also changes. We are seeing chemical complexity indicating a long, interactive history with the water. The more complicated the chemistry is, the better it is for habitability. The boron and clay underline the mobility of elements and electrons, and that is good for life."

MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – During its last meeting of 2016, the Middletown Area Town Hall heard from the new District 1 supervisor-elect, got updates on projects and took nominations for its 2017 board.

The meeting took place Dec. 8 at the Middletown Community Center.

Shortly after the start of the meeting, MATH Chair Fletcher Thornton offered his congratulations to Jose “Moke” Simon III, who won the District 1 supervisorial seat in the November election. The final results were confirmed by the county's elections office two days before the meeting.

In addition to being grateful to those who supported him, Simon said he wants to earn the respect of people who didn't cast their vote for him.

“I am proud to be standing where I am today,” said Simon, who promised to work as hard as possible to rebuild the south county in the wake of the wildland fires and to develop it into the jewel it can be.

He offered kind words to the three people who ran against him, including Voris Brumfield and Jim Ryan, who were eliminated in the June primary, and Monica Rosenthal, who ran a close race with Simon in the runoff.

Simon said that the south county's rebuilding is his No. 1 priority.

To Jim Comstock, the retiring District 1 supervisor who he will succeed when he's sworn in next month, Simon said it's an honor to step into his shoes.

“I'm going to be bugging you all the time for advice,” Simon promised Comstock.

Simon said he'll steer his own course and is ready to roll forward.

In other business, MATH Board member Linda Diehl-Darms gave a brief update on her visit to the Cobb Area Council, a new municipal advisory council that was formed earlier this year.

There has been discussion at previous meetings about changing MATH's boundaries to exclude the area now covered by the Cobb group. However, Diehl-Darms said the Cobb council's chair told her that he had spoken to Thornton and that it was not necessary at this time to consider boundary changes.

Diehl-Darms said she subsequently sent out an email to the recently formed bylaws committee that there isn't a problem with boundaries overlapping and that no boundary changes are to be done at this time.

Thornton, however, said there is still a need for the committee to meet to clean up MATH's bylaws, work he expected to have the group start working on soon.

Also at the Dec. 8 meeting, Danielle Matthews Seperas of Calpine gave MATH an update on the community garden project on a Calpine-owned lot next to its Middletown Geothermal Visitor Center.

She said a large tree that sits on the lot, the canopy of which covers part of the proposed garden area, was damaged in the Valley fire. An arborist who examined it proposed that it be taken down, and Calpine's legal department won't OK the garden moving forward until the tree is removed.

The tree was scheduled to be removed the middle of this month, but after a woman at the meeting said the tree should be left in place, Seperas agreed to push back the date of the tree removal.

The group's Dec. 8 meeting also included brief updates on a safety improvement project on a portion of Highway 175 outside of Middletown and an area plan revision.

MATH also took nominations for its 2017 board. Marlene Elder was the only nomination at the meeting, while Thornton and Lisa Kaplan had been nominated at the November meeting.

Thornton said the board election will take place in January when MATH holds its first meeting of the new year.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The California Highway Patrol's Clear Lake Area office will conduct a driving under the influence and driver's license safety checkpoint on Saturday, Dec. 17.

The checkpoint will occur somewhere within the unincorporated area of Lake County.

The CHP said its goal is to ensure the safe passage of each and every motorist by targeting roads where there is a high frequency of intoxicated or unlicensed drivers.

The sobriety/driver's license checkpoint is a proven effective tool for achieving this goal and is designed to augment existing patrol operations, the agency said.

Vehicles will be checked for drivers who are under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or driving unlicensed, the CHP said.

The CHP said it wants to send a clear message to those individuals who consider driving and mixing alcohol or drugs, or driving when unlicensed, that they will be caught and their vehicle will be towed away.

Funding for this program was provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Participants in the 2016 Lake County Wine Auction raised their bid cards high at this year's event and generated a record breaking $135,000 for 27 local schools, organizations and charities.

The second highest distribution was in 2005, when $125,000 was given away.

Despite the pressure on donors because of last year's fires, their generosity continued unabated.

“These donations will be extremely helpful this year as many of our beneficiaries are still struggling because of fire-related losses,” said Kaj Ahlmann, auction board president.

Distribution of this year's donations took place at a festive event on Wednesday at the Saw Shop Bistro in Kelseyville attended by more than 40 representatives of the beneficiaries.

The 2016 Lake County Wine Auction, held at Cache Creek Vineyard and Winery, was a production of the nonprofit Lake County Wine Alliance, which is made up of local wineries, grape growers, related businesses and community sponsors.

Since its founding in 2000, the Lake County Wine Auction has raised $1,401,502.00 to foster true arts, benefit health services and otherwise support the local community.

Applications are now being accepted for proceeds from next year's wine auction to be held Saturday, Sept. 16, 2017.

Copies of the application are now available at the auction Web site at www.WineAlliance.Org .

The 2017 Lake County Wine Auction will once again be held at Cache Creek Vineyard & Winery at 250 New Long Valley Road in Clearlake Oaks.

Situated at the intersection with Highway 20, this facility is a premier gateway to this outstanding corner of the California Wine Country.

Hosts for the 2017 auction will be Don and Margie Van Pelt, owners of the Cache Creek Facility.

The event's success this year would not have been possible without valued sponsors: Calpine, Pacific Gas and Electric, Sutter Lakeside Hospital, Beckstoffer Vineyards, Lake County Winegrape Commission, Six Sigma Vineyard & Winery, Sysco Foods, Tribal Health, Mendo Lake Credit Union, Umpqua Bank, Bella Vista Farming, Boatique Winery, Cache Creek Vineyard & Winery, Saw Shop Bistro, Servpro, Shannon Ridge Vineyards & Winery, TricorBraun WinePak, Congressman Mike Thompson, Kelseyville Pharmacy, Brassfield Estate Winery, C-Line Express Trucking and Savings Bank of Mendocino County.

Distributions for 2016 were as follows:

• High school arts programs: $9,000 each to Lower Lake High School, Kelseyville High School, Upper Lake High School, Clear Lake High School and Middletown High School.
• People Services: $10,500.
• Any Positive Change: $4,500.
• Lake County Hunger Task Force: $3,750.
• Catholic Charities: $3,000
• Lake County Symphony Association: $5,250.
• Lake County Arts Council: $3,750.
• Friends of the Lake County Museum: $2,700.
• Friends of the Lake County Library: $7,500.
• Lake Community Pride Foundation: $4,500.
• Children's Museum of Arts and Science: $1,800.
• Lake County Literacy Coalition: $3,000.
• Lake County Sheriff's Activity League: $7,500.
• Yuba College Culinary Club: $4,500.
• Clearlake Gleaners: $3,000.
• Operation Tango Mike: $5,250.
• Sponsoring Survivorship: $4,500.
• County senior centers: $2,500 each to the Highlands Senior Service Center, Lakeport Senior Activity Center, Clearlake Oaks Senior Center, Lucerne Alpine Seniors, Middletown Senior Center and Kelseyville Senior Center.

Members of the Wine Alliance board are Kaj Ahlmann, Lower Lake, president; Judy Luchsinger, Lakeport, vice president; Sharron Zoller, Kelseyville, secretary; Rob Roumiguiere, Kelseyville, treasurer; and Marie Beery, Kelseyville, and Bill Groody, Kelseyville, directors.