On copycats:

Another bank robbery after Monday's.

On knowing your sources:

Finally, I can sleep after tracking down the source of a widely distributed e-mail predicting El Nino flooding around California this week...

Daniel Swain, 20, studies atmospheric science at UC Davis. He started his weather blog in 2006, and it never got much traffic outside its niche audience, until his Jan. 12 post “hit a nerve” and got forwarded all over the place.
My editor got an e-mail with some of the post, which noted the Pacific jet streams that caused the rain and wind around the state this week could repower and dump a bunch of snow which would melt and overwhelm dams, causing major floods (which hasn't happened yet.)
The e-mail landed on my desk, and I called everybody whose tags were attached to the strand: the county, UC Berkeley, a meteorologist with US Geological Survey who is currently in Japan, and Cal FIRE. Nobody would claim this work, until Cal FIRE spokesguy Daniel Berlant sleuthed it out and gave me Swain’s web site.
Swain said he made the predictions a week and a half before the storm started, and there's still a chance we've gotten a lot more snow than usual.
He said frankly, it’s a little scary people are reproducing information and forwarding it all over the place without knowing where they got it from.
I agree, but it made for a fun chase.
You can find my weather story at tracypress.com

(209) 815-2769

Loyal readers,
I now have a cell phone on which you can reach me day and night by voice or text message.
Of course, my desk line still works: 830-4225, and my e-mail is ctomlin@tracypress.com.
Be safe in this soggy mess and call me.