35,000 Without Power

At least 3 people have died as a result of the sever weather that have struck Michigan for the third straight day. Two people delivering newspapers for The Grand Rapids Press drowned Sunday after their car sank in a creek swollen from weekend of thunderstorms that blacked out at least 251,000 Michigan homes and businesses.

High winds also were blamed for the death of a Lansing-area woman.

Tornado warnings issued by the National Weather Service for a dozen counties scattered across the Lower Peninsula had expired by 6 p.m. Severe thunderstorm warnings or watches also expired as the storms moved eastward into Ontario.

There were no immediate reports of funnel cloud touchdowns, but winds clocked at 70 to 80 mph in some areas toppled dozens of power lines and large trees.

Flood warnings remained in effect Sunday afternoon for much of western Lower Michigan, where 3 to 5 inches of rain fell overnight in some areas.

Consumers Energy said about 30,000 out of about 162,000 customers affected by the storm remained without power Sunday afternoon. Detroit Edison said about 13,000 of about 70,000 affected customers were without service as of 5 p.m. Sunday, but that number had soared to 53,000 by 6:15 p.m. as the storms slammed metropolitan Detroit.

Trouble With New Mars Robot

from Yahoo! News

Dirt that the Phoenix Mars Lander scooped recently from the planet's surface may be too clumpy to be analyzed by the machine's onboard system.

A robotic arm retrieved a cup-sized sample of Martian dirt on Friday and placed it on the lander's Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA, which was scheduled to spend about a week determining the soil's water and mineral content.

The TEGA features a screened opening that prevents large particles from clogging it. Only those thinner than 1 mm can pass through, and an infrared beam verifies whether they have entered the instrument. The beam has not yet confirmed any activity and researchers are not sure why.

Scientists suspect the soil may be clumped together too tightly. They may send instructions to vibrate the compartment after they inspect the problem for a day or two.

The $420 million lander spent 10 months journeying from Earth and touched down on Mars 12 days ago. Its three-month mission was proposed after the Mars Odyssey detected frozen water below the Martian surface in 2002.