The dry spell has been broken here in the Mono Basin. On Saturday morning I awoke to a winter wonderland—snow covered the streets and the Mono Lake Committee’s back porch. A Pacific storm hit the Sierra Nevada this weekend and brought with it high winds, rain, snow, and highway closures.

A capture from the Lee Vining web cam shows today's snowy town.

As of this afternoon Tioga Pass is closed (and has been since Tuesday evening). Highways 108, 4, and 89 are all closed. Highways 88, (more…)

After several weeks of unseasonably dry weather here in the Mono Basin, the weather forecast shows a change coming at the end of this week. High chances of snow and rain are predicted starting Wednesday night through the weekend. What does this mean for road conditions? As of today at 5:00pm the Yosemite National Park website says that Tioga Pass (Highway 120) through the park will be closing tonight at 7:00pm. It is unclear how long the road will be closed  if it closes tonight; it is usually weather-dependent. (more…)

This past weekend the South Yuba River Citizen’s League (SYRCL) held their tenth annual Wild and Scenic Film Festival in Nevada City.

Mono Lake Committee staff at the Wild & Scenic Film Festival in Nevada City. Photo courtesy of Margaret Eissler.

Communications Director Arya Degenhardt, Education Director Bartshe Miller, Eastern Sierra Policy Director Lisa Cutting, and I were lucky enough to be able to go to this exciting event and see the world premiere of the Mono Lake Committee’s brand new film, The Mono Lake Story. The festival consisted of seven venues at a variety of locations in the town, which showed approximately 140 films from around the world. (more…)

When I hear the word “pika,” I think of a small, cute, rabbit-like animal. Native to cold climates and rocky mountainsides, the American Pika is a well-known wild animal in the Sierra Nevada. But recently something has been happening to their habitat.

An American Pika in rocky, high-elevation Mono Basin habitat. Photo by Elin Ljung.

According to an article in the Sacramento Bee, the State of California is now looking at putting the American Pika under endangered status. After being rejected for protection under the California Endangered Species Act in 2009, further research has (more…)

The time has come to pick the lucky winners of the 2011 Free Drawing! Last Wednesday, December 14, Mono Lake Committee staff plunged through a box full of thousands of free drawing tickets to pick the 24 winners of a variety of prizes. Prizes included an iPad 2, Canon digital camera, brand new snowboard, and many more exciting items! Check the full list of 2011 prizes here.

Office Director Rose Catron shows off the ticket she pulled from the box.

I will be calling each individual winner in the next week to congratulate them on their winnings, so check your phone, it just might be me calling you with good news! (more…)

Researcher Sean Boyd from the Pacific Wildlife Research Centre in British Columbia spent the past few weeks diligently counting Eared Grebes on Mono Lake from over 425 photos taken this fall. Before going completely bug-eyed, Boyd was able to get a total count of Eared Grebes on Mono Lake for October 14, 2011 (the day volunteer Lighthawk pilot Geoff Pope and photographer Rick Kattelman did the aerial survey). Boyd was able to calculate the final number of grebes by taking the initial count from the photos, converting that number into a density (#/km^2), adjusting it for scale (which we created through three white X markers that were 50 meters apart near the lake shore), and used the current lake surface area to find the final count.  The final count was 886,500 +/-4.4% Standard Error.

The annual aerial Eared Grebe survey has been happening with the exception of a few years, for the past decade. See the listing of past year’s grebe counts here.

A new camera has been installed at the Mono Basin National Forest Scenic Area Visitor Center for the Mono Lake Cam, one of the Mono Lake Committee’s three Mono Basin web cams.

The new camera comes with perks; one of which is the elimination of the light streak that was present on the old web cam. It also (more…)

Leaves have dropped and temperatures have cooled here in the Mono Basin this week. The arrival of snow and consecutive freezing temperatures have led to Tioga Pass closing. It has been closed since last Friday, November 4.

The road is closed three miles west of Highway 395, so there is no access to the higher elevations near Tioga Pass (Ellery Lake, Saddlebag Lake, Tioga Lake, Dana Meadows, etc.).

If you are planning a trip to the area, take this in consideration and check for updated highway information.

Welcome to late fall and safe travels to all this season!

The arrival of winter weather this week has brought some highway closures and restrictions. As of this morning (Saturday, November 5), Tioga Pass, Sonora Pass, and Highway 89 are closed. Chains are required on Highway 88 and Highway 4 is open.

So what does this mean for your winter travel plans? If you are planning a trip to the area, make sure to check the weather forecast and road conditions before you leave and take the necessary precautions.

It’s that time of year again, time for the Eared Grebe (Podiceps nigricollis) count at Mono Lake. Most visitors in the Mono Basin can easily say that they have seen a lot of birds at the County Park and Old Marina sites, but how many grebes are there exactly? That’s where photographer Rick Kattelmann, volunteer Lighthawk pilot Geoff Pope, and researcher Sean Boyd come into the picture.

What look like tiny white specks in a black abyss are actually Eared Grebes on the surface of Mono Lake. There are 76 dots in this photo. Photo by Rick Kattelmann.

Since the mid-1990s aerial photographs have been taken of the lake surface. These surveys of the Eared Grebe populations are (more…)