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Heat Waves, Wildfires and Now Snow? California Endures Summer of Extremes

This photo provided by the National Weather Service shows a snow-covered section of Mt. Rainier, Wash., at 10,000 feet on Saturday, August 24, 2024. (National Weather Service via AP)
This photo provided by the National Weather Service shows a snow-covered section of Mt. Rainier, Wash., at 10,000 feet on Saturday, August 24, 2024. (National Weather Service via AP)
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Heat Waves, Wildfires and Now Snow? California Endures Summer of Extremes

This photo provided by the National Weather Service shows a snow-covered section of Mt. Rainier, Wash., at 10,000 feet on Saturday, August 24, 2024. (National Weather Service via AP)
This photo provided by the National Weather Service shows a snow-covered section of Mt. Rainier, Wash., at 10,000 feet on Saturday, August 24, 2024. (National Weather Service via AP)

An unusually cold weather system from the Gulf of Alaska interrupted summer along the West Coast on Saturday, bringing snow to mountains in California and the Pacific Northwest and prompting the closure of part of a highway that runs through a national park.
Parts of Highway 89 through Lassen Volcanic National Park in California were shut down after an estimated 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) of snow fell overnight, according to the National Weather Service.
Photos posted by the agency and local authorities showed a high-elevation blanket of white on Mount Rainier in Washington along with a dusting of snow at Minaret Vista, a lookout point southeast of Yosemite National Park in California's Sierra Nevada.
Madera County Deputy Sheriff Larry Rich said it was “definitely unexpected” to see snow at Minaret Vista in August.
“It's not every day you get to spend your birthday surrounded by a winter wonderland in the middle of summer,” The Associated Press quoted him as saying in a statement. “It made for a day I won't soon forget, and a unique reminder of why I love serving in this area. It's just one of those moments that makes working up here so special.”
In northern Nevada, rain fell in the runup to the annual Burning Man festival, prompting organizers to close the entrance gate for most of Saturday before reopening. Torrential rains upended last year’s festival, turning the celebration and its temporary city into a muddy quagmire.
It also snowed overnight on Mammoth Mountain, a ski destination in California, with the National Weather Service warning hikers and campers to prepare for slick roads.
Record rainfall moved through Redding, Red Bluff and Stockton in Northern California on Saturday, the weather service said, and rain showers south of Lake Oroville were expected to continue into the evening.
A dusting of snow fell overnight on the crest of the Sierra Nevada around Tioga Pass, the weather service said. August snow has not occurred there since 2003, forecasters said.
Tioga Pass rises to more than 9,900 feet (3,017 meters) and serves as the eastern entryway to Yosemite. But it is usually closed much of each year by winter snow that can take one or two months to clear.
While the start of ski season is at least several months away, the hint of winter was welcomed by resorts.
“It’s a cool and blustery August day here at Palisades Tahoe, as a storm that could bring our first snowfall of the season moves in this afternoon!” the resort said in a social media post Friday.
The “anomalous cool conditions” will spread over much of the western US by Sunday morning, according to the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.
Despite the expected precipitation, forecasters also warned of fire danger because of gusty winds associated with the passage of the cold front.
At the same time, a flash flood watch was issued for the burn scar of California's largest wildfire so far this year from Friday morning through Saturday morning.
The Park Fire roared across more than 671 square miles (1,748 square kilometers) after it erupted in late July near the Central Valley city of Chico and climbed up the western slope of the Sierra.
The fire became California's fourth-largest on record, but it has been substantially tamed recently. Islands of vegetation continue to burn within its existing perimeter, but evacuation orders have been canceled.
The state's wildfire season got off to an intense start amid extreme July heat. Blazes fed on dried-out vegetation that grew during back-to-back wet years. Fire activity has recently fallen into a relative lull.
Forecasts call for a rapid return of summer heat as the cold front departs.

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S.Africa Plans to ‘Bomb’ Mice That Eat Albatrosses Alive

Hordes of mice are devouring the eggs of some of the world's most important seabirds that nest on Marion Island, about 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) southeast of Cape Town. (AFP)
Hordes of mice are devouring the eggs of some of the world's most important seabirds that nest on Marion Island, about 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) southeast of Cape Town. (AFP)
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S.Africa Plans to ‘Bomb’ Mice That Eat Albatrosses Alive

Hordes of mice are devouring the eggs of some of the world's most important seabirds that nest on Marion Island, about 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) southeast of Cape Town. (AFP)
Hordes of mice are devouring the eggs of some of the world's most important seabirds that nest on Marion Island, about 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) southeast of Cape Town. (AFP)

Conservationists said Saturday that they plan to bomb a remote South African island with tons of pesticide-laced pellets to kill mice that are eating albatrosses and other seabirds alive.

Hordes of mice are devouring the eggs of some of the world's most important seabirds that nest on Marion Island, about 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) southeast of Cape Town, and have started eating live birds, leading conservationist Mark Anderson said.

This includes the iconic Wandering Albatross, with a quarter of the world's population nesting on the Indian Ocean island.

"The mice have now, for the first time last year, been found to be feeding on adult Wandering Albatrosses," Anderson told a meeting of BirdLife South Africa, the country's leading bird conservation organization.

Gruesome images presented at the meeting showed bloodied birds, some with flesh chewed off their heads.

Of the 29 species of seabirds that breed on the island, 19 are threatened with local extinction, the Mouse-Free Marion Project said.

Mouse attacks have escalated in recent years but the birds do not know how to respond because they evolved without terrestrial predators, said Anderson, a leader of the project and CEO of BirdLife South Africa.

"Mice just climb onto them and just slowly eat them until they succumb," he told AFP. It can take days for a bird to die. "We are losing hundreds of thousands of seabirds every year through the mice."

- Extreme conditions -

Billed as one of the world's most important bird conservation efforts, the Mouse-Free Marion Project has raised about a quarter of the $29 million it needs to send a squad of helicopters to drop 600 tons of rodenticide-laced pellets onto the rugged island.

It wants to strike in 2027 in winter, when the mice are most hungry and the summer-breeding birds are largely absent.

The pilots will have to fly in extreme conditions and reach every part of the island, which is about 25 kilometers long and 17 kilometers wide.

"We have to get rid of every last mouse," Anderson said. "If there was a male and female remaining, they could breed and eventually get back to where we are now."

The mice are proliferating because warmer temperatures due to climate change means they are breeding more frequently over a longer period, Anderson said. After eating through plants and invertebrates, the mice turned to the birds.

House mice were introduced to the island in the early 1800s. Five cats were brought in around 1948 to control their numbers. But the cat numbers grew to about 2,000 and they were killing about 450,000 birds a year. An eradication project removed the last cat in 1991.