LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County Animal Care and Control continues to offer for adoption several Clayton fire dogs plus new dogs taken in from other parts of the county.

The week's available dogs at Lake County Animal Care and Control include mixes of border collie, boxer, chow chow, Great Dane, hound, Labrador Retriever, Rottweiler and pit bull.

Clayton fire dogs are listed at the top, followed by dogs not taken in from the fire area.

Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.

If you're looking for a new companion, visit the shelter. There are many great pets hoping you'll choose them.

The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption (additional dogs on the animal control Web site not listed are still “on hold”).

CLAYTON FIRE DOGS

Labrador Retriever mix

This female Labrador Retriever mix has a short black coat.

She was found in the Clearlake area on Aug. 15.

She's in kennel No. 19, ID No. 5862.

Labrador Retriever mix

This female Labrador Retriever mix has a short white coat.

She was found in the Clearlake area on Aug. 15.

She's in kennel No. 20, ID No. 5860.

Pit bull terrier mix

This female pit bull terrier mix has a short black and white coat.

She was found in the Lower Lake area on Aug. 20.

She's in kennel No. 33, ID No. 5878.

NON-FIRE DOGS AVAILABLE

Border collie mix

This young male border collie mix has a medium-length black and white coat.

He's in kennel No. 6a, ID No. 6198.

Border collie mix

This young female border collie mix has a medium-length black and white coat. She already has been spayed.

Shelter staff said she has a great disposition and needs an active owner.

She's in kennel No. 7, ID No. 5943.

Hound mix

This young female hound mix has a short brindle and white coat.

She's in kennel No. 8, ID No. 6133.

Boxer-pit bull mix

This female boxer-pit bull mix has a short brindle and white coat.

She's already been altered, shelter staff reported.

She's in kennel No. 14, ID No. 6194.

Border collie-chow chow mix

This male border collie-chow chow mix has a short tan and white coat.

He's in kennel No. 16, ID No. 6195.

'Cinnamon'

“Cinnamon” is a female hound-pit bull terrier mix.

She has a short brown and white coat, and already has been spayed.

She's in kennel No. 17, ID No. 6156.

Rottweiler mix

This male Rottweiler mix has a short black and tan coat.

He's in kennel No. 24a, ID No. 3557.

Rottweiler mix

This female Rottweiler mix has a black coat with some brindle markings.

Shelter staff said she need some training and is manageable on a leash. They said she is a very nice dog and knows not to jump when excited. After proper introductions, she has gotten along with other dogs she has met, including off-leash play. She would do best in a home with no cats.

She's in kennel No. 25, ID No. 5947.

'Lucky'

“Lucky” is a male hound and Great Dane mix with a short black and white coat.

He's in kennel No. 30, ID No. 6026.

'Flor'

“Flor” is a female Labrador Retriever mix with a short black and white coat.

She already has been spayed, which should lower her adoption cost.

She is in kennel No. 30b, ID No. 6041.

To fill out an adoption application online visit http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control/Adopt/Dog___Cat_Adoption_Application.htm .

Lake County Animal Care and Control is located at 4949 Helbush in Lakeport, next to the Hill Road Correctional Facility.

Office hours are Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday. The shelter is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Visit the shelter online at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control.htm .

For more information call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278.

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.

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California’s 2016 Water Year drew to a close Friday, ending a fifth consecutive year marked by meager precipitation that fell more often as rain than snow.

Record warm temperatures created an early and below-average runoff that was in large part absorbed by parched soil before ever reaching the State’s reservoirs.

The water content of the California Sierra snowpack, often referred to as “the state’s largest reservoir,” flows each spring into a series of above ground storage reservoirs that essentially serve as California’s water savings accounts in order to meet the growing demands of an uncertain climate future.

These all-too-familiar dry, warming conditions have led state water officials to describe the situation as a California “snow drought.”

The California Department of Water Resources, or DWR, explains the term in its recently released Drought and Water Year 2016: Hot and Dry Conditions Continue, a water year wrap-up delivered with detailed historical context.

A “water year,” a 12-month time period during which precipitation totals are measured, runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30 of the following year.  The year is designated by the calendar year in which it ends.

Water Year 2016 is officially listed in the record books as “dry” statewide, even though parts of Northern California experienced average to slightly above average precipitation.

The forecast for Water Year 2017 is uncertain.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center currently sees slightly better than even odds that weak La Niña conditions will develop this fall and winter. 

La Niña refers to the periodic cooling of sea-surface temperatures across the east-central equatorial Pacific.

It represents the cold phase of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation cycle, nature’s year-to-year variations in oceanic and atmospheric conditions.

La Niña is the opposite phase of the warm, El Niño phase that California experienced last year. There are no guarantees for substantial La Niña rainfall.

Water officials warn that making seasonal forecasts of precipitation – the ability to predict now if 2017 will be wet or dry (and how wet or dry) – is scientifically difficult, and the accuracy of such predictions is very low; much less than that of a seven-day weather forecast.

Historical records are the only source of facts to study for any indication of what California may see in the form of precipitation in coming months.

Of the 18 La Niña winters since 1950-51, 16 have provided below average precipitation for Southern California’s coastal region, and 15 winters have resulted in below average precipitation for Southern California’s interior region. 

Above average precipitation was recorded in 11 winters for the Northern Sierra and in eight years for the Central and Southern Sierra. Water year 2011 brought the only significantly wet La Niña event in this time period.

Sixty percent of the state currently remains in severe or extreme drought. While mandatory water restrictions today vary across California, making water conservation a California way of life remains a statewide goal and a top priority in Gov. Jerry Brown’s State Water Action Plan.

Furthermore, responding to climate change is vital to minimizing conditions that likely lead to more frequent, prolonged and severe droughts, state officials said.

To learn about all the actions the state has taken to manage our water system and cope with the impacts of the drought, visit www.Drought.CA.Gov . Every Californian should take steps to conserve water. Find out how at www.SaveOurWater.com .

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – With fall having arrived, rain is forecast to return to Lake County on Sunday.

The National Weather Service forecast has chances of showers in the county beginning Sunday morning and continuing into early Tuesday.

Winds of up to 13 miles per hours are forecast across parts of the county on Saturday, with clouds increasing Saturday night.

On Sunday, there is up to a 70-percent chance of rain arriving after 11 a.m., with up to a quarter of an inch possible, based on the forecast.

Chances of rain will drop to 30 percent on Sunday night, when wind gusts of up to 25 miles per hour are anticipated. Past Sunday, windy conditions are expected to clear.

The forecast calls for a 20-percent chance of rain during the day Monday and on Monday night, and a slight chance on Tuesday morning, with conditions expected to move from partly sunny on Tuesday night to mostly sunny during the days on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Along with the rain, temperatures are forecast to drop over the next several days.

Daytime temperatures will drop as low as the mid-50s during the daytime through Tuesday, and will rise back into the high 70s by the end of the week, according to the forecast.

Forecasters also predict nighttime temperatures will see a dip into the mid-40s before rising back into the 50s by Friday.

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.

Ever since NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto last year, evidence has been mounting that the dwarf planet may have a liquid ocean beneath its icy shell.

Now, by modeling the impact dynamics that created a massive crater on Pluto’s surface, a team of researchers has made a new estimate of how thick that liquid layer might be.

The study, led by Brown University geologist Brandon Johnson and published in Geophysical Research Letters, finds a high likelihood that there’s more than 100 kilometers of liquid water beneath Pluto’s surface.

The research also offers a clue about the composition of that ocean, suggesting that it likely has a salt content similar to that of the Dead Sea.

“Thermal models of Pluto’s interior and tectonic evidence found on the surface suggest that an ocean may exist, but it’s not easy to infer its size or anything else about it,” said Johnson, who is an assistant professor in Brown’s Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences. “We’ve been able to put some constraints on its thickness and get some clues about composition.”

The research focused on Sputnik Planum, a basin 900 kilometers across that makes up the western lobe the famous heart-shaped feature revealed during the New Horizons flyby. The basin appears to have been created by an impact, likely by an object 200 kilometers across or larger.

The story of how the basin relates to Pluto’s putative ocean starts with its position on the planet relative to Pluto’s largest moon, Charon. Pluto and Charon are tidally locked with each other, meaning they always show each other the same face as they rotate.

Sputnik Planum sits directly on the tidal axis linking the two worlds. That position suggests that the basin has what’s called a positive mass anomaly – it has more mass than average for Pluto’s icy crust.

As Charon’s gravity pulls on Pluto, it would pull proportionally more on areas of higher mass, which would tilt the planet until Sputnik Planum became aligned with the tidal axis.

But a positive mass anomaly would make Sputnik Planum a bit of an odd duck as craters go.

“An impact crater is basically a hole in the ground,” Johnson said. “You’re taking a bunch of material and blasting it out, so you expect it to have negative mass anomaly, but that’s not what we see with Sputnik Planum. That got people thinking about how you could get this positive mass anomaly.”

Part of the answer is that, after it formed, the basin has been partially filled in by nitrogen ice. That ice layer adds some mass to the basin, but it isn’t thick enough on its own to make Sputnik Planum have positive mass, Johnson says.

The rest of that mass may be generated by a liquid lurking beneath the surface.

Like a bowling ball dropped on a trampoline, a large impact creates a dent on a planet’s surface, followed by a rebound.

That rebound pulls material upward from deep in the planet’s interior. If that upwelled material is denser than what was blasted away by the impact, the crater ends up with the same mass as it had before the impact happened. This is a phenomenon geologists refer to as isostatic compensation.

Water is denser than ice. So if there were a layer of liquid water beneath Pluto’s ice shell, it may have welled up following the Sputnik Planum impact, evening out the crater’s mass. If the basin started out with neutral mass, then the nitrogen layer deposited later would be enough to create a positive mass anomaly.

“This scenario requires a liquid ocean,” Johnson said. “We wanted to run computer models of the impact to see if this is something that would actually happen. What we found is that the production of a positive mass anomaly is actually quite sensitive to how thick the ocean layer is. It’s also sensitive to how salty the ocean is, because the salt content affects the density of the water.”

The models simulated the impact of an object large enough to create a basin of Sputnik Planum’s size hitting Pluto at a speed expected for that part in the solar system. The simulation assumed various thicknesses of the water layer beneath the crust, from no water at all to a layer 200 kilometers thick.

The scenario that best reconstructed Sputnik Planum’s observed size depth, while also producing a crater with compensated mass, was one in which Pluto has an ocean layer more than 100 kilometers thick, with a salinity of around 30 percent.

“What this tells us is that if Sputnik Planum is indeed a positive mass anomaly – and it appears as though it is – this ocean layer of at least 100 kilometers has to be there,” Johnson said. “It’s pretty amazing to me that you have this body so far out in the solar system that still may have liquid water.”

As researchers continue to look at the data sent by New Horizons, Johnson is hopeful that a clearer picture of Pluto’s possible ocean will emerge.

Johnson’s co-authors on the paper were Timothy Bowling of the University of Chicago and Alexander Trowbridge and Andrew Freed from Purdue University.

LUCERNE, Calif. – One woman was injured and another arrested for driving under the influence following a wreck on Highway 20 in Lucerne on Friday night.

Rhonda Kohfeld, 57, of Lucerne was arrested for felony driving under the influence of alcohol and driving with a suspended driver's license after the crash, which the California Highway Patrol said occurred at 6:35 p.m.

The CHP said Kohfeld was driving her 2005 Ford Taurus westbound on Highway 20 west of Lake Street at an unknown speed while 58-year-old Kathy Ellis of Lucerne was driving her 2005 Toyota Tacoma eastbound in the same location at approximately 30 miles per hour.

For reasons that the CHP said are yet to be determined, Kohfeld allowed her vehicle to veer across both lanes of Highway 20, colliding head-on with Ellis' Toyota.

Kohfeld's Ford came to rest in the westbound lane, while Ellis' vehicle was in the eastbound lane following the wreck, the CHP said.

The CHP said one-way traffic was in effect for a short period of time while the vehicles were cleared from the roadway.

A Northshore Fire Protection District ambulance transported Ellis to Sutter Lakeside Hospital for treatment of moderate injuries, which the CHP said included complaints of pain to her neck, back and chest.

The CHP said Kohfeld was evaluated at the scene and found to have minor cuts to a hand. She subsequently was placed under arrest for DUI and driving on a suspended license.

Both women were wearing their seat belts at the time of the crash, which is still under investigation by Officer Ryan Erickson.

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.

For those who find the night sky fascinating, there are a lot of interesting happenings in the month of October 2016.

In the video above, Jane Houston Jones of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., gives an update on what to watch for this month.

Highlights include descriptions of this month's moon phases, and on Oct. 8 both the Fall Astronomy Day and International Observe the Moon Night.

October also will include three meteor showers: the Draconids, expected to peak on Oct. 7 and 8; the Taurids, peaking on Oct. 10; and the Orionids on Oct. 21, although the full moon may interfere with viewing, Houston Jones said.

On Oct. 27 Saturn will form a straight line with Venus and the red star Antares.

For star parties and astronomy events near you, visit https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm .