One of the challenges of fighting climate change is balancing the need to shift to cleaner sources of energy in the future with the need to keep the lights on in the here and now. It’s no different for Indonesia, with its rapidly growing economy, as VOA’s Yuni Salim explains in this report narrated by Nova Poerwadi.
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Day: December 11, 2022
NASA’s Orion capsule made a blisteringly fast return from the moon Sunday, parachuting into the Pacific off Mexico to conclude a test flight that should clear the way for astronauts on the next lunar flyby.
The incoming capsule hit the atmosphere at Mach 32, or 32 times the speed of sound, and endured reentry temperatures of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius) before splashing down west of Baja California near Guadalupe Island. A Navy ship quickly moved in to recover the spacecraft and its silent occupants — three test dummies rigged with vibration sensors and radiation monitors.
NASA needed a successful splashdown to stay on track for the next Orion flight around the moon, currently targeted for 2024. Four astronauts will make the trip. That will be followed by a two-person lunar landing as early as 2025.
Astronauts last landed on the moon 50 years ago Sunday. After touching down on Dec. 11, 1972, Apollo 17’s Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent three days exploring the lunar surface, the longest stay of the Apollo era. They were the last of the 12 moonwalkers.
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One of China’s top health experts has warned of a surge in COVID-19 cases, state media said Sunday, in the wake of the government’s decision to abandon its hardline coronavirus strategy.
Shops and restaurants in Beijing are deserted as the country awaits a spike in infections following the decision to reduce the scope of mandatory testing, allow some positive cases to quarantine at home and end large-scale lockdowns.
Top epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan told state media in an interview published Sunday that the Omicron strain of the virus prevalent in China was highly transmissible and could lead to a surge in cases.
“The [current] Omicron mutation… is very contagious… one person can transmit to 22 people,” said Zhong, a leading advisor to the government throughout the pandemic.
“Currently, the epidemic in China is… spreading rapidly, and under such circumstances, no matter how strong the prevention and control is, it will be difficult to completely cut off the transmission chain.”
The easing of China’s so-called “zero-COVID” policy followed nationwide protests against harsh virus rules that had battered the economy and confined millions to their homes.
But the country is now facing a surge of cases it is ill-prepared to handle, with millions of elderly still not fully vaccinated and underfunded hospitals lacking the capacity to take on huge numbers of patients.
The country has one intensive care unit bed for 10,000 people, Jiao Yahui, director of the Department of Medical Affairs at the National Health Commission, warned Friday.
She said 106,000 doctors and 177,700 nurses will be redirected to intensive care units to cope with the spike in coronavirus patients but did not offer details on how this would affect the health system’s ability to treat other diseases.
‘I’m afraid to step out’
Long lines sprung up outside pharmacies in Beijing on Sunday as residents rushed to stockpile cold and fever medicines and antigen test kits.
Some told AFP they were ordering drugs from pharmacies in nearby cities.
“I’ve asked my family in Shijiazhuang to courier fever medicine because nearby pharmacies don’t have stocks,” said Julie Jiang, a Beijing resident.
Dozens of restaurants and small businesses in Beijing put up signs saying they were “temporarily closed”, without offering details.
Several major online grocery and food delivery platforms including Meituan, Fresh Hippo and Ding Dong were struggling to operate in Beijing without enough delivery drivers.
“I’m afraid to step out,” said Liu Cheng, a mother of two young children living in central Beijing’s Jianguomen area.
“Many of my friends with COVID symptoms have tested positive when self-testing, but they haven’t reported this to the authorities or gone to the hospital.”
Official caseloads in China have dropped sharply in the wake of the government’s decision to scrap routine mass testing, with only special groups including healthcare workers and delivery drivers exempt from the rules.
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After making a close pass at the moon and venturing further into space than any previous habitable spacecraft, NASA’s Orion capsule is due to splash down Sunday in the final test of a high-stakes mission called Artemis.
As it hurtles into Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of 40,000 kph, the gumdrop-shaped traveler will have to withstand a temperature of 2,800 degrees Celsius — about half that of the surface of the sun.
Splashdown in the Pacific off the Mexican island of Guadalupe is scheduled for 1739 GMT (9:39 am local time).
Achieving success in this mission of just over 25 days is key for NASA, which has invested tens of billions of dollars in the Artemis program due to take people back to the moon and prepare for an onward trip, someday, to Mars.
So far, the first test of this uncrewed spacecraft has gone very well.
But it is only in the final minutes of this voyage that the true challenge comes: seeing if Orion’s heat shield, the biggest ever built, actually holds up.
“It is a safety-critical piece of equipment. It is designed to protect the spacecraft and the passengers, the astronauts on board. So the heat shield needs to work,” said Artemis mission manager Mike Sarafin.
A first test of the capsule was carried out in 2014 but that time the capsule stayed in Earth’s orbit, so it came back into the atmosphere at a slower speed of around 32,000 kph.
Choppers, divers and boats
A U.S. Navy ship, the USS Portland, has been positioned in the Pacific to recover the Orion capsule in an exercise that NASA has been rehearsing for years. Helicopters and inflatable boats will also be deployed for this task.
The falling spacecraft will be slowed first by the Earth’s atmosphere and then a web of 11 parachutes until it eases to a speed of 30 kph when it finally hits the Pacific.
Once it is there, NASA will let Orion float for two hours — a lot longer than if astronauts were inside — to collect data.
“We’ll see how the heat soaks back into the crew module and how that affects the temperature inside,” said Jim Geffre, NASA’s Orion vehicle integration manager.
Divers will then attach cables to Orion to hoist it onto the USS Portland, which is an amphibious transport dock vessel, the rear of which will be partly submerged. This water will be pumped out slowly so the spacecraft can rest on a platform designed to hold it.
This should all take about four to six hours from the time the vessel first splashes down.
The Navy ship will then head for San Diego, California, where the spacecraft will be unloaded a few days later.
When it returns to Earth, the spacecraft will have traveled more than 2 million kilometers since it took off Nov. 16 with the help of a monstrous rocket called SLS.
At its nearest point to the moon, it flew less than 130 kilometers from the surface. And it broke the distance record for a habitable capsule, venturing 432,000 kilometers from our planet.
Artemis 2 and 3
Recovering the spacecraft will allow NASA to gather data that is crucial for future missions.
This includes information on the condition of the vessel after its flight, data from monitors that measure acceleration and vibration, and the performance of a special vest put on a mannequin in the capsule to test how to protect people from radiation while flying through space.
Some components of the capsule should be good for reuse in the Artemis 2 mission, which is already in advanced stages of planning.
This next mission planned for 2024 will take a crew toward the moon but still without landing on it. NASA is expected to name the astronauts selected for this trip soon.
Artemis 3, scheduled for 2025, will see a spacecraft land for the first time on the south pole of the moon, which features water in the form of ice.
Only 12 people — all of them white men — have set foot on the moon. They did this during the Apollo missions, the last of which was in 1972.
Artemis is scheduled to send a woman and a person of color to the moon for the first time.
NASA’s goal is to establish a lasting human presence on the moon, through a base on its surface and a space station circling around it. Having people learn to live on the moon should help engineers develop technologies for a years-long trip to Mars, maybe in the late 2030s.
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A Japanese space startup launched a spacecraft to the moon Sunday after several delays, a step toward what would be a first for the nation and for a private company.
Ispace Inc’s HAKUTO-R mission took off without incident from Cape Canaveral, Florida, after two postponements caused by inspections of its SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
More than a hundred people at a viewing party in Tokyo roared in applause when the rocket fired and lifted into the dark skies.
“I’m so happy. After repeated delays, it’s good that we had a proper launch today,” said Yuriko Takeda, a 28-year-old worker at an electronics company who joined the gathering.
“I have this image of the American flag from the Apollo landing, so while this is just the launch, the fact that it’s a private company going there with a rover is a really meaningful step.”
The national space agencies of the United States, Russia and China have achieved soft landings on Earth’s nearest neighbor in the past half century, but no companies have.
Mission success would also be a milestone in space cooperation between Japan and the United States at a time when China is becoming increasingly competitive and rides on Russian rockets are no longer available in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
It would also cap a space-filled few days for Japan, after billionaire Yusaku Maezawa revealed on Friday the eight crew members he hopes to take on a SpaceX flyby of the moon as soon as next year.
The name HAKUTO refers to the white rabbit that lives on the moon in Japanese folklore, in contrast to the Western idea of a man in the moon. The project was a finalist in the Google Lunar XPRIZE before being revived as a commercial venture.
Next year is the Year of the Rabbit in the Asian calendar.
The craft, assembled in Germany, is expected to land on the moon in late April.
The company hopes this will be the first of many deliveries of government and commercial payloads. The ispace craft aims to put a small NASA satellite into lunar orbit to search for water deposits before touching down in the Atlas Crater.
The M1 lander will deploy two robotic rovers, a two-wheeled, baseball-sized device from Japan’s JAXA space agency and the four-wheeled Rashid explorer made by the United Arab Emirates.
It will also be carrying an experimental solid-state battery made by NGK Spark Plug Co.
“The Rashid rover is part of the United Arab Emirates ambitious space program,” said Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, who is also vice president of the United Arab Emirates and who watched the launch at the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre.
“Our aim is knowledge transfer and developing our capabilities and to add a scientific imprint in the history of humanity,” he tweeted.
Privately funded ispace has a contract with NASA to ferry payloads to the moon from 2025 and is aiming to build a permanently staffed lunar colony by 2040.
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Mohammad Shafi Dar, 55, picks up a piece of willow, called a cleft, and places it on a vertical bandsaw to cut out a V-joint from the wooden block before passing it on to one of his colleagues, Mohammad Yousuf Bhat, 45, for further modification on a mechanical planer.
Both Dar and Bhat are pod-shavers, as the people who make cricket bats are known, for Model Sports Industries, a cricket bat factory, in Bijbehera, a town in the Anantnag district in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Following the footsteps of his father, Dar joined the multimillion-dollar cricket bat industry in the Himalayan region when he was a teenager.
The industry provides income to more than 100,000 people, including migrant workers who come to Kashmir from different parts of India, such as Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Bihar and Jharkhand.
Fear of losing jobs
For the first time in his four-decade career, Dar fears losing his job because of a shortage of willow, the raw material of cricket bats that mainly comes from England and Kashmir.
Trunks of willow trees are first cut into lengths according to the size of the bat to be produced. The trunk sections are later split with the help of a hammer and wedge before being carved into a more familiar cricket bat shape.
“In all these years, I have never felt insecure about losing the job, but in the last couple of years, bat production has decreased gradually, as a result proprietors are firing employees,” Dar told VOA. “Half a dozen men have been removed from their jobs at this workshop,” he said, adding that the situation is similar in many other factories.
Skilled craftsmen who were fired, Dar said, had been making bats for decades.
“A few of the fired pod-shavers went on to become casual laborers, others joined the agriculture sector and the rest became sand diggers,” Dar said. “Not everyone can cross the line from being a skilled craftsman to becoming a casual worker or a farmer,” he said, adding that locals as well as migrant workers are going through tough times.
Behind the materials shortage
All along the national highway connecting the Kashmir valley to the rest of India, 400 factories welcome visitors with willow-clefts piled up on both sides of the road.
Fayaz Ahmad Dar, president of the Kashmir Cricket Bat Manufacturers Union, told VOA the raw materials shortage began five years ago because of accelerated tree cutting and a lack of planting of new willow trees in the region.
“Today we only receive 50% of the supply in our factories,” Dar said. “Our business is on the verge of extinction due to complete negligence,” he added.
Local farmers, Dar said, plant poplar or cottonwood instead of willow because they grow quickly and are in demand by plywood factories, earning them money faster.
“We cannot blame local farmers for not planting willow as it is their own choice,” Dar told VOA. “We expect (the) government to act as soon as possible in order to inject new blood into Kashmir bat industry, as it generates income worth 1 billion rupees [$12.1 million],” he said.
Kashmir willow bats, Dar said, supply nearly 70% of the global market, as they are more affordable than those made from English willow.
“The price of a good quality English willow starts from $300 and can go up to $1,500, but the same quality bats produced locally begin from $50 and vary up to $500,” Dar said.
“Thus, people belonging to cricket-playing nations prefer to buy our bats, thus making Kashmir the largest exporter of cricket bats in the world,” he said, adding that nearly 3 million bats are manufactured in Kashmir annually and are exported to 125 cricket-playing countries.
In a new workshop of GR8 Sports in Anantnag’s Sangam neighborhood, Niaz Ul Kabir, co-owner and production head, ensures each bat is manufactured according to his brand’s standards.
Kabir said GR8 Sports marketing agents approached several international cricketers to test GR8 Sports bats. He said the response from the veteran cricketers spurred them to approach the International Cricket Council, the governing body of international cricket, and get approval so that international cricketers can use their product.
50 out of 400 factories shut
Kashmir cricket bat industry stakeholders have approached the Kashmir government for help, as 50 out of 400 factories have closed workshops because they are out of raw materials.
“We met the honorable director of commerce and Industries of Kashmir and highlighted the issues bat manufacturers are facing,” Dar, the president of Kashmir Cricket Bat Manufacturers, said. “The director was presented with the facts and figures about the growing demands of cricket bats globally following the expansion of the sport from 10 countries to over 100 countries in the last decade,” he added.
The manufacturers, Dar said, want the government to identify multiple locations for the planting of willow trees in Kashmir.
Dar said after the meeting the department, in association with the Faculty of Forest of Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir, distributed 1,500 willow saplings to many bat manufacturers, which he said, “in no way is sufficient meet the requirement.” Dar added that the annual demand of one manufacturer is 10,000 to 15,000 trees.
VOA asked Saloni Rai, director of commerce and industries of Kashmir, for her response to the industry representatives. She said that she “does not currently have enough information regarding the subject and will comment after going through the data thoroughly.”
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The U.S. is closely monitoring Chinese activities that potentially threaten American assets in space as debris rapidly accumulates in low Earth orbit, the head of United States military operations in space said Friday.
Commander of U.S. Space Command Army Gen. James Dickinson also cheered the overwhelming passage in the United Nations of a resolution that countries not conduct direct-ascent antisatellite tests that create vast fields of space debris, which endanger satellites and space stations.
Of the four countries that have conducted such ASAT tests, the United States was the only one that voted in favor, while China and Russia voted no and India abstained.
“We can’t continue to contribute to the debris that we find in the space domain,” Dickinson said in a telephone news conference with reporters in Asia. Most of that debris lies in crucial low Earth orbit, which has become “congested, competitive and contested,” he said.
Even tiny shards of metal can pose a danger and the number of objects is growing rampantly. Space Command is now tracking more than 48,000 in near Earth orbit, including satellites, telescopes, space stations and pieces of debris of all sizes, up from 25,000 just three years ago, Dickinson said.
China in 2003 became the third government to send an astronaut into orbit on its own after the former Soviet Union and the United States. Its program has advanced steadily since.
The Chinese space program drew rare international criticism after it conducted an unannounced test in 2007 in which it used a missile to blow up a defunct Chinese satellite, creating debris that continues to pose a hazard.
Beijing believes that “space is a very important piece to not only their economic or the global economic environment, but also the military environment, so we continue to watch that very closely as they continue to increase capabilities,” Dickinson said.
The secretive Chinese program is run by the ruling Communist Party’s military wing, the People’s Liberation Army, precluding it from participating in the International Space Station or engaging in most forms of cooperation with NASA.
Proceeding with little outside help, China last month launched the last of three modules for its own space station, which briefly hosted six Chinese astronauts in space during a turnover of the three-person crew. It also has rovers on the moon and Mars and is planning a crewed lunar mission sometime in the future.
With U.S.-China tensions high over Taiwan, the South China Sea, trade and technology, space is increasingly becoming a potential flash point. In addition, the Pentagon last week released an annual China security report that warned Beijing would likely have 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035, and that it has provided no clarity on how it plans to use them.
China continues to “build capabilities that, really quite frankly, hold most of our assets at risk in the space domain,” Dickinson said.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has further showed space to be a “contested domain that must be protected. It’s a role that we at U.S. Space Command take very seriously,” he said.
“I’m seriously focused on our pacing challenge, China,” Dickinson said, using a description of Beijing that has become standard in the Pentagon. “The unified stance of our allies and partners is critical in countering the coercion and subversion that threatens the international rules-based order here in the Indo-Pacific and beyond,” Dickinson said.
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As soon as Hansel Emmanuel began to weave in from the right wing, his Northwestern State teammates started to stand up. When he dribbled between two defenders for a stylish layup, most everyone in the gym joined them.
The freshman with one arm was finally on the board.
And a minute later Saturday night, the 198-centimeter-tall guard provided the most defining moment of the game — a thunderous dunk in a 91-73 win over Louisiana-Monroe.
“I had to keep going after the layup — that was my first bucket,” Emmanuel said in a quote posted on the Southland Conference school’s website. “I know my family was proud. I had to keep working. You can’t give up.”
The 19-year-old Emmanuel, who lost his left arm just below his shoulder in a childhood accident, wound up scoring five points. He was 2 of 3 from the field and 1 of 5 from the foul line, along with two rebounds in eight minutes.
Emmanuel had played in four previous games for the Demons this season, shooting 0 for 2 with one rebound.
Born in the Dominican Republic, Emmanuel was 6 when a pile of cinderblocks fell on him. The damage was so severe, doctors had to amputate his arm.
Emmanuel later moved to Florida and became a big scorer in high school. He drew interest from Memphis, among other colleges, and became an internet sensation last year for his highlight videos posted to social media.
The Demons (8-2) were well on the way to their seventh straight win when Emmanuel started to drive toward his first points. He smoothly cut to the hoop for his layup with 2 1/2 minutes left.
With slightly over a minute to go, Emmanuel was fouled and made the first free throw. He missed the second shot but corralled a loose ball just beyond the foul line, took one dribble and threw down a high-flying dunk.
The slam made it 89-70 and brought Emmanuel’s teammates and the crowd of 1,627 to their feet again for an even longer cheer.
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An emerald inscribed for a Mughal emperor. A Safavid-period knotted wool carpet. An Ottoman-era curtain, intricately embroidered with metal threads, which was part of the covering of the Kaaba, the cube-shaped structure in Mecca that Muslims consider the metaphorical “house of God.”
Like tiles in a mosaic, the collection in Doha’s Museum of Islamic Art, or MIA, provides visitors with a peek into diverse aspects of Muslim heritage, art and craftmanship with items spanning three continents and many centuries.
In a capital where so much is new, the museum showcases a variety of the old and historic. And with soccer fans from around the world descending on Qatar, the story that the museum tells now has a bigger audience.
On a recent day, visitors — some wearing soccer jerseys or scarves — stopped to snap photos, inspect objects, read labels or browse shelves lined with books and souvenirs.
“The architecture itself is very good. Also, I like the inside displays; the pieces are very impressive,” said Bert Liu, who lives in the United States. “Before I knew very little about Islamic history but after I saw a lot of objects, I feel I learned more.”
Qatari officials say they hope the tournament will help provide visitors with a better understanding of their culture and that of the larger region. The World Cup host has faced intense criticism over rights issues, including the treatment of migrant workers, and accusations of “sports-washing” or attempting to use the event’s prestige to remake its image.
Qatari officials have argued that the country’s progress and achievements are being overlooked. The ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, said some of the attacks on the first Arab and Muslim country to host the World Cup included “fabrications and double standards.”
Sports is not the only area where Qatar, a small country with big ambitions and the vast wealth to match, has sought to leave its mark as part of a quest for global influence. It has also been aiming to carve out a name in the culture and arts arenas, including with museums like MIA.
“Qatar has invested much in terms of establishing itself as a Middle Eastern hub for culture and art with soft-power aspirations being a key factor driving these efforts,” said Giorgio Cafiero, CEO of Gulf State Analytics, a geopolitical risk consultancy based in Washington, D.C. “Museums in Doha have done much to help the Qataris promote their culture, tell their stories, and share their unique perspectives with global audiences.”
And now, he noted, many soccer fans may be visiting the region for the first time.
Qatar is far from alone in such grand, well-financed cultural endeavors, with other Gulf countries also vying for tourists as they strive to diversify their economies.
“We have the ambition to show Islamic culture in all its diversity and sort of also show the regional differences,” said Julia Gonnella, MIA’s director. “The idea is really for education, for diversity, also to build up a society beyond oil and gas.”
The museum attracts both Muslim and non-Muslim visitors, she said, adding that MIA’s “first audience” is the people who live in Qatar.
Designed by renowned architect I.M. Pei, the MIA complex has a presence that is somehow both imposing and simple, with its waterfront location, light-colored exteriors and sharp and clean architectural lines. Geometric shapes and Islamic motifs appear inside. Windows drench the surrounding area in sunlight and provide a view of modern-looking buildings jutting into the sky across the water.
The museum’s collection includes metalwork, ceramics, woodwork and textiles. Items on display include jewelry, manuscripts of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, armor and arms.
Gabriel Petersen, who visited from Australia, said he was impressed by how old some of the objects were and enjoyed seeing exhibits from different parts of the world.
“It’s just a different culture,” he said. “You don’t get much of that in Australia.”
The museum also offers glimpses into religious beliefs and rituals. Visitors can read about the five pillars of Islam — the profession of faith, prayer, almsgiving, fasting and hajj or pilgrimage — or learn about hajj rituals and different funerary practices in the Islamic world.
Initially opened in 2008, the museum closed in April 2021 and reopened a month before the World Cup with expanded interpretive materials to help provide more context for items on display.
A temporary exhibition titled Baghdad: Eye’s Delight celebrates the capital of Iraq as one of the “most important and influential cities in the Islamic world” and highlights its role as a city “of power, scholarship, and riches,” according to the museum. The exhibition features objects on loan from world-renowned institutions, MIA says.
Rob Humphreys, who was visiting from Wales, said he particularly enjoyed viewing Baghdad from a different angle.
“At least in Europe, we tend to associate Baghdad with … war and so on and the invasion,” he said. “Learning about how important Baghdad was as a cultural and scientific and trading city … was really interesting.”
Catrin Evans, his wife, admired the quality of craftmanship dating back centuries in MIA’s collection and thought the calligraphy, jewelry and copies of the Quran were “awe inspiring.”
“We tend to think of everything in a European, Western perspective,” she said. “This definitely opened my eyes to the background to Islam and also the culture here.”
At one point, the couple thought of not coming to Qatar for the World Cup because of misgivings over rights’ issues, including those of LGBTQ people.
“We’ve come to learn, but it doesn’t mean we put our values to one side while we’re here,” Humphreys said, adding cultural exchanges are also important to them.
“Museums are always good places for generating new ideas, often controversial,” he said. “But it’s a space to express those and explore them and talk and have a dialogue.”
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A winter storm packing high winds and potentially several feet of snow blew into the Sierra Nevada on Saturday, triggering thousands of power outages in California, closing a mountain highway at Lake Tahoe, and prompting an avalanche warning in the backcountry.
The storm is expected to bring as much as 1.2 meters of snow to the upper elevations around Lake Tahoe by Monday morning, the National Weather Service said.
A 400-kilometer stretch of the Sierra from north of Reno to south of Yosemite National Park was under a winter storm warning at least until Sunday.
“Travel will be very difficult to impossible with whiteout conditions,” the weather service said in Reno, where rain started falling Saturday.
A flood advisory was in effect from Sacramento to the California coast near San Francisco.
The U.S. Forest Service issued an avalanche warning for the backcountry in the mountains west of Lake Tahoe where it said “several feet of new snow and strong winds will result in dangerous avalanche conditions.”
A stretch of California Highway 89 was closed because of heavy snow between Tahoe City and South Lake Tahoe, California, the highway patrol said. Interstate 80 between Reno and Sacramento remained open, but chains were required on tires for most vehicles.
More than 30,000 customers were without power in the Sacramento area at one point Saturday morning. It had been restored to all but about 3,300 by midday. But forecasters warned winds gusting up to 80 kph could bring down tree branches and power lines later in the day.
About 25 centimeters of snow already had fallen at Mammoth Mountain ski resort south of Yosemite where more than 3 meters of snow has been recorded since early November.
“It just seems like every week or so, another major storm rolls in,” resort spokeswoman Lauren Burke said.
The storm warning stretches into Sunday for most of the Sierra and doesn’t expire until Monday around Tahoe.
As much as 45 to 71 centimeters of snow was forecast through the weekend at lake level, and up to 1.2 meters at elevations above 2,133 meters with 80 kph winds and gusts up to 160 kph.
On the Sierra’s eastern slope, a winter weather advisory runs from 10 p.m. Saturday to 10 a.m. for Reno, Sparks and Carson City, with snow accumulations of 2.5-7.5 cm on valley floors and up to 20 cm above 1,524 meters.
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