Weather

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.

"NCIS" star Michael Weatherly has sold his house in the Hollywood Hills for $1.845 million. The redone one-story house sits behind gates and has ocean and mountain views. Features include French doors opening to the swimming pool, beamed ceilings, a fireplace, an updated kitchen with stainless-steel appliances, three en-suite bedrooms and a finished two-car garage used as a music room. There are four bedrooms, 31/2 bathrooms and 2,600 square feet of living space. A covered area outdoors is set up as a gym. Weatherly, 43, has starred as special agent Anthony DiNozzo on the highly rated crime drama, originally titled "NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service," since 2003 and appeared as the same character on "JAG.

The wait for tables is getting longer at Buck's, a popular breakfast spot for the tech elite and a weather vane for the Silicon Valley economy. Here, like everywhere else, Facebook is the talk of the town. "Charles Schwab was in the restaurant the other day, and I asked him to hook me up with some Facebook shares," said Jamis MacNiven, owner of Buck's, in the wealthy suburban enclave of Woodside. "He told me even he can't get Facebook shares. " The new tech boom officially gets underway Friday when Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg rings Nasdaq's opening bell remotely from the company's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, launching the largest initial public offering of stock in Silicon Valley history.

OKLAHOMA CITY - The boos cascaded upon him when he walked onto the court for warmups. They intensified when he was introduced before the game. And they continued even when he stepped to the free-throw line with the outcome long decided. "World Peace, we hate you!" a woman sitting courtside bellowed midway through the third quarter. Oklahoma City Thunder fans reserved a special welcome for Metta World Peace on Monday night at Chesapeake Energy Arena in the opener of the team's Western Conference semifinal series against the Lakers.

Gasoline prices are keeping up their record-setting ways. California drivers paid an average of $4.358 for a gallon of regular gasoline, up 6.6 cents from a week earlier, the Energy Department said Monday. That's a fresh record high for this time of year and is 48.4 cents above the year-earlier price. Nationally, the average rose 7.2 cents to $3.793, also a record for this week, according to Energy Department statistics. A year earlier, the average U.S. price was 27.3 cents lower.

Want to fool merchants with a fake ID? Hack someone's text messages? Or how about tracking where your co-workers are, without their knowing it? There's an app for that. The explosion in smartphone and tablet applications that enable people to check the weather, follow their stocks and play Words With Friends has a dark side: apps that facilitate questionable if not outright illegal behavior. Apple's App Store, for example, offers Drivers License software that promises "unlimited access to realistic-looking licenses" for all 50 states.

Dicey. That's the word Doug Thompson used to describe the strenuous 11-mile hike to the summit of Mt. Whitney in October, a month of unpredictable weather that can make the first step up the trailhead near Thompson's rustic convenience store the start of a death trap. About 25,000 people ascend the 14,494-foot mountain each year, and "while a lot of them are physically strong, they don't always have much experience or the proper gear," he said. "A year ago this very week, we had a fatal accident up here.

Sitting in a waiting room full of sniffling and sneezing people, Keith Varga can tell this allergy season is different from most. It's worse. "I've had allergies since I was a child, but they usually don't flare up until mid-March or early April, never this early," said Varga, of Santa Ana. What's producing so many red eyes and itchy noses? A season of sustained rainfall. While the hills may be green and lush, for allergy sufferers, the hills are also alive with pollen and mold spores.

High in the Himalayas, above this peaceful valley where farmers till a patchwork of emerald-green fields, an icy lake fed by melting glaciers waits to become a "tsunami from the sky." The lake is swollen dangerously past normal levels, thanks to the global warming that is causing the glaciers to retreat at record speed. But no one knows when the tipping point will come and the lake can take no more, bursting its banks and sending torrents of water crashing into the valley below.

Forecasters say this winter's El Nino just may be the climate event of the century. If it is, it will show how a weather change in one part of the world can affect climates in other places. El Nino is a change in the ocean-atmosphere system of the tropical Pacific, but its impact can be global. What will it mean for Southern California this year? Probably lots of rain. To learn more about weather, use the direct links on The Times' Launch Point Web site. http://www.latimes.

WASHINGTON - The number of U.S. satellites watching Earth is expected to plummet by 2020, and weather forecasting, including hurricane tracking, could suffer as a result, a new report warns. The study, released last week by the nation's top science advisors, estimated that the fleet of science satellites operated by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would "decline precipitously" from a peak of 110 probes last year to fewer than 30 in 2020. The drop is a result of several factors, including budget problems and rocket accidents, and scientists said the United States risked blurring its vision of Earth if it did not act quickly to replace satellites expected to die during the next eight years.

La Niña, the demon diva of drought, has ended, but what comes next could be even more foreboding: La Nada. La Nada, or "nothing" in Spanish, is climatologist Bill Patzert's nickname for when surface sea temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean are about normal. That means ocean temperatures are not too warm, which would trigger an El Niño and would typically mean a rainy winter in Southern California. The sea also is not too cold, which produces a La Niña and usually means a dry season.

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.

Strong gains in U.S. auto sales over the last six months eased in April as the Easter holiday, bad weather and fewer selling days ate into the business of some of the largest automakers, includingGeneral Motors Co. andFord Motor Co. But analysts and industry officials don't see the industry slipping further and said the falloff was probably temporary. "Taking it all into consideration, we are holding the trend of a moderate recovery," said Jeff Schuster, an analyst at LMC Automotive.

Ask anyone who attended both weekends of the 2012 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival what the big difference was between the events, and you'll likely end up talking about the weather. The festival, which kicked off April 13 and featured 140-plus artists, expanded from one weekend to two this year for the first time in its 13-year history. Although the lineup of artists - from the Black Keys to Radiohead to Snoop Dogg andDr. Dre - was identical each weekend, the same could not be said of the weather.

This year's late winter heat wave over much of the United States, dubbed "March Madness," has been cited as evidence that human-induced global warming is causing the climate system to stray far outside its normal range of variability. The thousands of all-time high temperature records shattered during last month's climate rampage have been likened to home-run records shattered by a baseball player on steroids. It is true that the signature of human-induced global warming is clearly apparent in the increasing number of new high temperature records, which are currently outnumbering low temperature records by a factor of about 3 to 1. Just as a rising tide lifts all ships, a rise in global mean temperature is bound to raise the levels of the highest temperatures.

Some of the highs and lows of watching Dodgers-Phillies Game 3: Say Hey "Beat L.A., beat L.A., beat L.A." That's the first thing you heard as TBS began its coverage. Don't Philadelphia fans realize that's a Boston Celtics thing? And Philly fans hate Celtic fans. Say what? Chip Caray, on the play-by-play, said Shane Victorino "Helicopters his way" to the Phillie dugout after a strikeout. It was the second time Caray used "helicopter" as a verb. Weird. Replay this The TBS pitch sequence of Cliff Lee retiring Manny Ramirez in the top of the seventh.

McDonald's Corp., the world's largest hamburger chain, keeps churning out profit — this time because of unexpectedly balmy weather and new products such as Chicken McBites. The Oak Brook, Ill., company Friday posted a profit of $1.27 billion, or $1.23 a share, in its first quarter. That's a 5% increase from the $1.21 billion, or $1.15, it earned during the same period in 2011. McDonald's revenue jumped 7.1% to $6.5 billion. Even though the chain is feeling pressure from rising food costs, it so far has managed to sustain a strong sales pace.

Sales of on-road motorcycles, which took a beating during the economic downturn, are finally revving up. According to the Motorcycle Industry Council, sales of new motorcycles meant for road use and scooters were up 8.8% for the first quarter of 2012 compared with the same period last year in part because of unseasonably warm weather and higher gas prices. Scooters alone got an especially big boost - 16.9% over last year. Sales of dual-purpose motorcycles, meant for on- and off-road riding, were up 12.7%.