nature

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - Winter weather has arrived in Lake Tahoe! The second of three storm fronts is finishing up Thursday night with the storm warning expiring at 4:00 a.m. Friday. But Mother Nature isn't done yet.

Another Winter Storm Warning goes up for the Lake Tahoe Basin at 1:00 p.m. Friday and will be in effect until 3:00 p.m. Saturday. A break in the weather precipitation will occur Friday morning which will make this the best window of opportunity to travel in the Sierra.

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - It takes a tragedy to bring people together, no matter their politics, their income or twitter handle.

Many in the South Lake Tahoe and Meyers community remember where they were at 2:15 p.m. on Sunday, June 24, 2007 and what happened in the days that followed. The Angora Fire quickly tore through neighborhoods, destroying 251 homes and burning 3,100 acres. While it seems small in comparison with the monster fires of 2017 and 2018, it took everything from so many local families.

The community came together to help their friends and neighbors.

With a narrow margin in the ballot measure concerning the future of vacation rentals in South Lake Tahoe, and other races still close, everyone is awaiting the release of more results from Tuesday's election.

You'll still have to wait a bit longer.

On Friday, November 9, El Dorado County Elections will post the next round of results, but it won't be the last as there are over 24,000 ballots yet to count.

13,372 mail-in ballots were dropped off at the polls
2,614 provisional ballots

This year is a big milestone in the history of the Freaker's Ball....40 years of fun and entertainment at a variety of South Shore locations since its inception. On Saturday, October 26, 2018 the Freaker's Ball will be held at MontBleu Resort & Spa starting at 9:00 p.m. The crowds continue to grow and the costumes continue to entertain.

The following is a reprint of our story from 2014:

The Beginning in 1978

The South Lake Tahoe City Council today voted unanimously to hire Frank Rush as their new city manager starting December 5, 2018.

The 49-year-old Rush gave his notice to the Emerald Isle, NC town commissioners, resigning the position he'd held for 17 years in the small oceanside resort community.

An unsettled weather pattern and further cooling looks likely for the upcoming week in Lake Tahoe with the best chances for rain from Tuesday through Thursday.

The National Weather Service in Reno (NWS RENO), dry conditions will prevail today through most of Monday, with areas of mid-high level cloud cover especially on Monday ahead of the next low pressure system approaching the California coast. There is a complex weather scenario setting up for Tuesday-Wednesday

The annual Fall Festival will be held on Saturday, September 29, at the American Legion Post, from 10:00 Am to 4:00 PM. Admission to the show is free.

Join UC Davis TERC in Incline Village for a special summer feature lecture on Thursday, August 30, with Jared Blumenfeld, former EPA Regional Administrator.

For Jared, walking from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail opened up new ways of thinking about our relationship with nature. Jared's talk will combine his amazing hiking photographs, stories of adventure and insights about the current state of environmental politics.

The Tahoe Institute for Natural Science and the Tahoe Rim Trail Association invite you to spend a Friday morning combining art and nature on a guided hike to Picnic Rock. Along the trail, participants will dive into wildflower exploration, while stopping frequently to investigate the colorful jewels that grow from Tahoe's soils. We will have tea on top of picnic rock as TINS naturalist, Sarah Hockensmith will lead a brief sketching workshop to invite an artistic nature experience while discovering flower patterns and details you may not otherwise notice.

Location

The Tahoe Fund has launched a new website, Take Care Tahoe (www.takecaretahoe.org), to connect visitors and locals with all the events and volunteer opportunities that Tahoe has to offer in keeping Lake Tahoe and the surrounding lands pristine for generations to come.

The U.S. Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit (LTBMU) will host the eighth Wild Tahoe Weekend 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., on Saturday and Sunday, June 23-24, 2018 at the Taylor Creek Visitor Center, located three miles north of South Lake Tahoe on Highway 89. The weekend event consists of the Native Species Festival on Saturday and the Lake Tahoe Bird Festival on Sunday.

Volunteers with Lake Tahoe Yoga came together to clean up the bike path that runs from Elks Point Road to Pine Ridge. The studio, serving the South Lake Tahoe area community for ten years, demonstrated their dedication to keeping Tahoe blue with a focus on Ahimsa (non-harming) and rallying residents to help on the path.

The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) recognized four people for their commitment to protecting and enhancing Lake Tahoe’s environment with Lake Spirit Awards on Wednesday.

People whose passions include building new paths and trails led the way in nominations this year, with improving mountain biking routes, creating new multi-use paths, and advancing pedestrian and bicycle safety among the interests of the award winners.

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - The coming months at the historic Valhalla Grand Hall, Grand Lawn and Boathouse Theater will be busy with a full slate of activities planned for the 2018 Valhalla Art, Music and Theatre Festival.

The festival is Valhalla Tahoe’s flagship event, a unique celebration of music, theatre and the visual arts. The festival is set against the magnificent backdrop of Lake Tahoe and the Tallac Historic Site. Looking forward to its 34th year, it is produced by Valhalla Tahoe.

The Festival begins in mid-June with events and activities that continue throughout August.

The Tahoe Chamber’s Leadership Lake Tahoe Class of 2018 invites the Tahoe community to join them for their event "Putting the Lens on STEAM Learning" to raise much needed funds to elevate STEAM Learning in Lake Tahoe Unified School District (LTUSD) elementary schools.

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - Just as many were enjoying sunny skies and temps in the 50s and 60s, Mother Nature is sending a bit of change to the area this week.

Coming in from the west is a significant storm with gusty winds and heavy rains Friday through Sunday. The storm is a warm and wet one so there will be the potential for flooding along creeks, streams and rivers.

Monday will be back in the mid-50s.

From the National Weather Service in Reno:

A South Tahoe Middle School student was arrested after allegedly making threats to bring a gun to the school's dance Friday night and harm students.

Officers from the South Lake Tahoe Police Department (SLTPD) made contact with the young man at his home. The residence was searched and at this time it is believed that he did not have access to any firearms.

Due to the nature of the threats, and the number of other students who were placed in fear by them, the male juvenile was arrested and booked into the El Dorado County Juvenile Treatment Center on Criminal Threats, a felony.

Mountaintop cameras from the University of Nevada, Reno spotted or tracked 240 fires in Nevada and California in 2017. This helped to keep firefighters more situationally aware and able to mount appropriate responses more rapidly over tens of thousands of square miles of forests and rangelands, including rural communities.

This is a new and expanding tool for fire managers who oversee the wildland and wildland/urban interface.

With the March 6 South Lake Tahoe City Council meeting set to address the annual music festival SnowGlobe, the Parks & Recreation Commission held a special meeting to decide what their stance would be on the festival being held on the Community Playfields.

The new playfields have never had a soccer or football game played on them, but they are in need of a lot of repair after SnowGlobe unpacked and left after their Dec. 29-31 event.

Human Trafficking is the trade of humans for the purpose of forced labor, sexual slavery, or commercial sexual exploitation for the trafficker or others; a modern day form of slavery. It is a multi-billion dollar criminal industry that denies freedom to 20.9 million people around the world

And its happening outside our door.

Carson City’s Deputy Director of Emergency Management, Stacey Belt, has a couple of very special Spinoni Italiano dogs. One of them, as Stacey puts it — a bearded Italian girl with bushy eyebrows named Adele, will be competing in the famous Westminster dog show in February.

We spoke with Stacey to learn more about these fascinating dogs as well as the world of competitive dog shows and the time both pooches got lost in the woods for an entire week in 2016.

How did you get into the Spinoni Italiano breed of dogs?

On adult male and one juvenile were hospitalized after an explosion at a Camino, California home on January 1, 2018.

Initially, El Dorado County Fire responded to the 3:25 p.m. call of an explosion in a home in the 5100 block of Pony Express Trail. They then asked for El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office to respond to the scene for a possible butane extraction lab explosion.

Joshua Jamison, 39, was at the home when the explosion occurred and suffered burns to his face. He was transported to a local hospital where he was treated and released.

The have been eight tremblers in the Mammoth Lakes / Mono Lake area in the last 12 hours, the smallest measured 1.2 on the Richter Scale, the largest at 3.7, according to the Nevada Seismological Laboratory on the UNR campus.

This area is a very active earthquake area, with swarms not unusual as it is one of the most seismically active volcanic regions in California. In 2014, there were more than 600 registered earthquakes in Mammoth in 36 hours.

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - To show nature is the best medicine, Barton Health and the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit (LTBMU) have partnered together to give the community Wellness Outings.

Patients will have access to the forest through a guided outing with a USFS ranger and physician or nurse.

In addition to Wellness Outings, the partnership will provide wellness and injury prevention training for USFS rangers and firefighters, as well as accessibility of public lands to promote outdoor recreation.