Appliance Repair in Le Grand, CA

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Smart & Final will be expanding in Santa Clara County, California, with the opening of its 10th store in the area, the grocer announced Monday.

The 39,000-square-foot Smart & Final Extra! larger-format store will be located at 430 Blossom Hill Road in San Jose, California, and will open for business on Dec. 14. The store format "combines the warehouse store with traditional grocery offerings like farm-fresh produce and natural and organic options, to provide a one-stop shop for all," said the company in a press release.

Smart & Final Extra! will sell household and club-sized products, available without a membership fee. There will also be USDA-certified meats, fresh and organic produce, frozen and packaged grocery items, a bulk department featuring coffee and nuts, a sushi bar, and personal care products. Additionally, the new store will feature fresh floral arrangements, goods tailored to business and household customers such as paper products, beverages, snacks and cleaning supplies, and the deli department will feature oven-roasted chicken for grab-and-go meals. Private label First Street meats, cheeses and bread will also be sold at the store, along with organic groceries and eco-friendly options from Smart & Final’s Sun Harvest brand.

“I’ve worked for Smart & Final since graduating from high school right here in San Jose,” said Store Manager Carlos Santa Cruz in a statement. “I’m thrilled to provide Smart & Final’s budget-friendly selection of products for both households and local businesses in my own community. We offer more club-sized products than the average club store, which saves our customers money and time.”

Online delivery in two hours or less and large business orders from Smart & Final's website and app will also be available. And, approximately 75 job positions will be filled to staff the new store and other locations in the area, according to Smart & Final.

On the grand opening day of the new store, customers will be able to receive a free tote bag and enter to win a Smart & Final Gift Card. In addition, the Smart & Final Charitable Foundation will present donations to two local organizations.

Smart & Final, headquartered near Los Angeles in Commerce, California, has been in business since 1871. Smart & Final has 375 store locations across three banners, including Smart & Final, El Super and Fiesta Mart, and has 24,000 employees.

Plant A Row for the Hungry Program has another successful year!

November 14, 2022 - By Michele Nowak-Sharkey, UC Master Gardener of Mariposa County - The UC Master Gardeners of Mariposa County - Plant A Row Program encourages gardeners to grow a little extra to donate to local organizations that provide food to community members in need. Along with local gardener donations, vendors at the Mariposa Farmer’s Market each week contribute produce. The 2022 Farmer’s Market vendors included (pictured below) Raw Roots Farm in Catheys Valley, Shasky Farms of Le Grand, Serrano Farms, also in Le Grand and House of Greens in Fresno.

This year the donations collected from these Farmer’s Market vendors and private gardeners provided over 800 pounds of produce for distribution. This abundance of fruits and veggies was donated to four organizations – Manna House, Mariposa Senior Services, The Alliance for Community Transformations, and Heritage House.

Due to the devastation of the Oak Fire this past summer, the need to lessen food insecurity was heightened. Programs such as Plant A Row show how local households and farm businesses can work together to support the larger community.

The UC Master Gardeners of Mariposa County want to thank all those that contributed to the success of this year’s program and encourage gardeners in the area, as they plan their plots for next year, that they consider planting an extra row or two for the hungry. In addition, if you have orchards that have excess produce at the close of the season that you would like to contribute, please contact the Master Gardeners program office (209) 966-7078 to talk about available options.

Together we can ensure that all members of our community can share in our local natural bounty.

For assistance, contact our Helpline at (209) 966-7078 or at mgmariposa@ucdavis.edu. We are currently unable to take samples or meet with you in person but welcome pictures.

The U.C. Master Gardener Helpline is staffed; Tuesdays from 9:00 A.M. - 12:00 P.M. and Thursdays from 2:00 P.M. - 5:00 P.M. Clients may bring samples to the Agricultural Extension Office located at the Mariposa Fairgrounds, but the Master Gardener office is not open to the public. We will not be doing home visits this year due to UCANR restrictions.

Serving Mariposa County, including Greeley Hill, Coulterville, and Don PedroPlease contact the helpline, or leave a message by phone at: (209) 966-7078By email (send photos and questions for researched answers) to: mgmariposa@ucdavis.edu

For further gardening information and event announcements, please visit: UCMG website: https://cemariposa.ucanr.edu/Master_GardenerFollow us on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/mariposamastergardeners

Master Gardener Office Location:UC Cooperative Extension Office,5009 Fairgrounds RoadMariposa, CA 95338

Phone: (209) 966-2417 Email: mgmariposa@ucdavis.eduWebsite: http://cemariposa.ucanr.edu/Master_Gardener

(L-R) Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier react at the kiss and cry in the pairs free skate at the 2022 ISU Grand Prix on Nov. 12, 2022 in Sheffield, England.

U.S. 2022 Olympic pair skaters Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier won a gold medal at the MK John Wilson Trophy in Sheffield, Great Britain, on Saturday, overpowering the field by more than 20 points.

It was the second victory of the ISU Grand Prix season for the Olympic team silver medalists and 2022 world pair champions, who also won at the season-opening Skate America last month in Massachusetts.

“When we finished Skate America, we were very eager and motivated to work even harder,” Knierim, 31, said. “We weren’t comfortable and ready at Skate America. We felt we made a lot of progress when we arrived here. … Our mental game and confidence (have) grown and become stronger since Skate America.”

When Knierim and Frazier won the world title last season, it was the first time since Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner in 1979 that a U.S. pair stood atop the world podium. With this victory, they make more history, becoming the first U.S. pair to win two Grand Prix events in the same season.

More history could be in the offing. The two Grand Prix titles qualified Knierim and Frazier for the Grand Prix Final, to be held in Turin, Italy, Dec. 8-11. It is the first time since 2015 that a U.S. pair has qualified. No U.S. pair has ever medaled at the event.

Knierim and Frazier built a seven-point lead with a strong short program Friday. Their free skate, set to Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times,” was imperfect — Knierim had glitches on the landings of both of the pair’s triple jumps — but other elements, including a triple twist and two throw triple jumps, were solid. Their 205.85 total was well off their personal best 221.09, set at the 2022 world championships.

Sara Conti and Niccolo Macii of Italy finished runner-up to Knierim and Frazier with a score of 184.19, while Letizia Roscher and Luis Schuster of Germany placed third with 167.37. U.S. skaters Katie McBeath and Nathan Bartholomay, who train alongside Knierim and Frazier in Irvine, California, were sixth with 147.29.

Jimmy Ma was the top-finishing American in the men’s competition, placing seventh.

Isabeau Levito Scores Silver

Isabeau Levito, a 15-year-old from Mount Holly, New Jersey, continued her outstanding senior international debut season Sunday, winning a second ISU Grand Prix silver medal.

Sunday’s finish, combined with her silver medal at Skate America in October, will likely qualify the world junior champion for the Grand Prix Final, to be held Dec. 9-11 in Turin, Italy.

“I have a mental vision of how I wanted to skate and I feel like I've yet to see it, but I felt very happy with how I did,” Levito said in a press conference after her clean short program Friday.

Skating with elegance and precision, the teen hit seven triple jumps in Sunday’s free skate to “My Sweet and Tender Beast,” including a difficult triple lutz, triple loop combination, to earn a personal-best 143.68 points. Her total score, 215.74, was also a personal best.

In four international events this season, Levito has two wins — at a small competition in Philadelphia and at the Ondrej Nepela Memorial in Bratislava, Slovakia — to go along with her Grand Prix silver medals. With the retirements of reigning U.S. champion Mariah Bell and world bronze medalist Alysa Liu, Levito is undoubtedly the top rising U.S. star.

Levito is taking the success and attention in stride.

“I don't think there is any additional pressure,” she said. “I'm just very excited to come here and compete, and so far, everything has been so wonderful.”

Levito placed second in both the short program and free skate to Mai Mihara of Japan, who won the gold medal with 217.43 points. The bronze medal went to Anastasia Gubanova of Georgia with 193.11.

Two-time U.S. champion Bradie Tennell, skating in her first competition since missing all of last season due to a foot injury, fell several times in her free skate and placed 12th with 153.19 points.

U.S. ice dancers Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko nearly scored a bronze medal, finishing fourth with a score of 187.42 following Sunday’s free dance.

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Now that we've arrived in the colder months of the year, p?arts of the United States could face crippling snowstorms, ice storms and severe cold blasts.

Forecasters look for certain large-scale weather patterns that can sometimes signal the arrival of extreme winter weather conditions to give time for people to prepare.

Here are a few of the weather patterns we watch for.

Meteorologists monitor an index called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) when examining the potential for a blockbuster East Coast winter storm. This pressure pattern has a positive and negative phase, and as its name implies, it oscillates between those phases to various degrees over periods of days or weeks.

The NAO is just one factor in the grand scheme of forecasting, but when it slips into a deeply negative state, East Coast snow-loving weather geeks begin to salivate.

The area of blocking high pressure near Greenland locks in a southward plunge in the jet stream across the eastern states when the NAO is in its negative phase. This leads to persistent cold temperatures and the potential for East Coast snowstorms.

The jet stream plunges southward over the eastern United States during a negative phase of the NAO in the colder months of the year, where it may lock in for a long period of time. This is due to what meteorologists call atmospheric blocking. In the case of a negative NAO, the block often takes the form of a strong bubble of high pressure near Greenland.

Depending on the orientation of the jet stream plunge, and the potency and evolution of disturbances traversing it, one or more major snowstorms can spin up and impact some part of the East Coast or Atlantic Canada.

The blocking in the NAO negative phase allows intensifying low-pressure systems to crawl up near or just off the Eastern Seaboard rather than scoot harmlessly out to sea.

One of the best recent examples of this was in March 2018 when the NAO slipped into a negative phase for about three weeks. This period produced four nor'easters that brought heavy snow, blizzard conditions and coastal flooding to portions of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast.

All of this said, the Northeast can still see significant snowstorms even without a negative NAO.

Forecasters look to Alaska, Canada's Arctic region and even Siberia for signs of bitterly cold air masses building during the heart of winter.

Arctic air masses from those source regions don't always pour south of the Canadian border when they develop, but when they do, the continental U.S. usually experiences its most extreme cold outbreaks of the winter.

The frigid air from those regions is typically dislodged when the jet stream builds northward over western North America. As a result, a southward plunge of the jet stream sweeps across the central and eastern United States, ushering in the shivering, and in some cases, subzero temperatures.

One of the most extreme weather patterns for the West Coast during winter is an atmospheric river.

An atmospheric river is a narrow plume of moisture extending from the tropics or subtropics that Pacific storm systems can tap into as they plow inland.

The atmospheric river provides extra juice to storm systems taking aim at the coasts of Washington, Oregon and/or California. Sometimes the extra moisture can be overwhelming, with heavy rain causing flooding both at lower elevations and when this warm rain soaks mountain slopes where snow usually falls.

Atmospheric rivers form many times from fall through early spring, but their potency can vary from weak to exceptionally strong.

A total of 40 atmospheric river events were documented in the six months from October 2019 through March 2020, from near San Diego to Washington's Olympic Peninsula, according to the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes (CW3E). Seven of the 40 atmospheric rivers were classified as strong.

An example of a high-impact atmospheric river event happened in January 2017.

More than 10 feet of snow fell in the higher elevations of the Lake Tahoe region during a seven-day period. In the lower elevations, flooding rainfall affected parts of California and western Nevada. Some locations in California saw more than two feet of rain.

Major ice storms are among the most high-impact winter weather events. They're destructive to trees and power lines and can bring travel to a standstill.

Some of the most expansive ice storms east of the Rockies develop in a weather pattern easily recognized by meteorologists.

Typically this setup features arctic air that is fed by a northerly wind near the earth's surface. This cold air source is then overrun by mild, moist air ushered in on southerly winds from the Gulf of Mexico.

The jet stream sends disturbances over the top of this battleground between cold and mild air, adding additional lift to the atmosphere. The result is a large swath of precipitation that can extend for hundreds of miles in a west-to-east fashion.

Depending on how long the freezing rain lasts, impacts can range from nuisance to crippling in any given location.

An example of a rare, crippling ice storm happened in late October 2020 in parts of Oklahoma, southern Kansas and far northwest Texas. Ice accumulations a half-inch or more thick caused widespread tree damage and power outages in central and western Oklahoma, including in Oklahoma City.

More than 400,000 outages were reported at the height of the storm's impacts, according to OG&E, the region's primary utility provider. The company says that's the highest number of storm-related outages it had ever experienced.

The storm damaged or destroyed more than 1,300 power poles, 1,050 crossarms and 194 transformers, OG&E said.

Lake-effect snow downwind of the Great Lakes is a common occurrence from late fall through the heart of winter.

Sometimes these events are short-lived, while others can hammer the same areas for days at a time.

Meteorologists take extra notice when a familiar setup for heavy lake-effect snow is projected by computer forecast models.

The pattern features a sharp, persistent southward plunge of the jet stream anchored over the eastern U.S. by a gyre of low pressure over or near Canada's Hudson Bay.

In this pattern, repeated rounds of cold air spill over the Great Lakes and manufacture bands of heavy lake-effect snow that can persist for several days in spots.

Snowfall amounts measured in feet are typical during lake-effect snow events featuring this long-lived setup, particularly east of Lakes Erie and Ontario.

Left: A giant snow pile is left in the wake of the February 2007 lake-effect snowstorm. Right: Snowfall totals from the Feb. 3-12, 2007, lake-effect snowstorm in the Lake Ontario snowbelt.

One of the most extreme situations occurred over a 10-day period from Feb. 3-12, 2007, when an incredible 141 inches of snow was measured in Redfield, New York, about 50 miles northeast of Syracuse.

The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.

The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.

ADA Council on Ethics, Bylaws and Judicial Affairs selects Tufts team for honorable mention

Losing yourself can actually mean winning.

The ADA Council on Ethics, Bylaws and Judicial Affairs has selected the winners of the 2022 Student Ethics Video Contest, with the grand prize winner being Ellie Fridman of the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry at the University of Southern California for her video "’Lose Yourself’ Dental Ethics Parody.”

The video, set to the music of Eminem’s chart-topping hit “Lose Yourself,” displays the principles of patient autonomy, veracity, non-maleficence, justice and beneficence as found within the ADA Principles of Ethics and Code of Professional Conduct.

As grand prize winner, Ms. Fridman will receive $2,500.

“I entered this contest in the hopes of just challenging myself to see if I could rewrite the original song with a dental ethics twist, and it was a really fun and fantastic way to do something creative,” Ms. Fridman said. “I have always really enjoyed writing song parodies. ‘Lose Yourself’ is such a culturally iconic song.”

Ms. Fridman said she remembered that during one of her school’s dental ethics seminars, she was told about the contest and shown one of the winning videos of a previous year.

“I thought it was such a great way to get students across the country to get involved and be more knowledgeable on this topic,” she said. “The idea of the contest always remained in my mind, and last year when I saw the flyer, I told myself that before I graduated, I really wanted to try and enter the competition. I wasn’t able to meet the deadline in 2021, but thankfully this year I submitted my video.”

The council also selected the honorable mention-winning video, prepared by Robert Fu, Daniel Won, Anil Ramappa, Emely Vidal and Tareina Rogers of the Tufts University School of Dental Medicine. Their video, “Burning Dental,” explores the ADA Code of Ethics principles of beneficence, justice, veracity and patient autonomy.

As recipients of the honorable mention, the winners receive a total award of $1,500.

The council initiated the annual contest in 2008 to encourage dental students to engage with and apply the ADA Principles of Ethics and Code of Professional Conduct.

"Every year CEBJA receives video entries from dental students around the country,” said Bruce A. Burton, D.M.D., council chair. “Each one is very well done, entertaining and thought-provoking. Although the task of selecting the top two videos is challenging, watching the videos each year is one of the highlights of serving on CEBJA. It is gratifying to know that ethics is alive and well in the students' thinking and dental education."