High Water

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Officials at Mammoth Mountain were a little worried late last week when the forecast called for a big storm with temperatures on the warm side, which would have meant rain -- at least on the lower slopes. But the weather turned cold enough during the weekend so the precipitation that fell was snow, lots and lots of snow. By Monday, between 4 and 6 feet of the white stuff had landed on this big Eastern Sierra Nevada resort. The base is now an impressive 50 to 70 inches.   As a result, all of Mammoth's terrain, 28 lifts and the Canyon and Eagle Lodges will be open Friday morning.

Anita Cultrera Stern insists that the only flood she's experienced was the torrent of outrage she felt last August when she opened her DWP bill. Instead of the normal $20 or so worth of water she typically uses at her Woodland Hills home during two-month billing cycles, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power charged her $829.82 for June and July 2009. The billing statement explained that Stern appeared to be using 2,295 gallons of water a day, contrasted with the 61 gallons she had used daily during the same period the previous year.

The owners of a Chino slaughterhouse that was at the center of the largest beef recall in U.S. history four years ago have agreed to pay more than $300,000 to settle a lawsuit that alleged fraud against the U.S. government. Donald Hallmark Sr. and Donald Hallmark Jr. were two of nine defendants in a federal False Claims Act suit brought by the Humane Society of the United States. As part of the settlement, the Hallmarks also agreed to a nominal $497-million judgment against the now-defunct Hallmark Meat Packing Co., which will not be collected because the company is bankrupt.

With rivers raging faster than they have in years, fatalities and rescues have jumped dramatically at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks this year. Only one person had died by this time in 2004, but so far this year eight people have been killed. Four drowned, two were struck by lightning and two climbers were killed on icy rock on Mt. Whitney. In the most recent fatalities, a Boy Scout and a Scout leader were killed by lightning last week.

Contemplating all the Prada, Gucci, Dior and more on display along Rodeo Drive is dizzying enough. The exhaustion of tempering all that consumerist desire with financial reality can wear a person down. Perhaps it's a good thing that within stiletto-tottering distance of Tiffany & Co. there's a new hotel bar where a lady can have a proper drink -- of water, designer water. Just enter the remodeled and renamed lobby bar and restaurant at the Regent Beverly Wilshire, now christened The Blvd.

The stubborn and canny old cuss is having a rough year and he won't give in, he just won't buckle. Not after a century of family farming will Ben Hillebrecht bow to bad times, although the price of water rose from $330 to $408 per acre-foot in June and this year's wimpy orange crop means no profit. "They used to say 30 years ago, 'How can you afford to farm at $35 an acre-foot?' Now it's $400," scoffs the 62-year-old grower, by many accounts one of the best and shrewdest farmers around.

THERE are times when the end of the world feels nigher than usual. This is one of those times. How will the world end? Plague, poison, divine or human wrath -- we're spoiled for choice. In Chris Adrian's odd, ardent, extraordinary novel "The Children's Hospital," it ends with a second Flood, seven deep miles of water covering everything on Earth but a children's hospital that has been repurposed by an angel-assisted architect into an ark.

The first of five blasts from the sirens atop St. Mark's bell tower and other high points in this lagoon city sounded late one night in early April, unusually late for the high tide season. The alarm woke many Venetians and tired tourists and let night owls know they would have wet feet if they didn't make it home in a couple of hours before the acqua alta--high water--flooded in. In Venice, life and the sea are inseparable.

A wide band of thunderstorms and showers dumped up to 2 inches of rain Saturday on waterlogged Arkansas and Texas as the swollen Trinity and Red rivers raged southward and threatened to drive more people out of their homes. The National Weather Service reported that tornadoes touched down Saturday morning near Lufkin and southwest of San Augustine in Texas.

BABYLON, N.Y. -- "There was a fish in my kitchen," said Elizabeth Scoyen, standing on the deck of her apartment in the Babylon marina, two blocks from the Atlantic Ocean. "That is when I knew this was going to be bad," she said, as she arranged water-logged chair cushions, soaked clothes and lamps in the open air. Like many residents on the south shore of Long Island, Scoyen, 57, a retired high school teacher, came outside Wednesday as the rains let up, and tried to dry out her belongings and take stock of what just happened.

Louisiana officials said Tuesday they're well-prepared to weather Hurricane Isaac, which had winds of up to 80 mph and was expected to make landfall overnight. “We are officially in the fight, and the city of New Orleans is on the front lines,” Mayor Mitch Landrieu said at an afternoon briefing. Although the storm remained a Category 1 hurricane, Landrieu cautioned residents not to underestimate the damage it could do . PHOTOS: Bracing for Isaac “Do not let this storm lull you into complacency,” he said, advising people to shelter in place.

LONDON - American swimmer Fran Crippen had hoped to be at the starting line Friday when the men's 10k open-water marathon got underway in Hyde Park. As a world bronze medalist and a two-time national champion in the event, it seemed likely he would. That dream, however, tragically - and needlessly - ended two years ago when he drowned during an international competition. And yet Crippen was everywhere Friday. PHOTOS: London Olympics, Day 14 In the water and at news conferences, swimmers paid tribute to Crippen, who died in October 2010 while competing amid unsafe conditions at a World Cup race in the United Arab Emirates.

Michael Phelps shared his celebration with a pool and a world. He put his arm around the South African kid who had just beaten him in one of his signature races, guiding the protege through the medal protocol. He went out of his way to compliment a French sprinter on what he thought was one of the five best swims of all time. He gathered his relay teammates to thank them for their help, and to tell them he might be too choked up to sing the national anthem. And then he left the pool, with a giddy smile and the greatest collection of medals any Olympian has ever seen.

Four southern Louisiana parishes were under a state of emergency Tuesday after heavy rains poured through the region, causing flash flooding. According to the governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness , a state of emergency was declared in Acadia, St. Landry, St. Martin and Lafayette parishes. No injuries were reported, but at least 77 residents had to be rescued from high water in Carencro , a town in Lafayette Parish, the state agency said.

On the bright side, Jon Huntsman Jr., the candidate whose poll numbers languished in the low single digits for most of the campaign, hit the high teens when real people finally got to vote in New Hampshire on Tuesday. On the dimmer side, that was only good enough for third place. The man who has no chance of winning the Republican nomination for president, Ron Paul, did much better, taking nearly a quarter of the votes. And the man who is most likely to walk away with the nomination, Mitt Romney, garnered more than a third.

Bob Gegg, deeply tanned and unlit cigar in his mouth, slammed the earthmover into gear and began to push the next load of limestone chunks uphill and into place on the levee. He had been doing this all Wednesday morning, going back and forth, back and forth, to the spot on Main Street where the huge dump trucks stopped and deposited their loads. He had, in fact, been doing the same thing for days on end as this small farming town struggles to save itself from the onrushing Mississippi River.

An oil spill in Montana's Yellowstone River surged toward North Dakota on Sunday as outraged residents demanded more government oversight of Exxon Mobil's cleanup. An estimated 750 to 1,000 barrels, or up to 42,000 gallons, spilled through a damaged pipeline in the riverbed, Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers said. The break near Billings could be related to the river's high water level, officials said. More than 120 people were working on the cleanup late Sunday, Jeffers said. But local officials said because of the raging floodwaters, only a handful of crews were laying absorbent pads and booms to trap the oil along short stretches of the river between Billings and Laurel.

The nuclear crisis in Japan is far from over. In recent days, highly radioactive water has been discovered in tunnels under reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, and radioactive plutonium has been found in the soil nearby. Efforts to contain the leaking radioactive material are underway, and cleanup will take far longer. Here are answers to some basic questions. How did plutonium get into the soil? In two samples, tests suggest that the plutonium came from the Fukushima reactors.