Snow

I've been to Disneyland hundreds of times over the last two decades and have been writing the Funland theme park blog for about four years now. As a result, people are always asking me how to do everything at Disneyland in a single day. The short answer is you probably can't. It can be a struggle for even hard-core fans with military assault-like strategies. The longer answer is there's lots of ways to maximize your time in the park and get on the most rides possible. PHOTOS: How to do Disneyland in a day So in honor of Disneyland's 24-hour Leap Day celebration , here are my seven tips for tackling Disneyland in a day: Tip 1: If you're trying to get the most out of your day at Disneyland , I always recommend arriving just before the park opens in the morning, staying until the park closes at night and taking a long break in the heat of the afternoon at your hotel pool or cocktail bar. It may sound like a long day, but you'll get more done in the first two hours and the last two hours of your day than if you spent 15 hours straight at the park.

Teams will fan out across the Sierra Nevada on Thursday to perform their final snow survey of the season, a closely watched rite of spring that helps determine how much water will flow to farms and cities in coming months. But 18,000 feet above the Sierra slopes, an airborne experiment is underway that could revolutionize that ritual. Starting in early April, researchers have made weekly flights over the upper Tuolumne River basin, taking sophisticated instrument readings of the snow depth and reflected sunlight.

Two frostbitten, emaciated horses were recovering inside a warm barn thanks to volunteers who spent the week before Christmas digging the animals out of snow in the mountains of northeastern British Columbia. Birgit Stutz said the rescuers cheered when they finally finished digging a half-mile escape route through the snow for the animals. The horses had been abandoned by a hunter and faced almost certain death. Over the course of a week, a growing number of residents trudged up the mountain with shovels in hand to dig out the escape pathway through 6-foot-deep snow.

The jockey colony at Hollywood Park might want to break out a bottle of champagne to celebrate the absence of Rafael Bejarano next week when he leaves town to ride Midnight Lucky in the Kentucky Oaks and Overanalyze in the Kentucky Derby. That means somebody else will get a chance to ride a winner. The red-hot Bejarano won four races in four mounts Friday. Then, on California Gold Rush Day on Saturday, he won three of the four richest stakes, including the $300,000 Snow Chief Stakes aboard Surfcup for trainer Bob Baffert.

The ski patrol had been at work since first light, inspecting Mammoth Mountain's reopened runs after a week of heavy snow and blustery winds. By midmorning Thursday, seven of them had set to work digging out a nearly buried fence erected to keep skiers away from one of the mountain's dangerous volcanic vents. Suddenly, the snow beneath them gave way. Two of the ski patrollers dropped into a 21-foot maw filled with deadly carbon dioxide fumes and landed on the ground, trapped in a deep hollow.

When I was a little girl in Scotland, my mother used to make a very simple yet delicious snow cake, which was topped with white icing and shredded coconut. PHOTOS: Holiday Cookie Bake-off winning cookies and bakers - Christina Conte ( christinascucina.blogspot.com), Glendale Total time: 35 minutes, plus cooling times Servings: Makes about 1½ dozen cookies Note: Adapted from Christina Conte. 1 cup (2 sticks) butter 1/2 cup granulated sugar 2 cups (9.25 ounces)

'The Snow Queen' Where: Glendale Community College Performing Arts Theater, 1500 N. Verdugo Road, Glendale When: 7:30 p.m. today and Saturday, 2:30 p.m. Sunday Price: $20 to $30 Contact: (818) 790-7924 or www.ccballet.net

Wuksachi Lodge in Sequoia National Park offers fair-weather guests a nice perk every winter: the services of a snow chain concierge . OK, the title sounds a bit grandiose, but who cares when there's someone to drive down to snow level and perform the dreaded task. "We have a lot of guests who haven't had the experience and pleasure of being in snow," lodge general manager Joe St. Laurent says. Translation: Folks flip out at the prospect of driving in snow and having to put chains on their tires.

About three inches of snow fell overnight in southern Indiana, slowing cleanup efforts and compounding the misery in areas hard hit by tornadoes in recent days, a state official said Monday morning. The snow creates problems such as hiding nails, screws, boards and other debris on roads, making it a bit more difficult to move in cleanup help, State Police Sgt. Ray Poole, public information officer for the state's joint information center, said in a telephone interview. The cleanup "hasn't come to a complete, screeching halt," Poole said, "but it does hide nails and screws, and we don't want people stepping on them.

It's not often you get to write this about golf: The first round of the Accenture Match Play Championship was suspended Wednesday because of snow in Marana, Ariz. Competitors will try to continue play tomorrow, weather permitting. "Yes yes the greens are covered in snow in Arizona. Wow it was freezing out there,” golfer Ian Poulter tweeted. Several matches were underway when the snow began to fall. How much snow? Enough for caddies to start a snowball fight, which they did to the delight of the sparse crowd in attendance.

The calendar says it's spring, but that doesn't mean snow season has ended, based on a blizzard warning from the National Weather Service for parts of Colorado. The temperatures in the Denver area was expected to reach the high 60s on Monday but drop rapidly in the evening. By the early hours of Tuesday, it will be cold enough to turn rain into snow, with accumulations of two to four inches expected, the weather service said. “The National Weather Service in Pueblo has issued a blizzard warning ... which is in effect from 3 a.m. to 6 p.m. MDT Tuesday,” the service said  on its website.

SEATTLE -- Hiker Mary Owen was still 2,000 feet from the summit of Oregon's Mt. Hood when a whiteout turned the mountain  into a frozen, impenetrable blur. Determined to reach the top,  she kept climbing. “I'd be walking, and these big crags would come looming out of the mist. It was eerie, kind of weirdly surreal, almost like walking through a dream,” Owen said Monday. She spent six days awaiting rescue from the snowy peak after she became disoriented and took a crippling fall.

Following hard upon "The Artist," "Blancanieves" is the second silent black-and-white feature to emerge from Europe in little more than two years. A pair of films don't exactly make a trend, but "Blancanieves" has enough going for it to make you wish it did. A major critical success in its native Spain, where it won 10 Goyas (the Spanish Oscar), including best picture, "Blancanieves" is different in tone from "The Artist. " The title translates as "Snow White," and Pablo Berger (who made the wonderful comedy "Torremolinas 73" a decade ago)

MEXICO CITY -- FIFA, the world governing body for soccer, on Tuesday denied a protest from the Costa Rican Football Assn. which challenged the results of last Friday's World Cup qualifier against the U.S. in suburban Denver. The game, won by the U.S. 1-0, was played in a blizzard that covered boundary lines on the field and made it difficult for players to pass, run or even see. But in dismissing the challenge, FIFA did not address the conditions, basing its ruling instead on a technicality.

Spring typically means the return of sunshine, tornadoes and biblical thunderstorms across the Midwest, but a weekend blizzard in the lower Plains had winter stamping on all signs of life in Kansas and Missouri. A daffodil exposition in Springfield, Mo., had to be put on hold. The phone for the I-70 Drive-In's box office in Kansas City, Mo., rang without answer: There would be no outdoor movie with 8 inches of snow on Sunday. Guerrilla Streetfood, a food truck in St. Louis, tweeted that it would take a day off on Monday, preferring not to slog through the city's biggest snowstorm in 30 years -- joining many others in taking a late snow day in this part of the country.

DENVER -- A late-season snow storm swept across Colorado's front range and began making its way onto the eastern plains and Midwest on Saturday. The storm, which was causing havoc on the roadways, dropped about 8 to 12 inches of snow in Denver, Kyle Fredin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Boulder, said in a telephone interview. The snow led to multiple accidents and roadway closures. In one area, south of Fort Collins, between 20 and 50 vehicles had crashed or gone off the roadway, according to the Colorado State Patrol.

Gas prices in the United States have fallen more than 5 cents over the last two weeks, the Lundberg Survey finds. Prices are down a total of 24 cents over the last six weeks. The city with the lowest average price in the latest survey was Albuquerque, N.M., at $2.83. The highest average? San Francisco, at $3.57 . . . . Snow is anticipated from New Mexico into Kansas through Tuesday, with blizzard conditions possible. The National Weather Service has issued blizzard warnings across portions of northeastern New Mexico, southeastern Colorado, southwestern Kansas, the Oklahoma panhandle, and northern Texas . . . . Southern California mountains are expecting clear skies and typical temps for this time of year, through Christmas Day . . . . The sailing schooner America is offering a “No Seasickness Guarantee” for whale watching trips from the Maritime Museum of San Diego.

Costa Rica's players and coach were none too happy with a 1-0 loss to the United States in a World Cup qualifier Friday night that was mainly played in a snowstorm in Commerce City, Colo. “You couldn't see the lines. You couldn't see the ball. You couldn't play,” Costa Rica midfielder Michael Barrantes said. Costa Rican Coach Jorge Luis Pinto was outraged that the game was played. “I asked them to stop," he said after the game. "They should suspend the ref.  It was an embarrassment.

We admire this sugared peak from our downtown L.A. offices on the clearest winter days, a 10,000-foot postcard of pleasures. Indeed, Mt. Baldy offers challenging (though limited) ski terrain. Serious hikers use it to train for Everest. In short, this SoCal playground offers something for almost everyone. And you don't have to be Marco Polo to get there: Baldy is only an hour's drive - one easy turn off the 210 Freeway. The bed The village's centerpiece is the popular Mt. Baldy Lodge ([909]