Water vapor - Mississippi River-size amounts of it flowing at hurricane speeds miles above the Earth - is hurtling across the Pacific, an atmospheric river poised to drench a parched Northern California and the Sacramento region as early as Thursday night.

A crack team of science experts is going along for the ride, part of an experiment known as CalWater 2015, many of whom gathered at McClellan Park near Sacramento on Tuesday in preparation for the major weather event and the vital information they hope to pull from the phenomenon.

"It's a real milestone for us. Nothing of this scope has happened," said Marty Ralph, director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, of the project he's helping to lead. "One of the drivers of CalWater was the uncertainty of climate projections. We haven't had the data to measure the strength and structure of ARs. ... There's so much potential for the monitoring of atmospheric rivers."

They come from an alphabet soup of agencies, universities and scientific institutes, from NOAA to NASA, USGS and the DOE, to study atmospheric rivers and the role they play in water supply. The researchers will cast a wide net from the Sierra Nevada to the Coast Range and into the Pacific Ocean during a storm system that CalWater forecasters said will produce "copious" amounts of rain into Saturday.

"There will be ample opportunity to store this water, hopefully, and provide a little relief from the drought," said Allen White, a research meteorologist at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

The information the scientists glean, they hope, will help do nothing less than predict the future of water and weather in a California at the mercy of both. Think of atmospheric rivers as a massive water vapor pipeline, responsible for many of the major storms along the West Coast and about half of the rain and snow Northern California sees each year.

Knowing how atmospheric rivers are formed, how strong they are and where they will land can help communities and water experts in California and the West. They can better plan for water storage, storm and disaster preparedness, drought and climate change.

Scientists today examined a dead female humpback whale that washed ashore Tuesday afternoon.

The juvenile was found near the Lighthouse Road beach access in Corolla with entanglement scars from fishing nets.

The whale, which was about 30 feet long and weighed 25,000 pounds, otherwise appeared healthy and had recently eaten menhaden, said William McLellan, the North Carolina State Stranding Coordinator.

Whale strandings -- especially this time of year -- are not uncommon and happen frequently on the Outer Banks, more so than anywhere else on the East Coast, he said. There have been 100 whale strandings in 15 years, he said.

An alarming increase in the number of dead and dying band-tailed pigeons along the California coast has prompted wildlife biologists to ask the public for help documenting the apparent decline of the only native pigeon left in the state.

At least 1,000 of the pigeons, which winter in Central and Southern California, have been found dead in Santa Clara and Santa Barbara counties since December, the apparent victims of a parasite spread by the common rock pigeon, said Krysta Rogers, an environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The sudden increase in mortality is disturbing, Rogers said, because the closest living relative to the extinct passenger pigeon has been struggling for decades to recover from rampant hunting, habitat loss and other environmental problems.

Bird watchers from across the country traveled to the Crescent City Harbor for the first North American sighting of the Common Scoter on Wednesday.

The Common Scoter is a sea duck that is native to Northern Europe. The rare North American Common Scoter sighting not only brought out local bird watchers, but bird watchers from North Carolina.

"This is very important for me; it's pretty much all I live for," Keith Camburn, a bird watcher who traveled from North Carolina, said.

Harbor Master, Charlie Helms of the Crescent City Harbor District, said the Common Scoter sighting brought a crowd he's never seen at the harbor.

Belmont father Vincent Capriotti died after being struck by lightning while walking with his "best mate" Juke in a Bayswater park on Tuesday night.

The 58-year-old's son Grant said yesterday his family was struggling to believe that an "horrific act of nature" had taken his life.

"The family is absolutely devastated," he said. "We've lost the most loving and caring man in the entire universe.

"I don't think we'll ever recover from this."

But he said they were trying to draw some comfort from knowing that his daily walk with his black kelpie around local parks and the river was his favourite thing to do.

Event Time
2015-02-05 04:40:54 (UTC)

Times in other timezones

Nearby Cities

1. 314km (195mi) S of Punta de Burica, Panama
2. 341km (212mi) S of Puerto Armuelles, Panama
3. 351km (218mi) S of Pedregal, Panama
4. 358km (222mi) S of David, Panama
5. 545km (339mi) SSE of San Jose, Costa Rica

Scientific Data

Seventy-six inches and counting.

That's how much snow has fallen in Eastport since Jan. 25, which is a new 10-day record for documented snowfall anywhere in Maine. The previous record of 71 inches was set more than 50 years ago at Ripogenus Dam, just west of Baxter State Park in Piscataquis County, over a 10-day period, from late December 1962 to early January 1963, according to the National Weather Service.

Victor Nouhan, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Caribou, emphasized Wednesday the amount of data and information available to the federal agency is limited, so he cannot say whether Eastport's 76 inches is the most snowfall ever in Maine in a week and a half. He said the Fryeburg area got an exceptionally heavy dumping of snow in February 1969, which may rival the amount that officially has been measured in Eastport.

Black bear attacks are on the rise in Florida, prompting the state to contemplate how to keep the growing population in check. The government may remove a 20-year ban on hunting the animal as bears increasingly start to be seen as a suburban menace.

In December, two Floridians were attacked by bears. At the beginning of the month, 68-year-old Jeanne Barber was walking her dog when it spotted a bear at a construction dumpster, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

The dog excitedly yanked at the leash, pulling her to the ground. Then the bear attacked, clamping its jaw around her arm. Her injuries were not life-threatening, but hers was the third attack in Central Florida's Seminole County over the past year.

Less than three weeks later, a 15-year-old was attacked in the Panhandle's Franklin County. Leah Rader was walking her dog, when it spotted a bear.

A bottlenose dolphin was shivering off of Sunny Isles Beach Tuesday afternoon. Three rescuers stood in the water with the mammal until it died.

The light gray dolphin was stranded on the ocean near the Trump International Beach Resort, 18001 Collins Ave. The death comes as scientists continue to study a measles epidemic of unprecedented proportions that is targeting bottlenose dolphins along the east coast.

Laura Diaz, a biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the bottlenose dolphin was likely suffering from measles, also known as morbilli-virus.

Heavy rains have provoked landslide at the ancient Italian site of Pompeii, partially collapsing a retaining wall and sending rubble into a garden at the house of Severus.

Italian officials on Wednesday said the affected area falls within the "Great Pompeii" joint EU-Italian restoration project and had been already closed to the public.

Pompeii, the ancient Roman city encased in volcanic ash near Mount Vesuvius, south of Naples, has suffered numerous collapses of walls and buildings in recent years, often due to rain. The problems have attracted widespread attention to Italy's difficulties in maintaining its cultural treasures.

Pompeii officials said firefighters were assessing the ancient site to determine areas at particular risk for collapse in a bid to shore them up.