Planetary Ruin

NBC4 forecaster Fritz Coleman said the mixture of precipitation in West Los Angeles at about 3 p.m. included a dusting of snow. Residents in West Los Angeles said the snow accumulated in parking lots, on cars and around palm trees near Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards and other areas.

Most of the snow fell south of Sunset Boulevard and just east of the 405 Freeway. Residents told NBC4 that several inches of snow fell in their yards.

The last snowfall recorded at Los Angeles International Airport was in January 1962, according to the National Weather Service. Trace amounts — less than 0.5 inches — were reported, according to the NWS.

Snow fell earlier Wednesday in Malibu and caused traffic problems on the area’s winding and narrow roads. Sleet made driving treacherous on Kanan Dume Road, a steep route through the Santa Monica Mountains where it’s more typical to see beach-bound cars loaded with surfboards than a snowplow.

“One of our sergeants said he hadn’t seen anything like this in 20 years,” said California Highway Patrol Officer Leland Tang at the West Valley Station.

A probation officer at a juvenile camp in the Santa Monicas said he was traveling down Kanan Dume when it began to snow.

“It was snowing pretty good,” said Officer Oscar Cross. “The road was covered in ice and slush, and I saw one car slide into a ditch. Everyone seemed scared to drive.”

Cross said that when he reached Pacific Coast Highway, the weather turned “nice and sunny.”

“It’s easy to mistake Malibu at sea level with the Malibu Hills,” said Coleman. “Malibu Hills are about 550 feet to 580 feet. That’s almost easy to understand. The sea-level snow is not.”

More snow was reported in Canyon Country, where a resident said he has not seen snow for about 10 years.

In Ventura County, northwest of Los Angeles, a portion of State Route 33 about 12 miles north of Ojai, was closed due to snow and ice, said Marie Raptis, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Transportation.

Snow, Ice Close Grapevine

Authorities closed the northbound Golden State (5) Freeway at Parker Road in northern Los Angeles County about 8:40 a.m., due to snow and ice on the section of the route popularly known as the Grapevine, the California Highway Patrol reported.

CHP officials said Wednesday evening that the road is expected to remain closed through the night.

“We’re at the mercy of Mother Nature,” said California Highway Patrol Officer Francisco Villalobos.

Southbound lanes were closed at Laval Road, Villalobos said.

CHP officers escorted motorists — 100 vehicles at a time — through the area earlier Wednesday. Vehicles were stopped on the side of the freeway as snowplows cleared paths.

“I go to work in Bakersfield, and I got stuck here,” a trucker told NBC4. “It’s beautiful.”

CHP officers provided motorists with alternate routes, but warned that conditions on some of those roads also were dangerous because of ice and snow.

CHP Officer George White said about three inches of snow accumulated on the freeway, with a layer of ice underneath, causing a number of car and truck spinouts near the Pyramid Lake area. South of Pyramid Lake, in the Santa Clarita area, drivers were contending with hail and slushy snow.

Weather Pattern To Continue

The National Weather Service said the wintry precipitation was from an upper-level low moving through the region.

The cold set in late last week, bringing night after night of freezing overnight temperature to many parts of the state and causing extensive agricultural damage.

In the high desert north of Los Angeles, the early morning low was 8 degrees at Lancaster and 14 at Palmdale. Numerous other points in Southern California had lows in the 30s, with some areas in the 20s. Downtown Los Angeles was 44 overnight.

In the Van Nuys area of the San Fernando Valley, where the morning low was 35, a 6-inch water main broke and flooded a street. Service was cut to 30 homes, said Carol Tucker, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

The city’s water mains don’t freeze because they are underground, but extremely cold water can cause the cast iron pipes to crack, Tucker said.

Fire departments across Southern California have reported hundreds of calls in recent days about burst pipes. The Victorville courthouse got flooded when sprinkler heads ruptured, and broken irrigation lines may have caused a mudslide that blocked a private road to five Pasadena homes with 150 tons of debris Monday night.

A winter weather advisory is in effect for the mountains of Ventura and Los Angeles counties, including the Antelope Valley. Snow might fall as low as the 1,000-foot level. Rain, freezing rain, sleet, and hail are possible.

Highways could freeze overnight, and conditions are expected to be dangerous on the 5 Freeway north of Los Angeles, Highway 14 and Highway 138.

Coleman said there is a 20-percent chance of rain Wednesday night and into Thursday. Most of the rain is expected in Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange counties.

More cold and windy conditions are forecast for Thursday.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, intent on putting global warming atop the Democratic agenda, is shaking up traditional committee fiefdoms dominated by some of Congress’ oldest and most powerful members.

She’s moving to create a special committee to recommend legislation for cutting greenhouse gases, most likely to be chaired by Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a Democratic leadership aide said Wednesday.

Markey has advocated raising mileage standards for cars, trucks and SUVs and is one of the House’s biggest critics of oil companies and U.S. automakers,

Pelosi has discussed the proposal with at least two Democratic committee chairmen: fellow Californian Henry Waxman of Oversight and Government Reform, and West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall, who heads the Natural Resources panel. Pelosi intends to announce the move this week, said the leadership aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because not all of the details have been worked out.

The move, to some degree, would sidestep two of the House’s most powerful Democratic committee bosses, in shaping what’s expected to be at least a yearlong debate on global warming:

- Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell of Michigan, a defender of the auto industry and at 80 the longest serving member of the House.

- New York Rep. Charles Rangel, who as the 76-year-old chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, would have to clear any tax on carbon-based fuels like coal, oil or natural gas, which have been blamed for warming the atmosphere. A chief advocate of such a tax is former Democratic Vice President Al Gore.

Rahall said he had spoken with Pelosi about the idea of a new select committee. Rahall’s panel oversees energy development on public lands, including coal, oil and natural gas as well as cleaner, non-carbon sources such as geothermal and windmills.

“I’ve been assured that no legislative jurisdiction would be taken away from any committee,” Rahall said. “No legislative responsibility would be shifted from any committee.”

As chair of Energy and Commerce, Dingell oversees the Clean Air Act – and would have the most to lose by letting another panel take the lead. The panel’s staff chief, Dennis Fitzgibbons, a former auto company lobbyist, said Dingell was philosophically opposed to Pelosi’s plan.

“He has always been cool to the idea, because it undermines the fundamental idea for establishing committees in the first place, which is to acquire expertise in a certain area,” Fitzgibbons said.

Dingell, asked about the new committee, said, “I have not been officially informed.”

Waxman, like Markey a one-time protege of Dingell, said that Pelosi discussed the idea of a special committee with him several days ago. He, too, is a skeptic.

“I believe the existing committees can deal effectively with global warming,” he said Wednesday. “But I can also understand why the speaker believes it’s important to highlight this issue.”

A new committee would give Pelosi a vehicle to push a regulatory scheme for reducing greenhouse gases and pit her against President Bush, who plans to outline his global warming approach in his State of the Union next week. Bush has repeatedly opposed any mandatory reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, instead advocating voluntary approaches and research on new technologies. Pelosi has supported mandatory reductions with specific target dates for achieving them.

“It’s an issue that the speaker thinks is critical to address,” said Pelosi spokeswoman Jennifer Crider.

Democratic officials said the committee would be responsible for advising the best legislative approaches while the actual bill-writing duties would likely still be done by Dingell’s and Rangel’s committees. Among the topics being negotiated are how long the committee should exist and how broad its focus should be, since global climate change affects virtually everything.

Pelosi hasn’t shied from taking on other powerful House Democrats. She endorsed the losing effort by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., to become majority leader over Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md. She also has approved of six-year term limits for committee chairmen over objections from Dingell and other senior Democrats.

She also has a history with Dingell, who backed Hoyer over Pelosi in a 2001 race for the party whip’s post. Pelosi backed a Democratic primary challenger to Dingell’s re-election the following year.

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The Weather Channel’s most prominent climatologist is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming. This latest call to silence skeptics follows a year (2006) in which skeptics were compared to “Holocaust Deniers” and Nuremberg-style war crimes trials were advocated by several climate alarmists.

The Weather Channel’s (TWC) Heidi Cullen, who hosts the weekly global warming program “The Climate Code,” is advocating that the American Meteorological Society (AMS) revoke their “Seal of Approval” for any television weatherman who expresses skepticism that human activity is creating a climate catastrophe.
 
“If a meteorologist can’t speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn’t give them a Seal of Approval. Clearly, the AMS doesn’t agree that global warming can be blamed on cyclical weather patterns,” Cullen wrote in her December 21 weblog on the Weather Channel Website. [Note: It is also worth taking a look at the comments section at the bottom of Cullen’s blog, very entertaining.] See: http://climate.weather.com/blog/9_11396.html This latest call to silence skeptics of manmade global warming has been the subject of discussion at the annual American Meteorological Society’s Annual conference in San Antonio Texas this week. See: http://www.ametsoc.org/meet/annual
“It’s like allowing a meteorologist to go on-air and say that hurricanes rotate clockwise and tsunamis are caused by the weather. It’s not a political statement…it’s just an incorrect statement,” Cullen added. [Note to Cullen: Hurricanes (Cyclones) in the Southern Hemisphere do rotate clockwise. Also, Cullen and the media have ignored the growing climate skepticism by prominent scientists see: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=E58DFF04-5A65-42A4-9F82-87381DE894CD ]

Cullen’s call for decertification of TV weatherman who do not agree with her global warming assessment follows a year (2006) in which the media, Hollywood and environmentalists tried their hardest to demonize scientific skeptics of manmade global warming. Scott Pelley, CBS News 60 Minutes correspondent, compared skeptics of global warming to “Holocaust deniers” and former Vice President turned foreign lobbyist Al Gore has repeatedly referred to skeptics as “global warming deniers.” See: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Facts&ContentRecord_id=A4017645-DE27-43D7-8C37-8FF923FD73F8 & http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=E58DFF04-5A65-42A4-9F82-87381DE894CD

Cullen Featured Advocate of Nuremberg-Style Trials for Climate Skeptics

In addition, Cullen’s December 17, 2006 episode of “The Climate Code” TV show, featured a columnist who openly called for Nuremberg-style Trials for climate skeptics. Cullen featured Grist Magazine’s Dave Roberts as an eco-expert opining on energy issues, with no mention of his public call to institute what amounts to the death penalty for scientists who express skepticism about global warming. See: http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264568

Cullen’s call for suppressing scientific dissent comes at a time when many skeptical scientists affiliated with Universities have essentially been silenced over fears of loss of tenure and the withdrawal of research grant money. The United Nations Inner Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) process has also steadily pushed scientists away who hold inconvenient skeptical views and reject the alarmist conclusions presented in the IPCC’s summary for policymakers. See: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=21CC88EC-CCA6-4A61-8C2E-78FA8DE4850D
 
Cullen also participated in the New York premiere of the fictional Hollywood global warming disaster film The Day After Tomorrow in 2004 and has routinely promoted celebrity environmental views. See: http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=%5CSpecialReports%5Carchive%5C200504%5CSPE20050414a.html & http://press.weather.com/index.php/press_releases/109.html The Weather Channel, which has billed itself as itself as the “pre-eminent provider of weather information,” also served as a consultant to The Day After Tomorrow and allowed the use of its name and logo in the movie.
Broadcast meteorologists (TV weatherman) skeptical of climate alarmism have — up until now — been unburdened to speak out on climate issues. Cullen’s call for decertification by the AMS can only serve to intimidate skeptics and further chill free speech in the scientific community. Stripping the “Seal of Approval” from broadcast meteorologists could affect their livelihoods, impact their salaries and prestige. TV weathermen are truly the last of the independent scientists and past surveys have shown many of them to be skeptical of manmade global warming claims. Their independence is being threatened now. For more info on the background of the AMS seal, see: http://www.ametsoc.org/amscert
 
Intimidating scientists with calls for death trials, name calling and calls for decertification appears to be the accepted tactics of the climate alarmists. The real question is: Why do climate alarmists feel the need to resort to such low brow tactics when they have a compliant media willing to repeat their every assertion without question. See: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Facts&ContentRecord_id=3EE352B0-5D2E-4CC0-BD6B-304E3F6E0E2D
 
The alarmists also enjoy a huge financial advantage over the skeptics with numerous foundations funding climate research, University research money and the United Nations endless promotion of the cause.
Just how much money do the climate alarmists have at their disposal? There was a $3 billion donation to the global warming cause from Virgin Air’s Richard Branson alone. The well-heeled environmental lobbying groups have massive operating budgets compared to groups that express global warming skepticism. The Sierra Club Foundation 2004 budget was $91 million and the Natural Resources Defense Council had a $57 million budget for the same year. Compare that to the often media derided Competitive Enterprise Institute’s small $3.6 million annual budget.
 
In addition, if a climate skeptic receives any money from industry, the media immediately labels them and attempts to discredit their work. The same media completely ignore the money flow from the environmental lobby to climate alarmists like James Hansen and Michael Oppenheimer. (ie. Hansen received $250,000 from the Heinz Foundation and Oppenheimer is a paid partisan of Environmental Defense Fund)
The alarmists have all of these advantages, yet they still feel the need to resort to desperation tactics to silence the skeptics. Could it be that the alarmists realize that the American public is increasingly rejecting their proposition that the family SUV is destroying the earth and rejecting their shrill calls for “action” to combat their computer model predictions of a “climate emergency?” See http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Speeches&ContentRecord_id=07F23E38-D271-4300-AC40-90C84A49134A
 
That may be the real Inconvenient Truth. After all, even the UN is reportedly downgrading man’s impact on the climate by 25% and now concedes that cow “emissions” are more damaging to the planet than C02 from cars. See: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Facts&ContentRecord_id=8EA35336-7E9C-9AF9-7025-4B6CD20B983A

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The world’s elite will hold discussions on climate change and the Middle East next week at their annual rendezvous in the chic Swiss ski resort of Davos, this time with few distractions from Hollywood stars.

Some 2,400 businessmen and politicians are expected to rub shoulders when the World Economic Forum starts next Wednesday, including 900 company chief executives and board chairs and 24 heads of state — among them British Prime Minister Tony Blair and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

While last year’s meeting made media waves with appearances by stars such as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, Forum chairman Klaus Schwab said there were weighty matters ahead for the 2007 gathering of political and business leaders.

“There are some very crucial issues in the world that have to be addressed,” Schwab told a news briefing at the Forum’s headquarters on the shores of Lake Geneva, listing climate change, energy and geopolitics as top concerns.

Noting that a few rock stars are due to attend the Davos meeting — but Jolie was not — Schwab said the conference was focused more on participants from traditional power circles.

“We do not need such (show business) invitations,” he said. “This year it happens to be just Bono and Peter Gabriel, and I think it’s right.”

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California’s citrus crop has been devastated by a freeze, but Florida promises to make up some of the shortfall.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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President Bush will outline a policy on global warming next week in his State of the Union speech but has not dropped his opposition to mandatory limits on greenhouse-gas emissions, the White House said on Tuesday.
 
“It’s not accurate. It’s wrong,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said regarding media reports suggesting that Bush would agree to mandatory emissions caps in an effort to combat global warming. Such caps could require energy conservation and pollution curbs.

“If you’re talking about enforceable carbon caps, in terms of industry-wide and nation-wide, we knocked that down. That’s not something we’re talking about,” Snow said.

Britain’s “The Observer” newspaper reported on Sunday that senior Downing Street officials, who were not named, said Bush was preparing to issue a changed climate policy during his annual State of the Union speech on January 23.

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

“We’ll have a State of the Union address in a week and we’ll lay out our policy on global warming,” Snow said when asked whether British Prime Minister        Tony Blair had persuaded Bush to agree to tougher action to combat global warming.

Bush has pushed a series of initiatives aimed at encouraging the development of alternative energy sources such as hydrogen and ethanol. That theme is expected to be emphasized in his speech.

Germany is hosting the Group of Eight summit later this year and German Chancellor Angela Merkel plans to make the fight against climate change a top issue on the agenda.

Meeting with Merkel at the White House earlier this month, Bush said he was committed to “promoting new technologies that will promote energy efficiency, and at the same time do a better job of protecting the world’s environment.”

The topic of climate change also came up on Tuesday when Bush met with new U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon. Ban raised the subject, according to a U.N. source.

“This is a global problem that calls for global leadership,” the source quoted U.N. secretary general as telling Bush. According to the source, Bush said that those who sign on to protocols like Kyoto need to live by them.

Bush administration stances on global warming and other environmental issues appear to have evolved over the last year, starting with the president’s 2006 State of the Union address, when he called U.S. addiction to foreign oil a serious problem that required more spending on new technologies.

After years of skepticism and calls for more research into the causes of global warming, Bush acknowledged last summer that humans exacerbate the problem.

His administration also is considering designating polar bears, whose icy habitat has been melting in recent years, as an endangered species. That could pressure the government to impose tougher measures to avoid global warming.

Snow suggested the president was sticking to his emphasis on voluntary steps to curb emissions.

“The president believes in doing everything in our power to use innovation and the power of innovation to achieve people’s goals of having cleaner energy and abundant energy,” he said

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The White House on Tuesday denied it was planning a U-turn on its climate change policy by embracing a system of formal caps on greenhouse emissions, despite rising pressure from European governments to change its stance.

Although energy security will be a key theme in President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address next week, the White House issued an unusually public rebuttal of rumours about its climate change policy. Tony Snow, White House spokesman, said: “I want to walk you back from the whole carbon cap story…The carbon cap stuff is not accurate. It’s wrong.”

International pressure for Mr Bush to consider reducing US emissions via a form of “cap and trade” system like that in force in the European Union has intensified. The issue has been raised in the last two weeks by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and José Manuel Barroso, European Commission president. Tony Blair, the British premier, has also been persistent in lobbying the president.

The Bush administration has consistently stressed technological solutions, rather than formal treaties such as the Kyoto accord. Mr Snow said: “What the president has talked about all along is the importance of innovation,” adding there was a need to focus on change “consistent with economic growth”.

After meeting Ms Merkel, Mr Bush said he would focus on “technological developments that will enable us to be good stewards of the environment, and enable us to become less dependent on oil and hydrocarbons from parts of the world that may not like us”.

The president is also under pressure at home. Last Friday six US senators – including two presidential hopefuls for 2008, the Republican John McCain and the Democrat Barack Obama – presented a cap and trade proposal to force industries, such as electricity utilities, to cut by 2050 greenhouse gas emissions to one third of the levels of 2000.

White House officials remain privately sceptical about a British report produced in October by Sir Nicholas Stern on the economics of climate change, suggesting it would be wrong to make big decisions based on what some officials dismiss as “popular science”. Mr Stern is due to testify next month before a Senate committee that will address emissions legislation.

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

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

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

“If you live here long enough, you just know the power’s going to go out twice a year, at least. You don’t worry about it,” said Scott Towne, owner of Rondac Pet Services near Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where portable generators provided light and heat for about two-dozen dogs. “You make all the plans in advance that you can.”
 
Scores of schools canceled classes or opened late Tuesday in New Hampshire and upstate New York in the Northeast and Oklahoma and Texas on the southern Plains.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Customers in some rural parts of Oklahoma might have to wait until next week for service, said Stan Whiteford of Public Service Co. of Oklahoma. “There are a lot of places where virtually everything is destroyed. In some cases, entire electric services will have to be rebuilt,” he said.
 
More than 200,000 customers in Michigan also lost power and about 86,000 of them were still blacked out Tuesday.

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

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

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

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

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An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.7 jolted Tokyo and its vicinity in eastern Japan early Tuesday, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage from the 3:18 a.m. quake.

The quake measured 3 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale of 3 in Tokyo, Mito and Hitachiomiya in Ibaraki Prefecture, Utsunomiya in Tochigi Prefecture, Ichihara and Kimitsu in Chiba prefecture and Yokohama in Kanagawa Prefecture.

The center of the quake was in the eastern region of Shizuoka Prefecture in central Japan and about 170 kilometers underground, according to the agency.

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Freezing rain, snow, sleet, flash floods and at least one tornado walloped the United States this weekend, killing at least 13 people in accidents on slick roads as a massive storm front blanketed much of the country.
The storm was expected to continue through at least Tuesday.

The ice, wind and snow downed trees, traffic signals and power lines, blocked roads and forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights. Churches cancelled Sunday services and businesses closed early or did not open at all.

Ten people died in Oklahoma where slippery highways caused more than 200 accidents, the Oklahoman newspaper reported.

A state of emergency was declared and the National Guard was called out in the midwestern state of Missouri declared after an ice storm knocked power out to more than 200,000 homes on a bitterly cold weekend.

Emergency shelters and hotels were filled by people trying to warm up and a nursing home had to be evacuated because of the freezing temperatures, local media reported.

In Texas, the governor also call out the National Guard after more than six inches of rain cause flash flooding and dramatic high-water rescues.

One woman was swept away by floodwaters in an Austin creek and a man who jumped in to save her was rescued when he was spotted clinging to foliage in water up to his neck, the Austin-American Statesman reported.

Crowds filled grocery stores to stock up on essentials after the rain was forecast to turn into an ice storm, the Statesman reported.

Record-breaking cold weather even hit California, which usually has mild temperatures throughout the year, with citrus farmers in the Central Valley and the southern part of the state using wind-machines to protect their fruit, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“This is a very, very big cold front,” National Weather Service spokesman Greg Romano told AFP.

“We’re aware of at least six fatalities and numerous injuries due to weather-related vehicle accidents as of Saturday afternoon. There’s been tree damage, downed power lines and significant power outages.”

Parts of Colorado got up to 18 inches of snow while up to three inches of sleet were reported in Illinois, Kansas and Missouri, Romano said. Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri got an inch or more of freezing rain.

The storm is gathering moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and cold air from the Arctic, Romano said. It is expected to hit the east coast on Tuesday.

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