Latest Sierra Nevada Stories
WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Ronald J. Tenpas, Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division, will participate in the Truckee River Operating Agreement signing ceremony, a historic reservoir operations agreement between the United States, the states of California and Nevada, the Truckee Meadows Water Authority, and the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe of Indians. The ceremony will take place on SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2008, at 12:00 P.M. PDT. WHO:...
Warming temperatures will cause California's giant sequoia trees to die off more quickly unless forest managers plan with an eye toward climate change and the impact of a longer, harsher wildfire season, federal researchers warned.Recent research from the U.S. Geological Survey said hot and dry weather over the last two decades already has contributed to the deaths of an unusual number of old-growth pine and fir trees growing in Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks.Nathan Stephenson, a...
The National Weather Service posted a red-flag warning Tuesday in the mountains of Northern California for the unofficial start of wildfire season. Fire crews spent Labor Day getting a handle on two fires that threatened scores of homes near the town of Lincoln and in Yuba and Calaveras Counties. Firefighters had the upper hand early Tuesday, although a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection told the Sacramento (Calif.) Bee that Labor Day "kicked off what...
By Caroline An PASADENA - With one week to go before the start of school, parents and students attended John Muir High School's Freshman Orientation on Thursday to get a glimpse of the major changes implemented at the school. For Cicely Buggs, a Muir alumna, this was an opportunity to share her memories from high school with her daughter, Jeh Kirby, an incoming ninth-grader. "I had a great time in high school. This is my daughter's home high school," said Buggs, who graduated in 1991. "It...
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) -- A fire burning outside Yosemite National Park has destroyed 28 homes, seven more than previously thought, fire officials reported Tuesday as weather forecasts produced new wildfire worries. Officials said crews were able to go in and more accurately survey the damage from the blaze, which was 95 percent contained. No additional structures were at risk, they said. The fire, which has consumed about 53 square miles and cost nearly $37 million to fight,...
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. _ Scientists predict that climate change will mean more rainfall and less snow in Yosemite in the next 50 years. If that happens, they say, one of the nation's premier outdoor destinations could experience problems _ including severe floods in winter and spring, plus dry wells in the summer. Farmers in the San Joaquin Valley also could be hurt because reservoirs might not be able to handle large winter runoffs, and water needed for irrigation or groundwater...
FRESNO, Calif. (AP) -- Hundreds of residents streamed back into their mountain homes Wednesday as firefighters announced they had made critical gains against a wildfire charging across the hillsides outside Yosemite National Park. An evacuation order remained in effect for about 100 homes near the fire northwest of Midpines, a small town about a dozen miles from the protected wilderness. By Wednesday evening, the 50-square- mile blaze was 40 percent contained. (c) 2008 Deseret News (Salt...
By Garance Burke Associated Press YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. -- Visitors trying to photograph Yosemite National Park's famed peaks on Tuesday instead took shots of flying ash blowing in from an out-of-control wildfire burning just 12 miles outside the park. The fire -- which has destroyed 25 homes and is only 15 percent contained -- has shrouded one of California's most popular destinations in smoke and risks marring business at the height of Yosemite's busiest season. "It's the views...
MARIPOSA, Calif. _ Her little brown cabin in the woods was gone, reduced to ash and rubble by a wave of flames, but Mary Briggs had no time to be consoled. Her mind was elsewhere. Down the road, in another part of the woods near Mariposa, Briggs was needed at the care where she worked. Sixteen elderly men and women, some more than a century old, were waiting to be rescued to safer ground. The Telegraph fire was approaching, and there was no time that Saturday afternoon for Briggs to dwell...
A fire charring forest land west of Yosemite National Forest and threatening communities in Mariposa County, Calif., continues to spread fast. The Telegraph fire has scorched 29,600 acres and remains 10 percent contained, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The fire is burning with "a rapid rate of spread in multiple directions" in steep, rocky terrain that is challenging firefighters, Cal Fire states. Erratic fire behavior also is attributed to...
Latest Sierra Nevada Reference Libraries
Sequoia National Park is located in the United States in the southern area of the Sierra Nevada. The park contains 404,063 acres of protected land that was once inhabited by the Western Mono Native American tribe. The best evidence of Native American inhabitants are the pictographs found on Potwisha and Hospital Rock and bedrock mortars, tools that were sued to crush acorns. When European explorers and settlers entered the area, smallpox had already decimated the Native American...
Yosemite National Park is located in eastern California in the United States in the central area of Sierra Nevada, extending to the western slopes of the range. The park holds 761,268 acres of protected land. The area became very popular after Thomas Ayres, the artist who was responsible for much of the publicity of the area, and an entrepreneur named James Mason Hutchings visited in 1855. Early tourists that visited Yosemite before it was a national park could enjoy passing over the Wawona...
Kings Canyon National Park is located in southern Sierra, Nevada. The park encompasses an area that was once General Grant National Park, which was established in 1890, in order to preserve a grove of giant sequoia trees. The area was known to European settlers in the mid-nineteenth century, but was not well-known until 1873, after John Muir visited and found the environment to be similar to Yosemite valley. Harold Ickes, a United States Secretary of Interior, supported the idea of...
Fallon Nevada is located on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountain chain which has a huge impact in the type of weather in the region and is more of an arid type pattern. Temperatures for Fallon NV: December and January mark the coldest months in the area with average temps around 20-40F. February through March temps warm into the average of 30-50 increasing to 60 by March. April is a mild month with temps in the 40-60 range on average. May and June the average temps warm to 50-70...
The Northern Alligator Lizard, Elgaria coerulea, is a medium-sized lizard that lives in the North American west cost. It occurs along the Pacific Coast and in the Rocky Mountains from southern British Columbia through Washington, northern Idaho and western Montana south through Oregon until the coastal range and the Sierra Nevada in central California. These lizards can attain a length of about 10 inches long with nearly 4 inches of it being the snout. They have a distinct skin fold on...
