LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County is included in a portion of interior Northern California which the National Weather Service has placed under a red flag warning.

The warning, which took effect at 11 p.m. Friday, remains active until 6 p.m. Saturday.

The National Weather Service said that a red flag warning means that critical fire weather conditions are either occurring or will occur shortly.

In this case, the agency is warning of a combination of mostly northerly winds, low relative humidity and warm temperatures that can contribute to extreme fire behavior.

The winds are forecast to continue on Saturday before gradually decreasing Saturday night and into Sunday morning, the National Weather Service reported.

The areas of highest threat are the mid to upper slopes and ridges below 4,500 feet in Lake, Butte, Glenn, Shasta and Tehama counties, and the west side of the Sacramento Valley, according to the forecast.

In the specific Lake County forecast, daytime temperatures on Saturday are expected to be into the mid 90s, with winds of up to 5 miles per hour that are expected to calm in the evening.

Beyond the red flag warning, from Sunday through Wednesday daytime temperatures are expected to climb into the mid 90s in much of the county and the high 90s in the Middletown area, before dropping to the low 90s on Thursday and the high 80s on Friday, according to the forecast.

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.

When the NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft buzzed by Pluto last year, it revealed tantalizing clues that the dwarf planet might have – or had at one time – a liquid ocean sloshing around under its icy crust.

According to a new analysis led by a Brown University Ph.D. student, such an ocean likely still exists today.

The study, which used a thermal evolution model for Pluto updated with data from New Horizons, found that if Pluto’s ocean had frozen into oblivion millions or billions of years ago, it would have caused the entire planet to shrink.

But there are no signs of a global contraction to be found on Pluto’s surface. On the contrary, New Horizons showed signs that Pluto has been expanding.

“Thanks to the incredible data returned by New Horizons, we were able to observe tectonic features on Pluto’s surface, update our thermal evolution model with new data and infer that Pluto most likely has a subsurface ocean today,” said Noah Hammond, a graduate student in Brown’s Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, and the study’s lead author.

The research, which Hammond coauthored with advisors Amy Barr of the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona and Brown University geologist Marc Parmentier, is in press in Geophysical Research Letters.

The pictures New Horizons sent back from its close encounter with the Kuiper Belt’s most famous denizen showed that Pluto was much more than a simple snowball in space.

It has an exotic surface made from different types of ices – water, nitrogen and methane. It has mountains hundreds of meters high and a vast heart-shaped plain.

It also has giant tectonic features – sinuous faults hundreds of kilometers long as deep as 4 kilometers. It was those tectonic features that got scientists thinking that a subsurface ocean was a real possibility for Pluto.

“What New Horizons showed was that there are extensional tectonic features, which indicate that Pluto underwent a period of global expansion,” Hammond said. “A subsurface ocean that was slowly freezing over would cause this kind of expansion.”

Scientists think that there may have been enough heat-producing radioactive elements within Pluto’s rocky core to melt part of the planet’s ice shell.

Over time in the frigid Kuiper belt, that melted portion would eventually start to refreeze. Ice is less dense than water, so when it freezes, it expands.

If Pluto had on ocean that was frozen or in the process of freezing, extensional tectonics on the surface would result, and that’s what New Horizons saw.

There aren’t many other ways on Pluto to get such features. One way might have been through a gravitational tug of war with its moon, Charon.

But the active gravitational dynamics between the two have long since wound down, and some of the tectonics look fairly fresh (on a geologic timescale). So, many scientists believe that an ocean is the strongest scenario.

But if Pluto had an ocean, what is its fate today? Could the freezing process still be going on, or did the ocean freeze solid a billion years ago?

That’s where the thermal evolution model run by Hammond and his colleagues comes in. The model includes updated data from New Horizons on Pluto’s diameter and density, key parameters in understanding the dynamics in Pluto’s interior.

The model showed that because of the low temperatures and high pressure within Pluto, an ocean that had completely frozen over would quickly convert from the normal ice we all know to a different phase called ice II.

Ice II has a more compact crystalline structure than standard ice, so an ocean frozen to ice II would occupy a smaller volume and lead to a global contraction on Pluto, rather than an expansion.

“We don’t see the things on the surface we’d expect if there had been a global contraction,” Hammond said. “So we conclude that ice II has not formed, and therefore that the ocean hasn’t completely frozen.”

There are a few caveats, the researchers point out. The formation of ice II is dependent on the thickness of Pluto’s ice shell.

Ice II only forms if the shell is 260 kilometers thick or more. If the shell is thinner than that, the ocean could have frozen without forming ice II. And if that were the case the ocean could have frozen completely without causing contraction.

However, the researchers say there’s good reason to believe that the ice shell is more than 260 kilometers.

Their updated model suggests that Pluto’s ice shell is actually closer to 300 or more kilometers thick. In addition, the nitrogen and methane ices that New Horizons found on the surface bolster the case for a thick ice shell.

“Those exotic ices are actually good insulators,” Hammond said. “They may be helping Pluto from losing more of its heat to space.”

Taken together, the new model bolsters the case for an ocean environment in the furthest reaches of the solar system.

“That’s amazing to me,” Hammond said. “The possibility that you could have vast liquid water ocean habitats so far from the sun on Pluto — and that the same could also be possible on other Kuiper belt objects as well — is absolutely incredible.”

The research was supported by the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship and NASA Planetary Geology & Geophysics.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Drivers traveling along Highway 20 on the Northshore will be encountering delays on weeknights due to road work meant to improve safety on several curves on the highway.

The work is taking place between Sayre Avenue in Nice and the Paradise Cove subdivision east of Lucerne, Caltrans said.

That area was included in a major repaving project that began last year, with some of the work continuing this year.

Earlier this month Caltrans reported that its contractor was starting nighttime paving between 8 p.m. and 7 a.m. Monday through Thursday, with one-way traffic control in place.

Caltrans District 1 spokesman Phil Frisbie told Lake County News that the latest round of night work on Highway 20 is to install a high-friction surface to seven curves.

“It is basically an epoxy that is applied to the roadway and then a grit is applied to the top. It makes the surface look like a very course sandpaper and it helps vehicles that are traveling too fast to stay on the road,” said Frisbie.

Caltrans' contractor also is continuing with daytime work in the area from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays.

Frisbie said that during the day workers are still raising some utility covers and repairing guardrail.  

“All work is anticipated to be completed by the end of July,” he said.

Motorists are told to expect up to 10-minute delays both for the daytime and nighttime work, according to Caltrans.

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.

California's State Treasurer John Chiang on Friday stressed that uncertainty roiling world markets in the wake of Britain’s planned departure from the European Union is not expected to substantially impact investments managed by his office or the state’s outstanding debt.

About two-thirds of the $75 billion Pooled Money Investment Account is invested in low risk and liquid U.S. government securities. The balance is in prime-rated capital market investments. The account includes $22.5 billion in local government agency funds, Chiang reported.

In addition, Chiang said the state’s outstanding, general obligation debt portfolio is conservative, with 95 percent in fixed-rate bonds and just 5 percent in variable-rate bonds.

The vote to leave the EU will have no impact on the state’s fixed-rate bonds. There have been only minimal changes to interest rates on variable-rate bonds, he said.

“Market volatility could be sharp until many questions surrounding Brexit can be resolved over the coming two years,” said Chiang. “Californians can be assured, however, that my office is monitoring developments closely and will take appropriate actions to safeguard the state’s financial integrity.

“Our $75 billion investment portfolio and another $75 billion in outstanding general obligation debt are in strong positions to weather the uncertainty as Great Britain and the European Union embark on a complex and unprecedented separation,” Chiang said.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Lake County Library will host a conversation and poetry reading featuring Dana Gioia, California’s State Poet Laureate, on Wednesday, July 6.

The event will begin at 5:30 p.m. at the Lakeport branch, located at 1425 N. High St.

This internationally known poet, editor and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts will read from his newest book “99 Poems: New and Selected” and share his love of poetry and literacy.

The program is free and open to the public.

Gioia is a native Californian with diverse interests whose work has earned many honors and his poems, translations, essays, and reviews have appeared in many magazines.

Before becoming a full-time professional writer in 1992, he worked for General Foods for 15 years.

Gioia served two terms as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts where he initiated a number of outreach programs such as Shakespeare in American Communities, Poetry Out Loud and Operation Homecoming.

Since 2011 he has been the Judge Winey Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California. In 2015 he was appointed California’s State Poet Laureate.

Gioia’s Web site is http://danagioia.com .

The Lake County Library is on the Internet at http://library.lakecountyca.gov and Facebook at www.facebook.com/LakeCountyLibrary .

Jan Cook is a library technician at the Lakeport Library.

Generally speaking most people are best served by having a will, regardless of whether or not they also have a living trust.

It is the will, not the trust, which speaks to assets held in a decedent’s name, excluding any so-called non probate assets such as those held in joint tenancy (where there is a surviving joint tenant) and any so-called pay on death or transfer on death accounts which pass to a surviving death beneficiary. 

Typically though not all assets of a person are held the living trust. Often one or more checking accounts, vehicles are outside of the trust in the person’s name.

Sometimes amounts due the decedent, such as undistributed inheritances, are pending when the decedent died, and also subject to the decedent’s will.

That is why a so-called pour over will typically accompanies the living trust. The pour over will leaves assets to the decedent’s living trust.

The non-trust assets once transferred into the trust become integrated into the trust’s distribution scheme and also enjoy any asset protections afforded by the trust.

However, there are times where a standalone will may accompany a trust.

If the decedent has a small estate – under present California law a small estate is an estate with assets which total under $150,000 in gross value – outside the living trust then the small estate is not subject to probate.

Transferring major assets into the trust that will inevitably become answerable for the decedent’s debts – such as real estate subject to liens – can sometimes result in a small estate outside the trust. Then a standalone will may favor a person’s beneficiaries over the decedent’s creditors.
   
Assets inside a small estate are not subject to any formal administration, such as either postmortem trust administration or probate.

The successor trustee of a deceased settlor’s trust, or the personal representative of a deceased settlor’s court supervised probate estate, must notify all of the decedent’s reasonably ascertainable creditors and pay all valid debts.

With small estates assets are typically claimed without any probate by the beneficiaries using a small estate procedure.

The small estate beneficiaries inherit without assuming any legal duty to solicit creditor claims from the decedent’s creditors. This has been described by some as “take the money and run” informal estate administration.

The foregoing is not to say that the beneficiaries will not themselves decide to pay the decedent’s debts, they may well do so as they feel doing so is justified or for the best.

That said, not having a duty to solicit does not mean these beneficiaries who receive assets necessarily escape potential liability to the decedent’s creditors.

Rather the creditors of the decedent’s estate, and/or living trust, must themselves either open a timely probate or proceed directly against the individual beneficiaries who received assets.

In that case, the beneficiaries may then be held liable to pay for the decedent’s debts, up to the value of what the assets received or the sale proceeds of such assets.

Nevertheless, tracking down all beneficiaries, discovering what each received, and prosecuting recovery claims can be too onerous and not worthwhile to the creditors.

In addition, any other non-probate assets, besides the living trust assets, such as life insurance, joint tenancy assets, and pay on death accounts (including retirement accounts) also pass directly to the surviving beneficiaries outside of the decedent’s trust or probate administration, as relevant; except in unusual cases when the trust or the decedent’s estate receives these assets, such as when there is no surviving beneficiary or when the estate or trust is the named death beneficiary.

Depending on the type of non probate asset involved, like life insurance, these nonprobate assets may sometimes themselves not be answerable for the decedent’s debts.

Clearly, when a person has serious debts the foregoing considerations are relevant to the estate planning.    

Dennis A. Fordham, Attorney, is a State Bar-Certified Specialist in estate planning, probate and trust law. His office is at 870 S. Main St., Lakeport, Calif. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and 707-263-3235. His Web site is www.DennisFordhamLaw.com .