Storms

A stream of highly charged particles from the sun is headed straight toward Earth, threatening to plunge cities around the world into darkness and bring the global economy screeching to a halt. This isn't the premise of the latest doomsday thriller. Massive solar storms have happened before - and another one is likely to occur soon, according to Mike Hapgood, a space weather scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, England. Much of the planet's electronic equipment, as well as orbiting satellites, have been built to withstand these periodic geomagnetic storms.

When: 7:30. Where: Staples Center. On the air: Time Warner Cable 101. Records: Sparks 1-0, Storm 0-1. Record vs. Storm: 1-0. Update: This will be the home opener for the Sparks, who overcame a 21-point deficit to beat the Storm, 72-66, in the teams' season opener Friday at Seattle. Kristi Toliver, who came off the bench, led the Sparks with 25 points, six assists and three steals. Candace Parker had 11 points and four rebounds.

Violent storms tore through four Midwestern states, killing three people in northern Missouri, damaging hundreds of homes and leaving thousands without power. At least two tornadoes touched down in Missouri's Adair County on Wednesday night, authorities said. One destroyed 10 homes in the town of Kirksville, and more than 200 buildings across the county were damaged.

BEIRUT - At least four students were killed, dozens injured and about 200 arrested Thursday when Syrian government forces stormed student dorms at Aleppo University, firing automatic guns and tear gas, activists said. The predawn raid was followed by the closure of the university, sending ripples across Syria as some in the opposition wondered aloud whether the major city was finally fully joining the uprising. The university, site of some of Aleppo's most energetic and consistent dissent, was shut down in an escalated crackdown on antigovernment opposition.

Thousands of Filipinos were marooned on rooftops Friday, and officials released water from at least one large dam to keep it from collapsing as heavy rain from Tropical Depression Parma pummeled the archipelago. Hundreds of people were reported killed by flooding and landslides, bringing the death toll from two storms in the last 10 days to more than 500, Philippine authorities said. Officials said 60% of Pangasinan province, about 110 miles north of Manila, was submerged. Strong winds and rain hampered rescue efforts, grounding military helicopters and lifeboats.

The second of four rainstorms forecast for Southern California pummeled the coast this afternoon, with gale-force winds and at least one tornado lifting boats in Orange County 30 to 50 feet, causing serious flooding across the region and promoting a new round of evacuations. But forecasters said the worst is yet to come, in the form of a stronger, colder storm set to hit the L.A. area Wednesday evening. Authorities plan to evacuate 489 homes in the mudslide-prone foothill areas including La Cañada Flintridge on Wednesday morning in advance of the storm.

Cameron Akbari and his girlfriend sat in the cab of his truck in Castaic on Monday as heavy rain and sleet poured from the heavens. Akbari, 47, was trying to get to Bakersfield to deliver ice cream cones. But his journey was barred by slushy snow. The largest storm of the season stretched from Oregon to the Mexican border, closing Interstate 5 and shutting Interstate 15 through the Cajon Pass.

The second of two cold fronts to sweep Southern California will hit the Los Angeles area Saturday, bringing rain, possible thunderstorms and the threat of mud and debris flows in hillside areas scorched by last year's wildfires, according to the National Weather Service. Rains on Friday snarled traffic and prompted road closures in foothill communities bordering the Angeles National Forest, where more than 160,000 acres remain charred from the Station fire. Los Angeles County saw relatively light rain, but Orange and San Diego counties experienced heavy thunderstorms and 45-mph wind gusts along the coast.

Tropical Storm Ketsana slammed ashore in the Philippines on Saturday, leaving at least 72 people dead or missing and stranding thousands on rooftops in the capital's worst flooding in more than 42 years. The government declared a "state of calamity" in metropolitan Manila and 25 storm-hit provinces, said Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro, who heads the National Disaster Coordinating Council. A landslide and flash flooding in nearby Rizal province killed 35 people, said provincial government spokesman Tony Mateo.

A new storm was forecast to dump rain on Southern California today and Wednesday, but the system was not expected to pose a significant threat to hillside areas saturated by last week's torrential downpours, officials said. The rainfall will be light with some moderate to heavy bursts at times, according to the National Weather Service. The storm is expected to drop half an inch to as much as 1 1/2 inches of rain across the region, with possibly higher amounts in mountain regions.

A stream of highly charged particles from the sun is headed straight toward Earth, threatening to plunge cities around the world into darkness and bring the global economy screeching to a halt. This isn't the premise of the latest doomsday thriller. Massive solar storms have happened before - and another one is likely to occur soon, according to Mike Hapgood, a space weather scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, England. Much of the planet's electronic equipment, as well as orbiting satellites, have been built to withstand these periodic geomagnetic storms.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Forecasting teams are calling for the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season to be slower than normal, although not by much. AccuWeather.com predicts 12 named storms, including five hurricanes, two with sustained winds greater than 110 mph. Weather Services International, or WSI, a part of the Weather Channel, projects 11 named storms, including six hurricanes, two of those intense. Both forecasts would translate to a slightly slower than normal season: On average, there are 12 named storms, including six hurricanes, three of them major.

Environmental groups are accusing Six Flags Magic Mountain of polluting the Santa Clara River with huge volumes of contaminated water and allowing trash with its logos to spill into the Southern California waterway and toward the ocean. The allegations were made in a letter sent to the Valencia theme park last week by a coalition of environmental groups, whose investigators say they found alarming levels of pollutants in water sloshing out of the facility's storm water outfalls into the nearby waterway during rainstorms.

It's been 84 years since there's been a Nor'easter like this one. On Monday morning, parts of Pennsylvania and New York were dealing with a springtime surprise -- a late-season storm that put some areas under a foot of snow and cut power to thousands of residents. Even more snow was expected in the higher elevations of Pennsylvania and New York state, south of Buffalo, and northeastern Ohio. The last time a big snowstorm hit so late in the season was 1928, according to Aaron Tyburski, a National Weather Service meteorologist in State College, Penn.

Chancy Smith, who is in charge of his county's emergency response unit, had never seen anything like it. A "funeral procession" of cars trekked through county roads as a tornado bore down on Solomon, Kan., Smith said. Gawkers clogged the streets. Photographers stood in the middle of highways with tripods. Some vehicles drove over downed power lines. Like some kind of paparazzi, obsessed with storms instead of stars, the chasers converged in tornado alley last weekend to capture images and perhaps profits from a deadly twister outbreak that scoured the Central Plains.

The Angels position players took the field Thursday night with an old-school, slump-busting kind of look, their bright white uniform pants pulled to their kneecaps and their red socks worn high. Considering how that worked, they may resort to sacrificing a live chicken or tossing their bats into a pile and starting a bonfire Friday. Albert Pujols mashed three doubles, but the Angels failed to cash in on too many chances, stranding two runners in five of nine innings and going three for 12 with runners in scoring position in a 4-2 loss to the Oakland Athletics at Angel Stadium.

Tim Williamson was asked this month to assess the state of his native New Orleans after the disaster. "After the disaster?" the nonprofit-group chief executive quipped, with a seen-it-all mordancy that's as common in the city as a potholed side street. "Which one?" The last few months have provided a roller-coaster run-up to Hurricane Katrina's fifth anniversary, which New Orleans was to observe Sunday with solemn prayers, a reunion of Superdome survivors, and a jazz funeral for the more than 1,800 dead along the Gulf Coast.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Dozens of tornadoes raked the Central Plains on Saturday as residents in Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Iowa braced themselves for a long night of tornado-watching. Damage was relatively light in the afternoon as the storm scraped across the sparsely populated farmlands of western and central Kansas. A hospital was damaged in Creston, Iowa, with no injuries reported. But well after sundown, much of the region was still under tornado watches. If anything, the potential for disaster increased as the system headed toward more densely populated areas in eastern Kansas and southeastern Nebraska.

MINNEAPOLIS - The Angels failed to hold a six-run, fifth-inning lead and a one-run, eighth-inning lead  Thursday as the Minnesota Twins roared back for three runs in the seventh and four in the eighth for a 10-9  victory in Target Field. The last time the Angels surrendered a six-run lead and lost was on May 14, 1994, when they had a 7-0 lead against the Seattle Mariners and lost, 10-7. After blowing the six-run lead and losing one of their top relievers to injury, the Angels took a 7-6 lead in the top of the eighth when Vernon Wells singled, took second on a wild pitch and scored on Peter Bourjos' two-out single to left field.