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Nature, Wildlife, Climate, Weather (VIII)

2007

a Year of Weather Records in U.S.

December 29, 2007
Filed at 12:15 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When the calendar turned to 2007, the heat went on and the weather just got weirder. January was the warmest first month on record worldwide -- 1.53 degrees above normal. It was the first time since record-keeping began in 1880 that the globe's average temperature has been so far above the norm for any month of the year.

And as 2007 drew to a close, it was also shaping up to be the hottest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere.

U.S. weather stations broke or tied 263 all-time high temperature records, according to an Associated Press analysis of U.S. weather data. England had the warmest April in 348 years of record-keeping there, shattering the record set in 1865 by more than 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit.

It wasn't just the temperature. There were other oddball weather events. A tornado struck New York City in August, inspiring the tabloid headline: ''This ain't Kansas!''

In the Middle East, an equally rare cyclone spun up in June, hitting Oman and Iran. Major U.S. lakes shrank; Atlanta had to worry about its drinking water supply. South Africa got its first significant snowfall in 25 years. And on Reunion Island, 400 miles east of Africa, nearly 155 inches of rain fell in three days -- a world record for the most rain in 72 hours.

Individual weather extremes can't be attributed to global warming, scientists always say. However, ''it's the run of them and the different locations'' that have the mark of man-made climate change, said top European climate expert Phil Jones, director of the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia in England.

Worst of all -- at least according to climate scientists -- the Arctic, which serves as the world's refrigerator, dramatically warmed in 2007, shattering records for the amount of melting ice.

2007 seemed to be the year that climate change shook the thermometers, and those who warned that it was beginning to happen were suddenly honored. Former Vice President Al Gore's documentary ''An Inconvenient Truth'' won an Oscar and he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international group of thousands of scientists. The climate panel, organized by the United Nations, released four major reports in 2007 saying man-made global warming was incontrovertible and an urgent threat to millions of lives.

Through the first 10 months, it was the hottest year recorded on land and the third hottest when ocean temperatures are included.

Smashing records was common, especially in August. At U.S. weather stations, more than 8,000 new heat records were set or tied for specific August dates.

More remarkably that same month, more than 100 all-time temperature records were tied or broken -- regardless of the date -- either for the highest reading or the warmest low temperature at night. By comparison only 14 all-time low temperatures were set or tied all year long, as of early December, according to records kept by the National Climatic Data Center.

For example, on Aug. 10, the town of Portland, Tenn., reached 102 degrees, tying a record for the hottest it ever had been. On Aug. 16, it hit 103 and Portland had a new all-time record. But that record was broken again the next day when the mercury reached 105.

Daily triple-digit temperatures took a toll on everybody, public safety director George West recalled. The state had 15 heat-related deaths in August.

Portland was far from alone. In Idaho, Chilly Barton Flat wasn't living up to its name. The weather station in central Idaho tied an all-time high of 100 on July 26, Aug. 7, 14 and 19. During 2007, weather stations in 35 states, from Washington to Florida, set or tied all-time heat records in 2007.

Across Europe this past summer, extreme heat waves killed dozens of people.

And it wasn't just the heat. It was the rain. There was either too little or too much.

More than 60 percent of the United States was either abnormally dry or suffering from drought at one point in August. In November, Atlanta's main water source, Lake Lanier, shrank to an all-time low. Lake Okeechobee, crucial to south Florida, hit its lowest level in recorded history in May, exposing muck and debris not seen for decades. Lake Superior, the biggest and deepest of the Great Lakes, dropped to its lowest August and September levels in history.

Los Angeles hit its driest year on record. Lakes fed by the Colorado River and which help supply water for more than 20 million Westerners, were only half full.

Australia, already a dry continent, suffered its worst drought in a century, making global warming an election issue. On the other extreme, record rains fell in China, England and Wales.

Minnesota got the worst of everything: a devastating June and July drought followed by record August rainfall. In one March day, Southern California got torrential downpours, hail, snow and fierce winds. Then in the fall came devastating fires driven by Santa Ana winds.

And yet none of those events worried scientists as much as what was going on in the Arctic in the summer. Sea ice melted not just to record levels, but far beyond the previous melt record. The Northwest Passage was the most navigable it had been in modern times. Russia planted a flag on the seabed under the North Pole, claiming sovereignty.

The ice sheets that cover a portion of Greenland retreated to an all-time low and permafrost in Alaska warmed to record levels.

Meteorologists have chronicled strange weather years for more than a decade, but nothing like 2007. It was such an extreme weather year that the World Meteorological Organization put out a news release chronicling all the records and unusual developments. That was in August with more than 145 sizzling days to go.

Get used to it, scientists said. As man-made climate change continues, the world will experience more extreme weather, bursts of heat, torrential rain and prolonged drought, they said.

''We're having an increasing trend of odd years,'' said Michael MacCracken, a former top federal climate scientist, now chief scientist at the Climate Institute in Washington. ''Pretty soon odd years are going to become the norm.''

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On the Net:

U.S. National Climatic Data Center's searchable records web site:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/records/

U.S. National Climatic Data Center on August heat wave:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2007/aug/aug-heat-event.php.records 

World Meteorological Organization on 2007 weather extremes:

http://www.wmo.ch/pages/mediacentre/press--releases/pr--791--e.html

The record for shrinking sea ice: http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007--seaiceminimum/20071001--pressrelease.html

2007 a Year of Weather Records in U.S., NYT, 29.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-YE-Climate-Records.html

Roadways Improve After Deadly Storm

December 25, 2007
Filed at 7:41 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

MILWAUKEE (AP) -- Sunny conditions on Monday helped road crews deal with the remnants of a blustery snowstorm that blacked out thousands of homes and businesses and was blamed for at least 22 traffic deaths in the upper Midwest.

Sgt. Michael Melgaard of the Wisconsin State Patrol in Eau Claire said driving conditions improved substantially for holiday travelers starting in the late morning.

''The roads were clear for the most part and traffic was moving at normal speeds,'' he said Monday afternoon. ''It seemed like there was a lot of steady holiday traffic, but it's starting to wane now as people are getting to their destinations.''

But in Michigan, crashes on icy roads Monday evening caused multiple injuries and shut down sections of three interstate highways in Detroit, Dearborn and Warren, radio station WWJ-AM reported.

The weekend-long blast of ice and windblown snow led to multi-car pileups that closed sections of several major highways on the Plains.

Adding to the death toll, authorities say a woman died in Maple Valley Township, Mich., about 60 miles north of Detroit, after she lost control of her truck and it rolled into a ditch filled with water. The woman was trapped in the overturned truck, said police who discovered the wreck Monday morning.

The storm rolled through Colorado and Wyoming on Friday, then spread snow and ice on Saturday from the Texas Panhandle to Wisconsin. On Sunday, snow fell across much of Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota and parts of Michigan and Indiana.

Up to 15 inches of snow fell over the weekend on parts of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, which typically gets heavy snow, and freezing drizzle glazed some highways Monday morning in counties along Lake Michigan.

The storm system had blown out to sea Monday morning, but in its wake wind blowing at 25 mph picked up moisture from Lake Erie to create lake-effect snow in Buffalo, N.Y. Five to 10 inches of snow was possible there and in other parts of western New York by Tuesday morning, the weather service said.

In Chicago, some 250 travelers stayed overnight Sunday at O'Hare International Airport after 300 flights were canceled because of high winds. The airport set up cots for travelers, and flights were running smoothly Monday, airport spokesman Gregg Cunningham said.

The freezing rain, ice, gusty wind and heavy snow over the weekend knocked out power to than 421,000 homes and businesses in Michigan and Illinois, as well as thousands in Wisconsin. Only 6,000 customers were still without power in Michigan Monday evening, while scattered outages remained in Illinois, utility representatives said.

In addition to the Michigan fatality, accidents on highways slippery with snow and ice killed at least eight people in Minnesota, three in Indiana, three in Wyoming, five in Wisconsin and one each in Texas and Kansas.

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Associated Press writer Caryn Rousseau in Chicago contributed to this report.

    Roadways Improve After Deadly Storm, NYT, 25.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Winter-Storm.html

Nations Agree on Step

to Revive Climate Treaty

December 16, 2007
The New York Times
By THOMAS FULLER
and ANDREW C. REVKIN

NUSA DUA, Indonesia — The world's countries wrapped up two weeks of intense and at times emotional talks here on Saturday with a two-year timetable for reviving an ailing, aging climate treaty.

The deal came after the United States, facing sharp verbal attacks in a final open-door negotiating session, reversed its opposition to a last minute-amendment by India.

"We've listened very closely to many of our colleagues here during these two weeks, but especially to what has been said in this hall today," Paula Dobriansky, who led the U.S. delegation, told the other assembled delegates. "We will go forward and join consensus."

The Bush administration had earlier made a significant change in policy, ending its long-held objection to formal negotiations on new steps to avoid climate dangers. This time, the United States agreed to set a deadline for an addendum to the original treaty, the Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was signed by President George H.W. Bush during his final year in office in 1992 but never ratified by the United States.

The agreement notes the need for "urgency" in addressing climate change and recognizes that "deep cuts in global emissions will be required."

Still, it does not bind the United States or any country to commitments on reducing greenhouse pollution.

"It starts a negotiation that allows but doesn't require an outcome where the U.S. takes a cap," or a national limit on greenhouse gases, said David Doniger, a former climate negotiator in the Clinton administration and the climate policy director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private Washington-based environmental group.

The agreement sets the stage for some commitments by developing countries to reducing greenhouse emissions. But it includes no language making such steps mandatory.

U.S. negotiators here had pushed hard to get developing countries, including emerging economic giants like China and India, to agree to seek cuts while retaining flexibility on how to make them. The last-minute dispute Saturday was over the wording of commitments by developing countries.

The overall agreement, if completed by 2009, would also ensure continuity for parties to the Kyoto Protocol, which took effect in 2005 and is the only existing addendum to the original climate treaty. The Kyoto pact limits emissions by three dozen industrialized countries but has been rejected by the United States under President George W. Bush.

Its emissions caps expire in 2012, and adherents, particularly European countries, were eager to start the process of setting new limits to sustain markets in emissions credits — a keystone of the protocol. The carbon market allows rich countries to receive credit toward their targets by investing in climate-friendly projects in poor countries.

The Bush administration is increasingly under pressure domestically to take action on global warming. Climate legislation is gaining momentum in the Democratic-controlled U.S. Congress, and presidential candidates from both parties are generally more engaged on the subject.

In April, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration's contention that carbon dioxide was not a pollutant and ordered it to re-examine the case for regulating carbon dioxide from vehicles ordered it to review its environmental policies. Dozens of states are moving ahead with caps on greenhouse gases.

The differences in philosophy at the meeting were striking and fundamental. European Union negotiators said they favored specific government-imposed caps on emissions and wanted industrial countries to lead the way.

The United States favored relying on "aspirational" goals, research to advance nonpolluting energy technologies and a mix of measures, including mandatory steps like efficiency standards for vehicles and appliances — but all set by individual nations, not mandated by a global pact.

Developing countries, a vaguely defined group that includes countries as different as China and Costa Rica, have long insisted that rich countries, which spent more than a century adding carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere, should take the first step.

The tenor of the conference improved markedly after European nations, frustrated with the United States, threatened on Thursday to boycott talks proposed by the Bush administration in Hawaii next month that would be separate from process here, sponsored by the United Nations.

Germany's environment minister, Sigmar Gabriel, who led the criticism of the United States earlier in the week, said Friday: "The climate in the climate convention has changed a little bit. It's true that during the last night and during the negotiations America was more flexible than in the first part of the conference.

We very much appreciate this. Not only the Americans but also other parties."

Reuters reported Friday that the European Union had dropped a central demand that the guidelines for the agreement should include a reference to tough emissions targets for wealthy countries to meet by 2020.

The mood here shifted after a speech Thursday by Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president who shared the Nobel Peace Prize this year for helping to alert the world to the danger of global warming.

After declaring that the United States was "principally responsible for obstructing progress" in Bali, he urged delegates to agree to an open-ended deal that could be enhanced after Mr. Bush left office in January 2009.

"Over the next two years the United States is going to be somewhere it is not now," Mr. Gore said to loud applause. "You must anticipate that."

Developing nations, notably China and India, stuck with their longstanding refusal to accept limits on their emissions, despite projections that they will soon become the dominant sources of climate-warming gases.

Separately, participants agreed on a system that would compensate developing countries for protecting their rain forests, a plan that environmentalists described as an innovative effort to mitigate global warming.

Rain forest destruction is a major source of carbon dioxide, and living rain forests, according to recent research, play an important role in absorbing the gas. Precisely how countries with large rain forests, like Indonesia and Brazil, would be compensated has not been fully worked out.

United Nations officials said part of the financing would come from developed countries through aid and other financing would come from carbon credits traded under the Kyoto pact.


Thomas Fuller reported from Nusa Dua, and Andrew C. Revkin from New York. Peter Gelling contributed reporting from Nusa Dua, and Graham Bowley from New York.

    Nations Agree on Steps to Revive Climate Treaty, NYT, 15.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/world/16climate.html?hp

A Look at the Bali Climate Change Plan

December 15, 2007
Filed at 5:35 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

BALI, Indonesia (AP) -- Key points of the final decision at the U.N. climate change conference setting an agenda for talks on a new global warming pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol at the end of 2012:

GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS:

It recognizes that ''deep cuts'' in global emissions will be required to prevent dangerous human interference in the climate. It references scientific reports that suggest a range of cuts between 25 and 40 percent by 2020, but prescribes no such targets itself.

DEADLINE:

Negotiations for the next climate accord should last for two years and conclude in 2009 in order to allow enough time to implement it at the end of 2012. Four major climate meetings will take place next year.

RICH AND POOR:

Negotiators should consider binding reductions of gas emissions by industrialized countries, while developing countries should consider moves to control the growth of their emissions. Richer countries should work to transfer climate-friendly technology to poorer nations.

ADJUSTING TO CLIMATE CHANGE:

Negotiators should look at supporting urgent steps to help poorer countries adapt to inevitable effects of global warming, such as building seawalls to guard against rising oceans.

DEFORESTATION:

Negotiators should consider ''positive incentives'' for reducing deforestation in developing countries, many of which are seeking international compensation for preserving their forest ''sinks'' absorbing carbon dioxide.

    A Look at the Bali Climate Change Plan, NYT, 15.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Bali-Climate-Glance.html

Midwest storm leaves 24 dead, nearly 1M powerless

10 December 2007
USA Today

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A thick glaze of ice brought down power lines and cut electricity to hundreds of thousands of homes and business, closed schools and canceled flights Tuesday as a major storm blasted the nation's midsection.

At least 24 deaths had been blamed on the storm system since the waves of sleet and freezing rain started during the weekend.

Glistening, ice-covered roads contributed to many of the deaths. Downed power lines caused dozens of fires in Oklahoma. And then there was the problem of staying warm because officials cautioned that electricity may not be restored for days, if not weeks.

The power outage was the worst ever in Oklahoma, with nearly 600,000 homes and businesses without electricity Tuesday. Nearly 350,000 other customers were affected by outages in Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Illinois.

Lesley Owczarski, owner of Big Apple Bagels in Ottumwa, Iowa, said the power was on at her shop, but many of her customers weren't so lucky.

"Most of the places don't have power so a lot of people have been coming to the bagel shop," she said. "If they can come in and get warm and have a hot coffee and a latte, why not? I can understand it's boring sitting at home."

The storm also caused extensive travel problems. About 560 flights were canceled at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, and hundreds of other flights were badly delayed.

In Oklahoma, schools were closed for a second day across most of the state. Classes were also canceled in Kansas, Iowa and Wisconsin, including the Milwaukee district, with 85,000 students.

Officials in Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma had declared states of emergency. President Bush declared a federal emergency in Oklahoma on Tuesday, ordering government aid to supplement state and local efforts.

The 24 deaths in the Midwest and 15 in Oklahoma, have been blamed on frozen conditions that sent cars skidding off highways and caused trees and power lines to snap under the weight of ice.

Tulsa and Oklahoma City each had more than 100 reports of fires since the storm began, mostly from tree limbs crashing into live power lines, authorities said.

Until Tuesday, the volunteer fire department in the small Kansas town of Durham had gone on just two fire runs all year. Within hours, the department rushed to the scene of three weather-related electrical fires.

"I don't know as we've ever run that many fires," said Fire Chief Pete Sommerfeld, who was without power along with the rest of the town of 110 people.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency rushed 50 industrial generators to Oklahoma for hospitals, water-treatment plants and emergency shelters, and 50 more were on the way. FEMA was also providing blankets, cots and pre-packaged meals.

Most people decided to stay home and bundle up rather than go to shelters.

Eva Mowry and her mother, Madeline Lee, were among dozens of people waiting in line at a Home Depot store in Oklahoma City that was operating on backup power provided by a generator. A sign in front of the store read: "No Generators, Ice Melt, Scrapers, Lamp Oil, Firewood, Kerosene Heaters, Chainsaws."

The two women stocked up on flashlights, batteries and starter logs for the fireplace.

"This is our first ice storm," Lee said. "I don't like it."

Sonya Kendrick, who spent Monday night at one of several American Red Cross shelters set up in Oklahoma City for people without power, said a tree ripped the electrical box off the side of her house, and she needed a warm place to take her three children until repairs could be made.

"When I got in here yesterday, I was totally distraught. I was like 'Why me? Why me of all people?' I look at it this way, too: I'm not the only one," said Kendrick, 43. "There's other people here that I got to know in less than two days, literally. All of them have been through the same thing, and everybody here just understands everybody."

The National Weather Service in Norman, Okla., said the cold air that caused the freezing drizzle in Oklahoma pushed northeast into Kansas, Missouri and Iowa, but a thick layer of ice remained on parked cars, homes and trees. A steady rain that fell Tuesday drenched workers and homeowners who were out clearing wreckage.

"This poor lady we went to had tears in her eyes because her 90-year-old oak tree was just ravaged," said Tom Moffett, who used a chainsaw to cut branches that fell on his neighbors homes and driveways in Norman.

"This could change the face of Norman, because these trees are part of the charm of the city."

Paul Nosak, who owns a tree service in Tulsa, estimated it could be up to six months before everything was cleaned up.

"What we have here is a storm of biblical proportions," Nosak said as his crew demolished a 100-year-old oak tree and sheered off a house's front porch. "This is a Category 5 hurricane in Oklahoma."

    Midwest storm leaves 24 dead, nearly 1M powerless, 10.12.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/winter/2007-12-10-ice-storm_N.htm

Plains ice storm leaves 13 dead, 300,000 powerless

10 December 2007
USA Today
By Ken Miller, Associated Press Writer

OKLAHOMA CITY — Commuters contended with treacherous roads Monday from the southern Plains to the Northeast as a storm spread a coating of ice and freezing rain linked to at least 13 traffic deaths.

Hundreds of thousands of people had no electricity and airline flights were canceled Monday in Oklahoma.

Winter weather warnings and advisories were posted along a cold front that stretched from Texas to New Hampshire. The wintry weather was expected to continue through midweek.

Oklahoma was especially hard hit, with more than a quarter-million customers blacked out Monday morning as ice-laden trees crashed onto homes and power lines. Schools were closed across the state and the Highway Patrol discouraged travel.

Ice accumulations already a half-inch thick were reported Sunday in parts of Oklahoma and could build up to as much as an inch thick in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area, the weather service said.

Most morning flights were canceled at Oklahoma City's Will Rogers World Airport, where two of the three runways were iced over.

Oklahoma utilities said about 300,000 homes and businesses were blacked out Monday, mostly in the Oklahoma City and Tulsa areas. There was no way to estimate when power might be restored, said Oklahoma Gas & Electric spokesman Gil Broyles.

"This is a big one, we've got a massive situation here and it's probably going to be a week to 10 days before we get power on to everybody," said Ed Bettinger, a spokesman for Public Service Company. "It looks like a war zone."

The Oklahoma City suburb of Jones, a town of 2,500 people, had very low water pressure because there was no electricity to run well pumps, and firefighters said an early morning fire destroyed most of the local high school.

Missouri utilities and electrical cooperatives reported more than 100,000 customers had no power Monday, and the utility AmerenUE said roughly 11,000 were blacked out in southern Illinois. On Sunday, blackouts affecting thousands of customers also were reported in parts of Illinois and Kansas.

The sound of branches snapping under the weight of ice echoed through Oklahoma City neighborhoods.

"You can hear them falling everywhere," Lonnie Compton said Monday as he shoveled ice off his driveway.

In the Northeast on Monday, many schools across upstate New York were closed or started late because of icy roads.

On ice-covered Interstate 40 west of Okemah, Okla., four people died in "one huge cluster of an accident" that involved 11 vehicles, including a tractor-trailer rig, said Highway Patrol Trooper Betsey Randolph. All 11 vehicles burned, she said.

Eight other people also died on icy Oklahoma roads, and Missouri had one death on a slippery highway. In addition, a transient died of hypothermia in Oklahoma City, the state medical examiner's office said.

Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt declared a state of emergency Sunday and activated the National Guard to aid communities affected by the storm. The National Guard said no soldiers had been sent to any affected communities as of Monday morning, but an armory in Lamar was opened as a shelter and about 80 peoples spent the night.
 

Contributing: Associated Press writers Jeff Latzke in Oklahoma City and Cheryl Wittenauer in St. Louis contributed to this report.

    Plains ice storm leaves 13 dead, 300,000 powerless, UT, 10.12.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/winter/2007-12-10-ice-storm_N.htm

Bush declares federal disaster in 11 Ore., Wash. counties

8 December 2007
USA Today

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — President Bush declared a federal disaster for 11 counties in the Pacific Northwest on Saturday, clearing the way for federal aid after severe storms ravaged parts of Oregon and Washington.

The declaration provides recovery assistance to five northwestern Oregon and six southwestern Washington counties. It does not include assistance for individuals.

The disaster declaration says the federal government will reimburse 75% of the public cost for disaster response in those designated areas. It also creates a grant program that would provide federal money to take steps to reduce damage from future disasters such as burying utility lines.

FEMA spokeswoman Debbie Wing said more types of assistance could be granted and more counties could be covered as floodwaters recede and officials get a better look at the damage.

Oregon and Washington saw severe flooding, landslides and mudslides as the result of storms that hit the coast Dec. 1-3. Eight deaths were blamed on the disaster: two in Oregon and six in Washington, including a pair of hikers in the Cascade Mountains.

    Bush declares federal disaster in 11 Ore., Wash. counties, UT, 8.12.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-12-08-bush-oregon_N.htm

Floods Still Plague the Northwest

December 5, 2007
Filed at 8:41 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

CHEHALIS, Wash. (AP) -- Those who survived the drenching rain and howling wind in the Northwest are hoping for the muddy brown waters to recede so they can return home and see what was left.

In Oregon, tens of thousands of people are still without power from a fierce storm that's moved out. But it left behind flooded communities and landslides which largely cut off a town northwest of Portland.

Washington state remains under a state of emergency. Several miles of Interstate Five are still closed because the highway is under water. Officials are hoping to open the highway Thursday but are waiting for inspection reports to make sure it didn't suffer structural damage from the water.

One state transportation official says the pavement was littered with debris from the flooding, including dead rats.

As the water started to rise outside their Lewis County home, Terry Roberts moved his cars to higher ground, shepherded his wife and two children into their RV and hit the road.

They didn't get far.

''We were on dry road and all of a sudden, the water started swirling around,'' Roberts said, standing with his wife in a temporary shelter in Chehalis after being rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter. ''That's when we got on the CB and called for help.''

Roberts, 64, was among the hundreds who fled their homes after a fierce storm battered the Pacific Northwest, killing at least seven people and leading to widespread flooding that shut down a stretch of the region's major north-south highway.

Others were looking for the lost. In the Lewis County town of Winlock, a dive team planned to spend Wednesday searching normally tiny Wallers Creek for Richard Hiatt, 81, believed to have been swept away when a bank gave out from underneath him.

''It happened so quickly,'' daughter-in-law Sharon Hiatt said Tuesday as searches continued. ''That's the only possibility, that he fell into the creek.''

Gov. Chris Gregoire, who toured the ravaged region by helicopter Tuesday, touched down at a high school shelter in Chehalis and offered encouragement to the roughly 40 people staying there.

She also ordered a plane to deliver food and emergency supplies to the high school in Pe Ell, about 25 miles to the west, because the roads were blocked by water.

''It's hard to comprehend 5- to 10-feet under until you see those houses,'' Gregoire said.

The governor also flew to the water's edge on Interstate 5, which has been shut down since Monday at Centralia because of flooding. At one point Tuesday, officials said a three-mile section of the road was under as much as 10 feet of water from the surging Chehalis River.

The interstate, which is the main north-south route between Portland, Ore., and Seattle, was expected to be closed at least through Thursday.

In Tillamook, Ore., home to large dairy cattle herds, the smell of manure was pervasive as shopkeepers downtown shoveled out their businesses. At the Wilson River RV Park, one vehicle was on its side, and others were in mud 6 inches to 8 inches deep.

Ben and Amanda Beal had moved to a motel with their two young children when police notified everyone there to evacuate. Just as they left the parking lot, waves swelled over Highway 101.

''I thought we were going to be swept away,'' said Amanda Beal. ''You could feel the water pushing the Blazer. The winds were blowing at 100 miles per hour.''

''We just panicked,'' Ben Beal said.

With I-5 closed, state officials were recommending a lengthy detour -- Interstate 90 across the Cascade mountains and down U.S. 97 through central Washington to the Oregon border -- a route that roughly doubles the three-hour trip from Seattle to Portland.

David Dye, Washington state's deputy transportation secretary, said workers were cleaning up lots of debris -- ''garbage, tires, dead rats everywhere'' -- while they waited for the water to recede.

On the edge of downtown Centralia, waist-high water the color of chocolate milk covered streets as police used small boats to get to houses in flooded neighborhoods.

Firefighters finally persuaded Katrina Puris, 25, to flee her home as her neighbors' cars were floating down the street late Monday night. She had been reluctant to leave with three children under 5 in the house, despite the firefighters' pleas.

''They were yelling: 'If you're not coming out now, we're leaving,''' Puris said Tuesday. ''So I just grabbed everything I could and we just ran.''

More than 300 people had to be rescued in Lewis County, many being plucked off their rooftops by helicopter, Sheriff Steve Mansfield said.

Chehalis City Manager Merlin MacReynold said between 70 and 80 people had to be rescued in the city limits alone. He called the flooding worse than the 1996 deluge, which is still legendary in the area.

The latest of three storms slammed into the state on Monday, hitting hardest on the Olympic Peninsula, Kitsap County and the southwestern corner of the state, leaving at least 73,000 western Washington residents without power. More than 50,000 were still in the dark Tuesday. Pacific Power said that nearly 36,000 of its customers were still without power.

The storm overwhelmed a number of sewage treatment plants, allowing tons of raw sewage to spew into Puget Sound.

Mudslides halted Amtrak passenger train service between Portland and Vancouver, British Columbia, at least through Wednesday.

Two hikers were found dead Tuesday from an avalanche in the Cascade Mountains, King County sheriff's officials said. The hikers were killed as heavy rain atop heavy snow increased the avalanche danger.

A man in Mason County died Monday night when he was buried in a building hit by a mudslide, said Kyle Herman, a spokesman for the Washington State Emergency Management Division.

Officials said two more men died in Grays Harbor County: one in Aberdeen who was hit by a falling tree, and a man in Montesano who apparently relied on oxygen equipment that stopped working after electricity was lost.

Two Oregon deaths were reported, both in Tillamook County. Medical personnel said one person died of a heart attack; the other victim was a driver swept away by floodwaters.

The storm moved out to the Upper Midwest, where it dumped as much of 9 inches of snow in parts of North Dakota. Western Ohio was predicted to get as much as 7 inches before the storm moved out Wednesday.

The snow created delays at several midwestern airports, including Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, and caused a bus crash in Indiana that injured 17 people, authorities said.

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Associated Press writers Curt Woodward in Centralia, and Brad Cain in Tillamook, contributed to this report.

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On the Net:

Emergency Management Division: http://www.emd.wa.gov

    Floods Still Plague the Northwest, NYT, 5.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Severe-Weather.html

Northwest Reeling From Storms

December 4, 2007
The New York Times
By JOHN HOLUSHA

The Pacific northwest was reeling today from the effects of two winter storms whose high winds and heavy rains caused floods that blocked highways, cut power to thousands of homes and prompted the governors of Oregon and Washington to declare states of emergency. Two deaths were attributed to the bad weather.

Meanwhile, lake effect snow and high winds from Syracuse to western New York resulted in the closing of dozens of school districts and slowed travel on the New York State Thruway and local highways. Two to six inches of new snow was expected to fall today in Syracuse, and more than 10 inches were expected in other areas of upstate New York.

The snow extended across northern Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine and may ,cause flurries as far south as New York City, forecasters said.

On the west coast, one man was killed in southwestern Washington when a tree fell on him as he was trying to clear another tree that had fallen earlier, police said. Another man died of an unspecified medical problem after the power failed.

The heavy rain — 10.8 inches fell in Bremerton, Wash in 24 hours — was accompanied by winds gusting as high as 100 miles per hour. Interstate 5, the main route between Seattle and Portland, was closed due to flooding that was expected to deepen as rivers continued rising.

The rain slid south overnight reaching the San Francisco area today and leading to delays at the San Francisco airport.

Pacific Power company said approximately 40,000 homes were without power in Oregon, and Governor Chris Gregoire said 80,000 people had lost electricity in Washington. Because so many roads are closed, Pacific Power said, it would take three to four days before the lights could be turned back on.

    Northwest Reeling From Storms, NYT, 4.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/us/04cnd-storm.html?hp

Tension at the Edge of Alaska

December 4, 2007
The New York Times
By JAD MOUAWAD

BARROW, Alaska — Each summer and fall, the Inupiat, natives of Alaska’s arid north coast, take their sealskin boats and gun-fired harpoons and go whale hunting. Kills are celebrated throughout villages as whaling captains share their catch with relatives and neighbors. Muktuk, or raw whale skin and blubber, is a prized delicacy.

But now, that traditional way of life is coming into conflict with one of the modern world’s most urgent priorities: finding more oil.

Royal Dutch Shell is determined to exploit vast reserves believed to lie off Alaska’s coast. The Bush administration backs the idea and has issued offshore leases in recent years totaling an area nearly the size of Maryland.

Those leases have received far less attention than failed efforts to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but they may prove to be far more important. By some estimates, the oil under the Alaskan seabed could exceed the reserves remaining in the rest of the United States, though how much might ultimately be recoverable is uncertain.

Shell is eager to find out. It tried to make headway this summer, only to be stopped by an unusual alliance of Inupiat whalers and environmental groups who filed a suit in federal court.

They argue that noisy drilling off the Alaska coast could disrupt migration routes for the bowhead whales, making it impossible for the Inupiat to capture their allotted share of about 60 animals per year. A court hearing is scheduled for today to consider whether the company can move forward, though a ruling is not expected for months.

Native communities are not unalterably opposed to oil production — on the contrary, many rely on oil for their livelihoods. The North Slope Borough, a countylike governmental unit the size of Minnesota where most of Alaska’s 10,000 Inupiat live, gets the bulk of its $98 million budget each year from taxing onshore oil operations.

Native corporations also derive a large part of their business from serving the oil industry in Prudhoe Bay. Community leaders are caught between a desire to preserve traditional whaling and the economic necessity of permitting the oil industry to move into new areas.

“It’s a hell of a dilemma,” said Edward S. Itta, the mayor of the North Slope Borough, who is opposed to Shell’s drilling plans. “Without a doubt, America’s energy needs are way up, and something’s going to happen up there. It’s a way of life against an opposing value. This way of life has value; nobody can put it in dollars and cents.”

The oil resources off Alaska’s coast amount to some 27 billion barrels, according to government estimates, about the same as the original reserves of the giant Prudhoe Bay field discovered in 1968. That would be enough to satisfy America’s total oil consumption for three years if every last drop could be pumped, which is unlikely.

It is a tantalizing bonanza for the Bush administration, which has strongly backed exploration to make up for a decline in domestic oil production; for oil companies, which are scouring the world to find new supplies; and for Alaskan authorities, who need to keep the trans-Alaska pipeline flowing.

Returning to the Sea

Oil off Alaska’s coast is hardly a new discovery. Soon after petroleum was found under the North Slope 40 years ago, companies began to suspect there might be oil under the Beaufort Sea and beyond.

Shell was one of the early pioneers of Arctic exploration in the following decades but it abandoned the region along with other companies after the oil price collapse of the mid-1980s. Five years ago, as the company sought new places to drill, Shell geologists dusted off their old seismic surveys. They identified a spot called Hammerhead, where the company had first drilled in 1985. They renamed it Sivulliq, meaning “the first one” in Inupiat, and decided to drill there. The area, about 15 miles offshore in 110 feet of water, is just opposite the western coast of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Shell moved aggressively to secure offshore holdings after 2005. The company paid about $80 million for leases in the Beaufort Sea, outspending its competitors.

“If you look at the Arctic, this is an incredibly important energy resource for the United States,” said Marvin Odum, Shell’s executive vice president for the Americas. “Going in with paced development is the right way to go.”

Mr. Odum says Shell is respectful of native rights and can safely drill in the Beaufort Sea without disturbing whales or whalers. The company offered to shut drilling operations during the whaling season and said it would monitor migration routes with the latest equipment, including unmanned aerial drones.

In February, Shell obtained its drilling permit from the Minerals Management Service, a government agency in charge of overseeing oil and gas production in federal waters. That allowed it to bring in a small armada of ships and emergency craft to prepare for the drilling season, which lasts 90 to 120 days in the summer, when the Beaufort Sea is largely free of ice.

But in April, environmental groups sued the agency, which is part of the Interior Department, asserting it had not taken adequate account of the risks any oil spill would pose to whales and other species.

The plaintiffs, later joined by the North Slope Borough and the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, won an injunction in July from a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, which ordered Shell not to drill while the case was under review. In September, the company lost an important ruling, effectively ending this year’s drilling efforts.

Both sides will present their arguments today, and the court is expected to rule before the next drilling season.

Mr. Odum, whose responsibilities at Shell span the Western Hemisphere, spent three days this summer as an observer on a hunt that captured two whales. The experience, he said, gave him a “visceral understanding” of whaling’s importance to native people, who refer to themselves interchangeably as Inupiat or Eskimos.

“The issue is how do we do this together in a way that does not interfere with the whale hunt,” Mr. Odum said. The company repainted one of its larger boats from bright orange to white and blue to make it less annoying to whales. It also reached an agreement with whalers on right of passage during the whaling season.

Despite the delays, Shell believes that its exploration program will be allowed to resume next year. In a bid to reach out to the Inupiat, the company says it spent several million dollars in community development projects on the North Slope; it declined to provide a specific figure. It gave $250,000, for example, to a science and engineering program at the University of Alaska geared toward native students.

But the company’s opponents argue that Shell moved into Alaska too aggressively, surprised the Inupiat with the scale of its operations and did a poor job of reaching out to them. “This lawsuit was a way of getting everyone’s attention and to get our concerns addressed,” said Mr. Itta, the mayor.

New Wave of Development

Not everyone here sees Shell as a threat. Richard Glenn, vice president of the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, the biggest Eskimo-run business, says the oil industry is vital to indigenous communities. The corporation runs a series of energy and construction businesses, and redistributes more than $200 million a year in profits to the Eskimos. “To say that the oil and gas industry succeeds does not mean that our culture fails,” Mr. Glenn said.

The controversy on the North Slope is the most visible sign of a new wave of oil development in Alaska. The Interior Department has been auctioning rights in the Beaufort Sea for five years, and it plans more sales there .

Environmentalists are concerned about what they see as the unchecked expansion of the oil industry in Alaska. They said they saw no contradiction in their support for native rights, including whaling rights, and their long-term effort to protect whales and other species.

“The bowhead whale is an icon of cultural identity for the Inupiat people,” said Rachel James, a campaigner at Pacific Environment, one of the groups suing the government. “Our concerns are over human rights issues, access for subsistence users to resources, and the protection of endangered species.”

The bowhead whale — Balaena mysticetus — is a member of the right whale family. Its skull is so powerful that it can crash through two feet of ice to reach the surface to breathe. Its numbers were greatly reduced in the era of commercial whaling, but it has made a modest recovery, and hunting by the Inupiat is not considered a threat.

From the Inupiat perspective, the big fear about oil drilling is that the inevitable noise will drive whales so far offshore they will be impossible to hunt with the limited traditional gear that villagers use.

Whale Meat in the Kitchen

In Barrow, signs of the whales can be found everywhere. Their curved skulls are displayed in front of public buildings and along the town’s coastline. The high school mascot is a smiling harpoon-wielding whaler.

“This is a community that depends on the Arctic Ocean for survival,” said Charles F. Hopson, a member of Barrow’s whaling commission.

The other day, an Eskimo named Lewis Brower took out a hunting knife, opened his refrigerator and lopped off a big chunk of raw whale meat. He cut a sliver for his 2-year-old daughter, Lauren, who gulped it between sips from a bottle.

“Nothing tastes like it,” Mr. Brower said.

Mr. Brower’s home, at the end of a wind-swept street, is decorated with pictures of whaling campaigns. He explained that a few weeks previously, he spent 12 hours helping butcher a 47-foot-long whale that was landed by Mayor Itta’s crew. It was carved on the beach and divided among village families. The captain’s wife cooked a big dinner for the entire village that evening.

Mr. Brower, whose family has had 32 years of uninterrupted success catching whales, is concerned that these traditions, which have united villagers and helped them survive for centuries, might get lost in an offshore drilling boom.

“They’re coming to our lands and disturbing our ancestral way of life,” he said. “How would you feel if I drilled in the middle of the New York Harbor?”

    Tension at the Edge of Alaska, NYT, 4.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/business/04alaskaoil.html?hp

Algae Emerges as a Potential Fuel Source

December 2, 2007
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ST. PAUL, Dec. 1 (AP) — The 16 big flasks of bubbling bright green liquids in Roger Ruan’s laboratory at the University of Minnesota are part of a new boom in renewable energy research.

Driven by renewed investment as oil prices push $100 a barrel, Dr. Ruan and scores of scientists around the world are racing to turn algae into a commercially viable energy source.

Some algae is as much as 50 percent oil that can be converted into biodiesel or jet fuel. The biggest challenge is cutting the cost of production, which by one Defense Department estimate is running more than $20 a gallon.

“If you can get algae oils down below $2 a gallon, then you’ll be where you need to be,” said Jennifer Holmgren, director of the renewable fuels unit of UOP, an energy subsidiary of Honeywell International. “And there’s a lot of people who think you can.”

Researchers are trying to figure out how to grow enough of the right strains of algae and how to extract the oil most efficiently. Over the past two years they have received more money from governments, the Pentagon, big oil companies, utilities and venture capital firms.

The federal government halted its main algae research program nearly a decade ago, but technology has advanced and oil prices have climbed since then, and an Energy Department laboratory announced in late October that it was partnering with Chevron, the second-largest American oil company, in the hunt for better strains of algae.

“It’s not backyard inventors at this point at all,” said George Douglas, a spokesman for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, an arm of the Energy Department. “It’s folks with experience to move it forward.”

A New Zealand company demonstrated a Range Rover powered by an algae biodiesel blend last year, but experts say algae will not be commercially viable for many years. Dr. Ruan said demonstration plants could be built within a few years.

Converting algae oil into biodiesel uses the same process that turns vegetable oils into biodiesel. But the cost of producing algae oil is hard to pin down because nobody is running the process start to finish other than in a laboratory, Mr. Douglas said.

If the price of production can be reduced, the advantages of algae include the fact that it grows much faster and in less space than conventional energy crops. An acre of corn can produce about 20 gallons of oil per year, Dr. Ruan said, compared with a possible 15,000 gallons of oil per acre of algae.

An algae farm could be located almost anywhere. It would not require converting cropland from food production to energy production. It could use sea water and could consume pollutants from sewage and power plants.

The Pentagon’s research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is financing research into producing jet fuel from plants, including algae. The agency is already working with the Honeywell subsidiary, General Electric and the University of North Dakota. In November, it requested additional research proposals.

    Algae Emerges as a Potential Fuel Source, NYT, 2.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/us/02algae.html

San Francisco Fleet Is All Biodiesel

December 2, 2007
The New York Times
By CAROLYN MARSHALL

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 30 — Claiming it now has the largest green fleet in the nation, the city of San Francisco this week completed a yearlong project to convert its entire array of diesel vehicles — from ambulances to street sweepers — to biodiesel, a clean-burning and renewable fuel that holds promise for helping to reduce greenhouse gases.

Using virgin soy oil bought from producers in the Midwest, officials said that as of Friday, all of the city’s 1,500 diesel vehicles were powered with the environmentally friendlier fuel, intended to sharply reduce toxic diesel exhaust linked to a higher risk of asthma and premature death.

“Just like secondhand smoke, diesel is one of the worst things we can breathe,” said the city’s clean vehicle manager, Vandana Bali of the Department of the Environment.

The announcement came without fanfare from Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office late Thursday, even as Congressional lawmakers dickered over the particulars of an energy bill that would give automakers incentives to produce cars that burn biofuels.

Ms. Bali said the city’s diesel vehicles now all used a fuel known as B20, a mix of 20 percent soy-based biofuel and 80 percent petroleum diesel fuel, which reduces toxic emissions of carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and other pollutants that lead to global warming.

A spokesman for the mayor, Nathan Ballard, said the goal was to cut such emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

In November, Mr. Newsom announced a new project called SFGreasecycle, a program to collect fats and cooking oils from restaurants, at no charge.

“We are collecting grease,” Mr. Ballard said. “Waste fats and oils are a major source of backup in our sewage system. But we’re taking the grease that would have gone down the drain and turning it into biodiesel.”

    San Francisco Fleet Is All Biodiesel, NYT, 2.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/us/02diesel.html

Energy Plan Pushes Automakers on Mpg

December 2, 2007
Filed at 3:41 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The groundbreaking deal in Congress to raise mile-per-gallon standards will compel the auto industry to churn out more fuel-efficient vehicles on a faster timeline than the companies wanted, though with flexibility to get the job done.

The auto industry's fleet of new cars, sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks and vans will have to average 35 mpg by 2020, according to the agreement that congressional negotiators announced late Friday. That compares with the 2008 requirement of 27.5 mpg average for cars and 22.5 mpg for light trucks. It would be first increase ordered by Congress in three decades.

Majority Democrats plan to include the requirement in broader energy legislation to be debated in the context of $90-per-barrel oil, $3-plus pump prices and growing concerns about climate change. The House plans to begin debate this week.

''It is a major milestone and the first concrete legislation to address global warming,'' said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

While Senate Democrats were quick to embrace the compromise, the energy bill may face problems over requirements for nonpublic electric utilities to produce 15 percent of their power from renewable energy sources such as wind or solar.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., on Saturday said that idea ''will make this bill untenable for many in the Senate.''

Environmentalists have sought stricter mileage standards for years, saying that is the most effective way to curb greenhouse gas emissions and oil consumption.

The energy bill will help accelerate plans by automakers to bring more fuel-efficient technologies to conventional engines and alternatives such as gas-electric hybrids and vehicles running on ethanol blends. For the first time, for example, manufacturers will receive credits for building vehicles running on biodiesel fuel.

Domestic automakers and Toyota Motor Corp. vehemently opposed a Senate bill approved passed in June that contained the same mileage requirements and timeline. They warned the measure would limit the choice of vehicles, threaten jobs and drive up costs.

The companies backed an alternative of 32 mpg to 35 mpg by 2022. At the time, Chrysler LLC executive Tom LaSorda told employees the Senate bill would ''add up to a staggering $6,700 -- almost a 40 percent increase -- to the cost of every Chrysler vehicle.''

But the compromise worked out by Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate leaders, maintains a significant boost in mileage standards while giving the industry more flexibility and certainty as they plan new vehicles.

The proposal would continue separate standards for cars and trucks, extend credits for producing vehicles that run on ethanol blends, and allow automakers to receive separate credits for exceeding the standards and then apply those credits to other model years.

Michigan lawmakers secured an extension of the current 1.2 mpg credit for the production of each ''flexible fuel'' vehicle, capable of running on ethanol blends of 15 percent gasoline and 85 percent ethanol. Without the extension, the credits may have run out by 2010, but under the deal, they will be phased out by 2020.

The United Auto Workers union also won a provision intended to prevent companies from shifting production of less profitable small cars to overseas plants. At stake are an estimated 17,000 jobs.

The House's energy bill, approved in August, did not include mileage standards, and lawmakers had worked since then to include them.

Rick Wagoner, General Motors Corp.'s chairman and chief executive, said the new rules would ''pose a significant technical and economic challenge to the industry.'' He said GM would tackle the changes ''with an array of engineering, research and development resources.''

GM, Chrysler and Ford Motor Co. have announced plans to double their production by 2010 of flex-fuel vehicles. Toyota has said it will bring the option to the Tundra pickup.

Among hybrids, Toyota has dominated the market with the Prius, but several automakers are beginning to bring the technology to large SUVs and pickups.

Environmental groups estimate the deal would save the country 1.2 million barrels of oil per day by 2020 while helping motorists save at the pump.

''Cars are going to be more attractive to consumers because they won't cost as much to own and operate,'' said David Doniger, director of the climate center for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

------

On the Net:

Environmental Protection Agency's fuel economy site: http://www.fueleconomy.gov/

General Motors Corp.: http://www.gm.com/explore/livegreengoyellow/

Natural Resources Defense Council: http://www.nrdc.org/

    Energy Plan Pushes Automakers on Mpg, NYT, 2.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-More-MPG.html

At least three dead in winter storm

1 December 2007
USA Today

DES MOINES (AP) — Snow and ice plastered a wide area of the Midwest on Saturday, interrupting campaigning by presidential hopefuls, disrupting airport and highway traffic and killing at least three people.

The National Weather Service posted winter storm and ice warnings across parts of Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, the eastern Dakotas, Illinois and northern Michigan, although some warnings were lifted later in the day. In Minnesota, Duluth received nearly 8 inches of snow.

Much of Iowa was hit by snow, sleet and freezing rain. Temperatures warmed to above freezing by evening, helping to melt away much of the ice and sleet that had accumulated, said Ken Podrazik, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Des Moines.

Hundreds of flights were canceled at airports in Des Moines, Chicago and Milwaukee. Officials decided to close Des Moines International Airport for several hours after a United Airlines plane slid off a taxiway as it was heading to a runway for a flight to Chicago's O'Hare, said airport spokesman Roy Criss. He said none of the 44 passengers was injured and the airport reopened by mid-afternoon.

At Dane County Regional Airport in Madison, Wis., an incoming Mesa Airlines regional jet flying for United Express slid off the pavement after failing to make a turn onto a taxiway, but no injuries were reported among the 25 passengers, said United Airlines spokesman Jeff Vick.

Madison was expecting three inches of snow and overnight wind gusts of up to 30 mph, an outlook so bleak that even meteorologists were postponing their own events. The University of Wisconsin-Madison's Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences department postponed its annual Solstice Party, which was set for Saturday, until February.

"This is the most treacherous kind of weather that the weather can deliver," said department chairman Jonathan Martin.

The storm also complicated plans for some presidential hopefuls drumming up support for the Jan. 3 caucuses that kick off the nomination process.

Republican Mitt Romney canceled three campaign stops planned Saturday in southern Iowa, and former President Clinton canceled a rally for his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, scheduled Saturday afternoon outside Des Moines.

Podrazik said some rain and freezing drizzle was expected overnight, turning to flurries on Sunday. He said travel could remain troublesome through early Sunday as temperatures fall, causing roads to refreeze. He also said gusty wind also could be a problem.

In the mountains of western Colorado, the storm dumped up to two feet of snow, bringing moisture to a region that had been thirsting for it.

A half foot of snow in Beaver Creek forced organizers to postpone a men's World Cup super-G skiing event from Saturday to Monday.

Eastbound Interstate 70 was closed for about three hours Saturday night leading up to Vail Pass in the mountains due to accidents on icy, snowpacked roads.

Heavy ice accumulations on power lines blacked out more than 14,000 customers scattered around Iowa, said representatives of for Alliant Energy and MidAmerican Energy. Thousands more were without power near Galesburg, Ill., Ameren spokesman Leigh Morris said.

In Indiana, a van carrying Purdue University's ice hockey team rolled over on an ice-slickened highway about 20 miles southwest of West Lafayette, killing one team member and injuring seven others, school officials said.

A man died when his Jeep hit a semitrailer on a highway north of Madison, Wis., authorities said. Vehicles had been slowing after another semitrailer tipped on its side as the driver tried to exit the highway.

On an icy interstate near Wellington, Colo., a van slid off the road, rolled and struck a fence. One passenger was thrown from the vehicle and died, while the driver and two other passengers were injured, police said.

Numerous accidents were reported on Iowa highways, said Transportation Department spokeswoman Dena Gray-Fisher.

Many travelers checked into motels to wait out the storm in the northern Iowa city of Clear Lake, but Lake Country Inn manager Linda Lorenz said she was surprised by the numbers of vehicles that stayed on the highways.

"They're still going," Lorenz said. "I don't know why they aren't home, I'm not leaving."

Freezing rain coated Illinois highways with ice, causing spinouts and accidents, weather officials said. Ice was about a quarter-inch thick in parts of central Illinois, said weather service meteorologist Dan Kelly.

More than 400 flights were canceled at O'Hare International Airport and 25 were reported at Midway International Airport, said Gregg Cunningham, a spokesman for Chicago's Department of Aviation. Flights at O'Hare were delayed 40 to 60 minutes, with times expected to increase.

"The snow has turned over more to freezing rain, so the weather and low visibility is causing those delays," Cunningham said.

About 30,000 Ameren customers in Illinois were without power as ice built up on power lines; all but 1,000 of those customers had their power restored by the end of the day, however, said Ameren spokesman Leigh Morris.

Many parts of Minnesota reported difficult driving conditions by early afternoon, the state Department of Transportation reported. Snow mixed with sleet along the Interstate 90 corridor across the southern edge of the state and visibility was down a quarter-mile in places.

Snow with wind of 20 to 25 mph reduced visibility in southeastern South Dakota and brought cancellations of regular weekend activities such as YMCA basketball, church practices, high school athletics and community events. One Sioux Falls television station had posted 43 event cancellations and postponements on its website by noon.

In North Dakota, snowy conditions caused numerous accidents, among them a crash on Interstate 94 in Fargo that involved a dozen vehicles including a passenger bus, Highway Patrol Capt. Jim Prochniak said.

Vehicles are "bumping into one another like pingpong balls out there," he said.

The weather also caused the search for two missing Illinois women to be called off after four hours of searching Saturday. More than 200 people scoured parts of Romeoville for Stacy Peterson, 23, who disappeared over a month ago from her Bolingbrook home, and 38-year-old Lisa Stebic, of Plainfield, who was reported missing in April.

    At least three dead in winter storm, UT, 1.12.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/winter/2007-12-01-midwest-snow_N.htm

A Rising Number of Birds at Risk

December 1, 2007
The New York Times
By ANTHONY DePALMA

Relentless sprawl, invasive species and global warming are threatening an increasing number of bird species in the United States, pushing a quarter of them — including dozens in New York and New Jersey — toward extinction, according to a new study by the National Audubon Society and the American Bird Conservancy.

The study, called WatchList 2007, categorized 178 species in the United States as being threatened, an increase of about 10 percent from 2002, when Audubon’s last study was conducted. Of the 178 species on the list, about 45 spend at least part of the year in this region.

Among the most threatened is the rare Bicknell’s thrush, a native of the Catskill and Adirondack highlands whose winter habitat in the Caribbean is disappearing. Although less at risk, the wood thrush — whose distinctive song was once emblematic of the Northeast’s rugged woodlands — is on the list because a combination of acid rain and sprawl has damaged its habitat and caused its numbers to decline precipitously over the last four decades.

The Audubon list, which was released Wednesday, overlaps the federal government’s official endangered species list in some cases. But it also includes a number of bird species that are not recognized as endangered by the federal government but that biologists fear are in danger of becoming extinct.

“We’re concerned that there’s been almost a moratorium on the listing of endangered birds over the last seven years under this administration,” Greg Butcher, Audubon’s bird conservation director and a co-author of the new study, said in a telephone interview. Placing a threatened bird on the new watch list can bring it the kind of attention it needs to survive even if the federal government does not act, he said.

“When we pay attention to these birds and do the things we know need to be done, these birds recover,” Mr. Butcher said. “All these birds have a chance to rebound if we put the right actions in motion.”

Those actions include channeling new development to established areas, being vigilant about new invasive species that can devastate habitats and limiting carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to climate change.

The national watch list is divided into two categories: 59 species, including the whooping crane and the lesser prairie-chicken, are on the “red list” for species that are declining rapidly and facing major threats; 119 are on the “yellow list” for species that are declining or rare but are not yet endangered.

In New York, 10 birds — including the Henslow’s sparrow — are on the red list. The cerulean warbler, the short-eared owl and 35 other birds are on the yellow list. New Jersey’s list includes many of the same birds as New York’s. The count in Connecticut is similar, Mr. Butcher said.

The region’s coastal location raises issues of particular concern. Mr. Butcher said he was especially worried about beach birds like the piping plover, the least tern and the black skimmer, as well as birds whose habitat is the region’s disappearing salt marshes. They include the saltmarsh sharp-tailed sparrow and the clapper rail. And he noted that migratory shore birds, including the red knot and the semipalmated sandpiper, would face increasing difficulties in this region.

“As sea level rises, and the salt marshes disappear, these species don’t have anyplace to go,” Mr. Butcher said. “In New York and New Jersey, so many people live close to the coast that we do what we can to safeguard people but we don’t necessarily protect the natural habitat.”

A Rising Number of Birds at Risk, NYT, 1.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/nyregion/01birds.html