Thousands of fish die as Midwest streams heat up

LINCOLN, Neb. – Thousands of fish are dying in the Midwest as the hot, dry summer dries up rivers and causes water temperatures to climb in some spots to nearly 100 degrees.

By Nati Harnik, AP

Dead fish float in a drying pond near Rock Port, Mo., in July. Multitudes of fish are dying in the Midwest as the sizzling summer dries up rivers and raises water temperatures in some spots to nearly 100 degrees.

By Nati Harnik, AP

Dead fish float in a drying pond near Rock Port, Mo., in July. Multitudes of fish are dying in the Midwest as the sizzling summer dries up rivers and raises water temperatures in some spots to nearly 100 degrees.

About 40,000 shovelnose sturgeon were killed in Iowa last week as water temperatures reached 97 degrees. Nebraska fishery officials said they've seen thousands of dead sturgeon, catfish, carp, and other species in the Lower Platte River, including the endangered pallid sturgeon.

And biologists in Illinois said the hot weather has killed tens of thousands of large- and smallmouth bass and channel catfish and is threatening the population of the greater redhorse fish, a state-endangered species.

So many fish died in one Illinois lake that the carcasses clogged an intake screen near a power plant, lowering water levels to the point that the station had to shut down one of its generators.

"It's something I've never seen in my career, and I've been here for more than 17 years," said Mark Flammang, a fisheries biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. "I think what we're mainly dealing with here are the extremely low flows and this unparalleled heat."

The fish are victims of one of the driest and warmest summers in history. The federal U.S. Drought Monitor shows nearly two-thirds of the lower 48 states are experiencing some form of drought, and the Department of Agriculture has declared more than half of the nation's counties — nearly 1,600 in 32 states — as natural disaster areas.

More than 3,000 heat records were broken over the last month.

Iowa DNR officials said the sturgeon found dead in the Des Moines River were worth nearly $10 million, a high value based in part on their highly sought eggs, which are used for caviar. The fish are valued at more than $110 a pound.

Gavin Gibbons, a spokesman for the National Fisheries Institute, said the sturgeon kills don't appear to have reduced the supply enough to hurt regional caviar suppliers.

Flammang said weekend rain improved some of Iowa's rivers and lakes, but temperatures were rising again and straining a sturgeon population that develops health problems when water temperatures climb into the 80s.

"Those fish have been in these rivers for thousands of thousands of years, and they're accustomed to all sorts of weather conditions," he said. "But sometimes, you have conditions occur that are outside their realm of tolerance."

In Illinois, heat and lack of rain has dried up a large swath of Aux Sable Creek, the state's largest habitat for the endangered greater redhorse, a large bottom-feeding fish, said Dan Stephenson, a biologist with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

"We're talking hundreds of thousands (killed), maybe millions by now," Stephenson said. "If you're only talking about game fish, it's probably in the thousands. But for all fish, it's probably in the millions if you look statewide."

Stephenson said fish kills happen most summers in small private ponds and streams, but the hot weather this year has made the situation much worse.

"This year has been really, really bad — disproportionately bad, compared to our other years," he said.

Stephenson said a large number of dead fish were sucked into an intake screen near Powerton Lake in central Illinois, lowering water levels and forcing a temporary shutdown at a nearby power plant.

A spokesman for Edison International, which runs the coal-fired plant, said workers shut down one of its two generators for several hours two weeks ago because of extreme heat and low water levels at the lake, which is used for cooling.

In Nebraska, a stretch of the Platte River from Kearney in the central part of the state to Columbus in the east has gone dry and killed a "significant number" of sturgeon, catfish and minnows, said fisheries program manager Daryl Bauer. Bauer said the warm, shallow water has also killed an unknown number of endangered pallid sturgeon.

"It's a lot of miles of river, and a lot of fish," Bauer said. "Most of those fish are barely identifiable. In this heat, they decay really fast."

Bauer said a single dry year usually isn't enough to hurt the fish population. But he worries dry conditions in Nebraska could continue, repeating a stretch in the mid-2000s that weakened fish populations.

Kansas also has seen declining water levels that pulled younger, smaller game fish away from the vegetation-rich shore lines and forced them to cluster, making them easier targets for predators, said fisheries chief Doug Nygren of the Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism.

Nygren said he expects a drop in adult walleye populations in the state's shallower, wind-swept lakes in southern Kansas. But he said other species, such as large-mouth bass, can tolerate the heat and may multiply faster without competition from walleye.

"These last two years are the hottest we've ever seen," Nygren said. "That really can play a role in changing populations, shifting it in favor of some species over others. The walleye won't benefit from these high-water temperatures, but other species that are more tolerant may take advantage of their declining population."

Geno Adams, a fisheries program administrator in South Dakota, said there have been reports of isolated fish kills in its manmade lakes on the Missouri River and others in the eastern part of the state. But it's unclear how much of a role the heat played in the deaths.

One large batch of carp at Lewis and Clark Lake in the state's southeast corner had lesions, a sign they were suffering from a bacterial infection. Adams said the fish are more prone to sickness with low water levels and extreme heat. But he added that other fish habitat have seen a record number this year thanks to the 2011 floods.

"When we're in a drought, there's a struggle for water and it's going in all different directions," Adams said. "Keeping it in the reservoir for recreational fisheries is not at the top of the priority list."

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NW storm cuts power, thousands try to stay warm (AP)

By MANUEL VALDES and JONATHAN J. COOPER, Associated Press Manuel Valdes And Jonathan J. Cooper, Associated Press – Sat Jan 21, 7:22 am ET

SEATTLE – Tens of thousands of Pacific Northwest residents faced the prospect of a chilly weekend after a powerful storm brought snow and ice and left a tangle of fallen trees and damaged power lines. Several Oregon counties saw their worst flooding in more than a decade.

The National Weather Service forecast more rain and winds gusting as high as 40 mph Saturday in Western Washington, a combination that could bring down even more snow-laden and ice-damaged trees.

Nearly 230,000 customers were without power late Friday night in Western Washington, about 220,000 of them Puget Sound Energy customers.

The utility has brought in repair crews from across the West and planned to field more than 800 linemen on Saturday, in addition to tree-trimming crews, spokesman Roger Thompson said.

"The wind is a wild card that could set us back," he said, adding PSE hoped to have the majority of the outages restored by Sunday, although some customers will probably be without power into early next week.

The Weather Service predicted weekend lows in the mid-30s.

Several warming shelters have been opened in the area to aid people whose homes are without heat.

Despite warnings from emergency officials, the first cases of possible carbon monoxide poisoning surfaced Friday night. Two families in the Seattle suburb of Kent were taken to hospitals after suffering separate cases of possible poisoning. Both had been using charcoal barbecues indoors for heat.

The storm was already blamed for three deaths. A mother and her 1-year-old son died after torrential rain on Wednesday swept away a car from an Albany, Ore., grocery store parking lot. An elderly man was fatally injured Thursday by a falling tree as he was backing an all-terrain vehicle out of a backyard shed near Seattle.

On Washington's Mount Rainier, a blizzard kept rescuers from searching Friday for two campers and two climbers missing since early this week. Just east of that region, about 200 skiers and workers were able to leave the Crystal Mountain ski resort after transportation officials reopened the area's main highway, closed two days earlier by fallen trees.

Near Tacoma, three people escaped unharmed Friday when a heavy snow and ice load on the roof of an Allied Ice plant caused the building to collapse. West Pierce Fire and Rescue Battalion Chief Hallie McCurdy said they heard loud noises and got out just in time.

As floodwaters receded, residents of Oregon's Willamette Valley began taking stock of damage in soaked cities.

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber paid a visit Friday to the hard-hit town of Turner, where 100 homes were damaged or still underwater.

Friday's mainly dry streets belied a morning of terror barely 24 hours earlier, when emergency crews conducted 55 boat rescues as water filled streets, homes and businesses.

"You just watch the water rise hour by hour, and there's nothing you can do about it," Mayor Paul Thomas said. "It's a long, slower sort of torture."

Kitzhaber said the state would work with local and federal officials to try and get disaster funding to Turner and other communities hard-hit by flooding.

The governor praised residents' strong sense of community as neighbors helped each other.

Nancy Ko saw that spirit first-hand. From the safety of higher ground, she watched a live feed from a security camera as water rose over the curb and lapped against the front door of the convenience store and cafe she owns just feet from Mill Creek.

Out of the blue, five strangers showed up and plopped sandbags in front of the door, preventing damage that she believes would have otherwise been far more severe.

"Just a godsend," said Ko, a Korean immigrant who has owned the store for six years. "Good person, amazing persons."

Elsewhere in the Willamette Valley, a 35-year-old woman who drove a Ford Mustang into 4 feet of floodwater was plucked from the roof Friday by deputies who arrived by boat to save her. It was one of a number of dramatic rescues in western Oregon, left sodden by as much as 10 inches of rain in a day and a half that has brought region's worst flooding in 15 years.

Interstate 5, the main road connecting Seattle and Portland, was briefly closed near Centralia so crews could remove fallen power lines.

Much of Washington's capital, Olympia, was without power.

Gov. Chris Gregoire's office, legislative buildings and other state agencies in Olympia lost electricity for several hours before power was restored. The governor thanked repair crews late Friday by hand-delivering peanut butter cookies.

The storm was "a constant reminder of who's in charge. Mother Nature is in charge, she gives us a wake-up call every once in a while, this is one of those," Gregoire said.

It was still snowing in the Cascades, with up to 2 feet possible in the mountains over the weekend.

At Sea-Tac Airport in Seattle, airlines were trying to accommodate passengers whose flights were canceled Thursday. The airport's largest carrier, Alaska Airlines, canceled 50 of its 120 daily departures Friday. On Thursday, Alaska and sister airline Horizon canceled 310 flights to and from Seattle, affecting 29,000 passengers.

In Seattle, Carly Nelson was negotiating an icy sidewalk on her way to Starbucks. Nelson has been frequenting her neighborhood coffee shop to avoid cabin fever.

"I'm pretty tired of it. It gets old pretty fast. All my friends are stranded in little pockets and you can't get together to go to yoga," she said. "I'm just looking forward to being able to go wherever I want to go."

___

Cooper reported from Oregon. Associated Press writers Doug Esser, Ted Warren, Rachel La Corte, Nigel Duara and Nicholas K. Geranios contributed to this report.

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Thousands remain without power week after October snowstorm (Reuters)

BOSTON (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of homes remained in the dark on Sunday a week after a historic snowstorm paralyzed the Northeast and cut power to more than three million customers.

In Connecticut, more than 112,000 Connecticut Light & Power customers were still in the dark.

Governor Dannel Malloy said the power company was not going to meet its goal of 99 percent restoration in each city and town by midnight on Sunday.

Malloy has called for an investigation into the massive and lengthy power outages that peaked at more than 830,000 customers statewide without heat and electricity during the monster October snowstorm.

"As soon as everyone's lights are back on, we need to have a very timely, thorough review of the power companies' performances, to identify what went wrong, why it went wrong, and most importantly identify solutions for the short-term before the next winter storm impacts Connecticut," said Malloy in a statement.

The deadly snowstorm that barreled through the Northeast last weekend and dumped more than two feet of snow in parts of the region has been blamed for well over a dozen deaths.

In Masssachusetts, where about 11,000 customers remained in the dark, Attorney General Martha Coakley has also called for a formal investigation of the power companies' restoration efforts.

A couple thousand customers were still without power in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Power restoration crews were aided by dry and sunny weather over the weekend expected to continue into the upcoming week.

Temperatures across the Northeast were forecast to climb into the 60s by Tuesday, according to AccuWeather.com senior meteorologist Tom Kines.

Some areas may reach 70 degrees on Tuesday or Wednesday, possibly challenging record highs, he said.

(Editing by Jerry Norton)

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Midwest storms leave thousands without power (Reuters)

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses remained without power in the Midwest on Wednesday, a day after severe weather tore through the region and parts of the South.

A slow-moving storm system drenched the central part of the nation, bringing large hail and winds of up to 100 miles per hour from Chicago to Dallas, grounding planes, stranding passengers and delaying commutes in Chicago.

About 220,000 customers in Chicago and its suburbs were without power Wednesday afternoon, down from 430,000. Many could remain so for at least another day.

"We anticipate 90 percent will be restored by midnight tomorrow," said ComEd spokeswoman Tabrina Davis.

In Mount Prospect, a Chicago suburb, large trees snapped or were uprooted, and roofs were damaged, according to the National Weather Service. "This damage is consistent with straight line winds of 90 to 100 mph," the service said.

Commuters on Metra trains in the Chicago area experienced delays due to fallen trees and branches on tracks, as well as power outages that knocked out signals.

Airlines operating at O'Hare International Airport canceled more than 250 flights due to the storms and some flights were delayed, the Chicago Department of Aviation reported on Wednesday morning.

The severe weather hit hardest in Illinois, southeastern Wisconsin up into northern Indiana and southern Michigan, according to AccuWeather.com.

Tornado warnings were issued for parts of the Midwest ahead of Tuesday's storms.

Early storm reports included four possible tornado sightings in Minnesota and Wisconsin and several reports of funnel clouds, according to the weather service.

The agency said it was not yet clear if the sightings were multiple reports of the same potential twister.

Storm damage teams were in Blaine and Coon Rapids, Minnesota on Wednesday to assess the damage and determine if there were any tornadoes, spokesman Chris Vaccaro said.

As the storms track east, the threat for severe weather on Wednesday was expected to move into the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley, said AccuWeather.com senior meteorologist Paul Walker.

Residents in Tennessee also felt the wrath of severe weather as thunderstorms and high winds rolled across the region on Tuesday striking most intensely in Knoxville.

Thousands remained without power in that east Tennessee city on Wednesday.

Further south in Dallas more than 22,000 customers were without power after storms shattered a rain record set in 1926, the Dallas Morning News reported.

The severe weather is set to continue as high temperatures are expected to reach triple digits in Dallas and other areas of Texas and nearby states in the coming days.

Areas in Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Louisiana, Vermont and New York remain at risk from flooding, and thunderstorms, hail, and strong wind are forecasted across the country, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

(Reporting by Timothy Ghianni; Writing by Mary Wisniewski, Lauren Keiper and Molly O'Toole; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Greg McCune)

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Thousands evacuate as typhoon skirts Philippines (AP)

MANILA, Philippines – Thousands of people along the eastern Philippine coastline were moving to temporary shelters Thursday as a powerful typhoon packing strong winds and plenty of rain roared toward the country's northeast.

Typhoon Songda was not expected to make landfall but will skirt along shores with winds of up to 93 miles (150 kilometers) per hour and rainfall of 1.2 inches (30 millimeters), the government weather bureau said.

"It has a big radius, so it can affect many areas even if it does not make landfall," said forecaster Mario Palafox.

About 20 typhoons hit the Philippines every year, killing hundreds of people and destroying crops despite government efforts to minimize casualties and damage by ordering early evacuations.

In central Albay province, Gov. Joey Salceda sent military trucks to begin moving 250,000 residents from coastal and landslide-prone villages and areas in the path of debris from the Mayon volcano. He also offered 11 pounds (five kilograms) of rice as an incentive for each family that evacuates.

Government offices in the region were closed and flights canceled. More than 7,000 people were stranded in ports after the coast guard barred sea travel in areas with typhoon warnings.

In other provinces leading up to the northwest, officials have collected rubber boats and food supplies and put rescuers on standby.

"Local government officials have enough time to prepare, so we hope we have" no casualties, presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said.

President Benigno Aquino III left on a visit to Thailand on Thursday but instructed officials to send him regular updates.

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