Free Republic

PASADENA (CBSLA.com) — The anticipated blockbuster return of El Niño is looking more like it will be a flop, a climatologist said Monday. Scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory say that unless developing weak-to-modest El Niño conditions strengthen, California will continue to stay bone dry. El Niño describes a weather pattern involving a warming of equatorial waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, a condition that is associated with increased rainfall on the west coast of North America. El Niño conditions in 1997 and 1998 doubled rainfall up and down California, Patzert said. “Those very strong El Niños happen every 30...

A European probe awoke from a deep sleep Monday (Jan. 20) to gear up for an unprecedented comet rendezvous and landing this year that will cap a 10-year voyage across the solar system. After two and a half years in hibernation, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft emerged from its slumber while cruising nearly 418 million miles (673 million kilometers) from the sun. The wakeup call, which was due to begin at 5 a.m. EST (1000 GMT), took hours as Rosetta switched on heaters to warm itself after its long night in the cold depths of space.