More than 8,500 forced to evacuate in California after levee breaks in storms

Mar 14 2023

Crews rushed to repair a levee break on a storm-swollen river in California’s central coast as yet another atmospheric river arrived on Monday with the potential to wallop the state’s swamped farmland and agricultural communities.

The Pajaro River’s first levee rupture grew to at least 400ft (120 meters) since it failed late Friday, officials said. More than 8,500 people were forced to evacuate and about 50 people had to be rescued as the water rose that night.

Still, some stayed behind in Pajaro, an unincorporated community that is known for its strawberry crops and is now mostly flooded. The largely Latino farmworker community there is already struggling to find food with many roads and businesses closed in the storm’s aftermath.

“Some people have nowhere to go and maybe that’s why there’s still people around,” resident Jorbelit Rincon said Monday. “Pretty much they don’t know where to go and don’t have money to provide for themselves.”

A second breach opened up another 100ft (30.48 meters) of the levee closer to the Pacific coast, providing a “relief valve” for the floodwaters to recede near the mouth of the river, officials said on Monday during a news conference.

Built in the late 1940s to provide flood protection, the levee has been a known risk for decades and had several breaches in the 1990s. Emergency repairs to a section of the berm were undertaken in January. A $400m rebuild is set to begin in the next few years.

Forecasters warned of more flooding, wind damage and potential power outages from the new atmospheric river that came ashore on Monday evening in northern and central parts of the state and was expected to move south over several days. California has been pummeled this winter by 10 atmospheric rivers, which are long, narrow plumes of moisture that turn into rain and snow when they make landfall.

Along the southern California coast, evacuation orders were scheduled to take effect at 8am on Tuesday in Santa Barbara county for several areas that were burned by wildfires in recent years. Burned soil can be water-repellent, increasing the risk of flash floods and flows of debris such as downed trees, according to the National Weather Service.

Water from the newest storm will likely go over the Pajaro River’s levee – but crews were working to make sure the rupture doesn’t get any larger, said Shaunna Murray of the Monterey county water resources agency. Over the weekend, crews had to build access roads to get to the site of the breach, and bring in rocks and boulders to plug the gap.

The river separates Santa Cruz and Monterey counties, about 70 miles (110km) south of San Francisco. Several roads were closed including a stretch of coastal Highway 1, a main route between the two counties.

Monterey county officials also warned that the Salinas River could cause significant flooding of roadways and agricultural land, cutting off the Monterey peninsula from the rest of the county. The city of Monterey and other communities are located on the peninsula.

Undersheriff Keith Boyd said first responders have rescued about 170 people who were stranded within the county’s evacuation areas since Friday, including a woman and her baby who got stuck trying to drive through high waters.

The undersheriff said 20 to 40 people remained trapped Monday near the Salinas River because the roads were impassible for rescuers.

Authorities had not received reports of any deaths or missing persons related to the storm as of Monday afternoon.

Winery and agricultural experts from the region said they are concerned about the storms’ impact on crops – both ones in the ground that are currently submerged, and ones that should be planted for the upcoming growing season.

Karla Loreto, who works at a Pajaro gas station, said she is worried about the toll the flooding will take on the area’s farmworkers.

“The fields are flooded right now,” she said on Monday. “Probably no jobs there right now. For this year, probably no strawberries, no blackberries, no blueberries.”

Governor Gavin Newsom on Sunday declared a state of emergency in six more counties after earlier making declarations for 34 counties.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/14/california-atmospheric-river-storms-levee-breaks

Department of the Air Force 2024 budget proposal invests in modernization, transformation

Mar 13 2023

ARLINGTON, Va. (AFNS) – The Department of the Air Force unveiled a $259.3 billion budget request March 13 designed to continue modernizing the Air Force and Space Force to meet evolving threats while also nourishing current needs that include training, readiness, and fostering new technology.

Broken apart, the $259.3 billion proposal that Congress will now consider for the fiscal year beginning October 1, includes $215.1 billion for the Air Force and $30 billion for the Space Force. If enacted into law as proposed, the Department's overall budget would grow by $9.3 billion beyond last year’s enacted budget.

The increase is necessary, Department of the Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said, to continue modernizing and transforming both services to meet an array of new threats from adversaries and challenges emanating from China as well as those from Russia, North Korea, Iran, and other nations.

The budget request includes notable increases for upgrading the ground-based nuclear deterrent know as Sentinel; increasing the number of military space launches to 15 from 10 which underscores the importance of space; and a $5 billion increase in research and develop necessary to bring “the force of the future” into reality. The proposed budget also accounts for inflation and rising fuels costs as well as boosting funds for recruiting and retention.

“We are united in our commitment to modernizing the Air and Space Forces and in achieving the transformation we must have to be competitive with our pacing challenge – China, China, China,” Kendall said, noting that the proposed budget marks a significant step in meeting that goal.

While the budget proposal is unlikely to be adopted without changes from Congress, the document represents the Department's priorities for maintaining the nation's security and interests. Kendall and other senior leaders acknowledged that the request is the result of difficult trade-offs but also reflects a consensus for how to achieve the Department's mission and the larger operational priorities of the Department of Defense.

In addition to funding for large, overarching efforts to train and equip the force and modernize the way bases are arrayed and managed, the budget proposal includes a multitude of specific line items.

Among them are $4.8 billion in new funding for Kendall’s seven Operational Imperatives. That effort is the blueprint for modernizing and reshaping the Air and Space Forces to accelerate capabilities and position themselves more closely to meets the security threats – and adversaries – of today and in the future.

Underneath that effort is funding that modernizes the Air Force’s fighter fleet, adding 72 fighters (F-35s and F-15EX), another that provides early-stage funding for the next generation of aerial refueling tankers, and funds for updating crucial command and control functions, among others. The budget proposal also:

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Invests in further development of the new and next-in-line fighter aircraft known as “Next Generation Air Dominance” and its powerplant known as Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion;

Pays attention to fiscal discipline by divesting platforms (310 aircraft) that “do not address our most concerning national security challenges;”

If approved as written, the budget proposal supplies $1 billion increase to purchase 48 top-of-the-line F-35 fighters, an increase of five over the previous fiscal year;

It carries $3 billion to support ongoing development and production of the B-21 long-range bomber which is scheduled to achieve its first flight this year; The B-21 will become the backbone of the Air Force's long-range strike force;

The proposal would deliver $2.6 billion to the Space Force for 15 launches in the fiscal year which is an increase of five launches;

It designated $4.4 billion to continue developing and testing the Sentinel ground-based nuclear deterrent, and as well as $500 million for procurement. It also includes $1.1 billion for upgraded and resilient missile warning and tracking.

Echoing comments he made March 7 in a major address, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., said the budget proposal is highly focused on delivering not only a more modern Air Force, but one that has the right combination of hardware, people and “capabilities.”

“We must make sure we have the right mix of capabilities and capacity as an Air Force and as a Joint team to be successful,” Brown said.

Chief of Space Operations, Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, made a similar point.

“We must field combat-ready forces so the Space Force has the personnel, expertise, weapon systems, and equipment required to protect U.S. interests in space,” he said, adding that the proposed budget balances those requirements for the nation’s newest military service.

In the documentation accompanying the release of the budget, the Department said that the proposal “

The budget includes as well smaller, but still significant, increases for pilot training and for bonuses to increase chances that personnel performing critical and highly sought functions will remain in the service.

Taken as a whole, Kendall, Brown, Saltzman as well as other leaders say the budget proposal represents a significant moment in the services’ “essential transformation.” It also advances the Operational Imperatives driving the efforts.

Finally, senior leaders collectively warned that delay is dangerous and that “standing still is falling behind.” That is why each has beseeched Congress to complete the appropriations process on-time to ensure that “the Air Force and Space Force remain dominant.”

https://www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article/3327867/department-of-the-air-force-2024-budget-proposal-invests-in-modernization-trans/

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NASA’s Webb Telescope Captures Rarely Seen Prelude to Supernova

Mar 14, 2023

The rare sight of a Wolf-Rayet star – among the most luminous, most massive, and most briefly detectable stars known – was one of the first observations made by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in June 2022. Webb shows the star, WR 124, in unprecedented detail with its powerful infrared instruments. The star is 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius.

Massive stars race through their lifecycles, and only some of them go through a brief Wolf-Rayet phase before going supernova, making Webb’s detailed observations of this rare phase valuable to astronomers. Wolf-Rayet stars are in the process of casting off their outer layers, resulting in their characteristic halos of gas and dust. The star WR 124 is 30 times the mass of the Sun and has shed 10 Suns’ worth of material – so far. As the ejected gas moves away from the star and cools, cosmic dust forms and glows in the infrared light detectable by Webb.

The origin of cosmic dust that can survive a supernova blast and contribute to the universe’s overall “dust budget” is of great interest to astronomers for multiple reasons. Dust is integral to the workings of the universe: It shelters forming stars, gathers together to help form planets, and serves as a platform for molecules to form and clump together – including the building blocks of life on Earth. Despite the many essential roles that dust plays, there is still more dust in the universe than astronomers’ current dust-formation theories can explain. The universe is operating with a dust budget surplus.

Webb opens up new possibilities for studying details in cosmic dust, which is best observed in infrared wavelengths of light. Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) balances the brightness of WR 124’s stellar core and the knotty details in the fainter surrounding gas. The telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) reveals the clumpy structure of the gas and dust nebula of the ejected material now surrounding the star. Before Webb, dust-loving astronomers simply did not have enough detailed information to explore questions of dust production in environments like WR 124, and whether the dust grains were large and bountiful enough to survive the supernova and become a significant contribution to the overall dust budget. Now those questions can be investigated with real data.

Stars like WR 124 also serve as an analog to help astronomers understand a crucial period in the early history of the universe. Similar dying stars first seeded the young universe with heavy elements forged in their cores – elements that are now common in the current era, including on Earth.

Webb’s detailed image of WR 124 preserves forever a brief, turbulent time of transformation, and promises future discoveries that will reveal the long-shrouded mysteries of cosmic dust.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/nasa-s-webb-telescope-captures-rarely-seen-prelude-to-supernova

NASA Picks Firefly Aerospace for Robotic Delivery to Far Side of Moon

Mar 14, 2023

To carry multiple payloads to the far side of the Moon including a satellite to orbit that area, NASA has selected Firefly Aerospace of Cedar Park, Texas. The commercial lander will deliver two agency payloads, as well as communication and data relay satellite for lunar orbit, which is an ESA (European Space Agency) collaboration with NASA.

The contract award, for just under $112 million, is a commercial lunar delivery targeted to launch in 2026 through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, initiative, and part of the agency’s Artemis program.

This delivery targets a landing site on the far side of the Moon for the two payloads, a place that permanently faces away from Earth. Scientists consider this one of the best locations in the solar system for making radio observations shielded from the noise generated by our home planet. The sensitive observations need to take place during the fourteen earth-day long lunar night.

One of these payloads delivered to the lunar surface aims to take advantage of this radio-quiet zone to make low-frequency astrophysics measurements of the cosmos – focusing on a time known as the “Dark Ages,” a cosmic era that began some 370,000 years after the Big Bang and lasted until the first stars and galaxies formed. Since there is no line of sight and no direct communication with Earth from the far side of the Moon, Firefly also is required to provide communication services.

“NASA continues to look at ways to learn more about our universe,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Going to the lunar far side will help scientists understand some of the fundamental physics processes that occurred during the early evolution of the universe.”

Firefly is responsible for end-to-end delivery services, including payload integration, delivery from Earth to the surface and orbit of the Moon, and NASA payload operations for the first lunar day. This is the second award to Firefly under the CLPS initiative. This award is the ninth surface delivery task award issued to a CLPS vendor, and the second to the far side.

“We look forward to Firefly providing this CLPS delivery,” said Joel Kearns, the deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “This lunar landing should enable new scientific discoveries from the far side of the Moon during the lunar night. This particular group of payloads should not only generate new science but should be a pathfinder for future investigations exploiting this unique vantage point in our solar system.”

The three payloads slated for delivery are expected to weigh in total about 1,090 pounds (494.5 kilograms). These payloads are:

• Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment-Night (LuSEE-Night): A pathfinder to understand the Moon’s radio environment and to potentially take a first look at a previously unobserved era in our cosmic history. It will use deployable antennas and radio receivers to observe sensitive radio waves from the Dark Ages for the first time. LuSEE-Night, is a collaboration between the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, the University of California, Berkeley, Space Science Laboratory, and NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. It is managed for NASA by the Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Lunar Pathfinder: A communications and data relay satellite that will provide communication services to lunar missions via S-band and UHF links to lunar assets on the surface and in orbit around the Moon and an X-band link to Earth. ESA’s Lunar Pathfinder is designed and developed by Surrey Satellite Technology Limited. ESA collaborated with NASA for delivery through the CLPS initiative.

• User Terminal (UT): This payload will institute a new standard for S-Band Proximity-1 space communication protocol and establish space heritage. It will be used to commission the Lunar Pathfinder and ensure its readiness to provide communications service to LuSEE-Night. It consists of software-defined radio, an antenna, a network switch, and a sample data source. UT is in development by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

• Commercial deliveries to the lunar surface with several providers continue to be part of NASA’s exploration efforts. Future CLPS deliveries could include more science experiments and technology demonstrations that further support the agency’s Artemis program.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-picks-firefly-aerospace-for-robotic-delivery-to-far-side-of-moon

'EXTREMELY RARE' FARSIDE CME

Mar 13 2023

Something big just happened on the farside of the sun. During the early hours of March 13th, SOHO coronagraphs recorded a farside halo CME leaving the sun faster than 3000 km/s:

Because of its extreme speed, this CME is classified as "extremely rare," a fast-mover that occurs only once every decade or so. A NASA model of the event shows the CME heading almost directly away from Earth. Good thing!

Although the CME was not Earth-directed, it has nevertheless touched our planet. See all the snowy dots and streaks in the coronagraph movie above? Those are energetic particles accelerated by shock waves in the CME. They create short-lived luminous speckles when they hit SOHO's digital camera.

NOAA's GOES-16 satellite has detected the particles reaching Earthall from the CME's backside. Imagine what a frontside blast would have been like. Earth's magnetic field is funneling the particles toward the poles where a type of radio blackout is underwaya polar cap absorption (PCA) event:

Note the broad red areas. Airplanes flying over these regions may find that their shortwave radios won't work due to the ionizing effect of infalling protons. This PCA could persist for a day or more.

https://spaceweather.com/

Ex-Navy Pilot Who Has Seen UFOs Calls On Congress To Investigate Incidents

March 14, 2023

Ryan Graves, a former United States Navy pilot, has called on Congress to investigate unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) in the skies above the United States. He spoke about his first-hand experiences in an interview with Fox News.

Graves was a flight instructor and spent around 11 years in the Navy as a pilot flying F-18s. However, he and other members of his squadron have yet to receive any answer in relation to a phenomenon they experienced while flying.

Describing his experience, Graves said that the objects had showed up as “contacts on our radar” until eventually “we were seeing these with our eyeballs.”

“While I was in the Navy, myself and others in my squadron had an experience that continues to this day and at first was something that we didn’t have a name for,” Graves said. “Two aircraft from my squadron were flying side by side and one of these objects went right between their aircraft.”

He went on to say that his squad members described the object as a “dark gray or black cube inside of a clear sphere.” He also said that the object were strangely stationary at time but did not behave like “tethered balloons” because they could move at extremely high speeds.

“Eventually we would see these objects proceeding about 0.6 to 0.8 Mach on average, which is about 250 to 350 knots at those altitudes,” he explained. “And they would be either in some type of holding pattern or seemingly just proceeding in a single direction.”

Graves said that the American people with preconceived notions about UAPs need to approach the issue with a “first principles” approach.

“We need to be able to agnostically, as a media, accept that there is uncertainty and look at it from a first principles approach,” he said. “Because if we wrap it into all that context about little green men, we’re going to be barking up the wrong tree.”

He gave two possible explanations for what the objects could be.

“It’s either going to be some type of adversarial platform, and it’s a matter for national security, or we don’t know what it is,” he said. “And it’s a matter for scientific inquiry and curiosity. We’ve been stymied to not have that scientific curiosity as of late, but that’s the biggest thing that needs to change and is changing right now.”

“For our military and our national security, our ability to know what’s over our heads is of critical importance. And if we don’t know what it is, we need to be curious about it. Because we may have national security issues fall out of that anomalous bucket,” Graves went on. “Once we start looking a little bit more closely into our airspace some things are going to pop out that [we] weren’t expecting to see.”

The former Navy pilot said that the media coverage of these incidents still “leaves a lot to be desired.”

Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), among other government officials, has acknowledged the unexplained incidents and the risks that they potentially pose to national security.

“Advanced objects demonstrating advanced technology are routinely flying over our restricted or sensitive airspace posing a risk to both flight safety & national security,” Rubio tweeted in February.

Graves went on to explain that a lot of pilots have had similar experiences that have shaken them up, but they have no safe environment to talk about their experience. He also called on government agencies to begin “sharing their information and offering it forward.”

“I’ve talked to a lot of pilots who have had some pretty powerful experiences that have really shaken them. They don’t want to go and share that on what you would loosely consider your talking head media set up,” he said. “They just don’t feel safe still doing it.”

In February, Graves had written an article detailing his experiences with UAPs in the military which sent shockwaves through the media and online platforms.

“These were no mere balloons. The unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) accelerated at speeds up to Mach 1, the speed of sound. They could hold their position, appearing motionless, despite Category 4 hurricane-force winds of 120 knots. They did not have any visible means of lift, control surfaces or propulsion — in other words nothing that resembled normal aircraft with wings, flaps or engines,” he wrote. “I am a formally trained engineer, but the technology they demonstrated defied my understanding.”

https://www.oann.com/newsroom/ex-navy-pilot-who-has-seen-ufos-calls-on-congress-to-investigate-incidents/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ex-navy-pilot-who-has-seen-ufos-calls-on-congress-to-investigate-incidents