How recent rains affected California’s drought and wildfire season
PAUL ROGERS, Mercury News: “After the driest January, February and March in Northern California’s recorded history back to 1849, rains this past week finally brought some relief — and real benefits — across the Bay Area and other parts of the state.
But the wet weather was kind of like receiving wrinkle cream for your birthday, experts said Friday. Better than nothing. But not enough to celebrate.
Simply put, 2 to 3 inches of rain fell in the Santa Cruz Mountains, North Bay Hills and Big Sur over the past week. The Sierra Nevada received 1 to 3 feet of snow over the past week, depending on the location, the most since December.”
What 76 inches of Sierra snowfall looks like from space
The Chronicle, JESSICA FLORES: “The recent storm that brought wet weather to the Bay Area last week dumped an “impressive” amount of snow on the Sierra Nevada for the month of April, said the National Weather Service.
The storm dumped 31.1 inches of snow, increasing April’s snowfall total to 76 inches — “almost double what we received January through March,” the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab tweeted Friday.
Snowfall totals also slightly increased California’s snowpack in the last week to 35% of average as of Friday — up from 28% of average on April 15, according to the California Department of Water Resources.”
The smell of financial distress overwhelms Gilroy Garlic Festival
LA Times, LOUIS SAHAGUN: “The Gilroy Garlic Festival started with what its founders like to say was a “crazy idea”: the city of Gilroy is in garlic country, so why not have a little fun, raise some money, and attract some attention by publicly celebrating the pungent herb?”
The Bay Area farming town has been at it for 42 years, drawing hundreds of thousands of garlic-holics a year and making the festival one of California’s biggest crop parties.
On Saturday, however, Gilroy was reeling from a festival board of director’s announcement that the event was canceled indefinitely due to the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the city’s insurance requirements and adjacent parking areas being absorbed by housing developments.”
Tijuana trash is fooding into San Diego. Here’s the $60,000 fix.
JOSHUA EMERSON SMITH, Union-Tribune: “Rain flushes thousands of pounds of trash a year through Tijuana’s Los Laureles Canyon and into San Diego County. Plastic bottles and car tires clog the estuary in Imperial Beach and pollute the city’s shoreline, where the refuse can harm an array of creatures including birds, lobsters, dolphins and gray whales.
In response, the local nonprofit Wildcoast has constructed a nearly 160-foot-long floating net, known as a trash boom, in a concrete flood-control channel that winds its way through one of Tijuana’s most impoverished neighborhoods. The device unfurls from a black plastic tube that rises with the water level.
The group reported this week that it has trapped roughly 73,000 pounds of trash in the boom so far, much of which has been sold to a recycling company.”
Sacramento mass shooting reveals how gangs have changed, from turf wars to Facebook feuds
JASON POHL, ROSALIO AHUMADA and MARCUS D. SMITH: “The Honda Accord pulled up a bit after midnight on Aug. 11, 2005 and unleashed a hail of bullets on a gold sedan just outside of Sacramento.
Three people were killed and two others wounded in the Power Inn Road shooting. A targeted gang attack was to blame. That same day, less than a mile away, a gunbattle in a residential neighborhood left a man dead in a cul de sac. And nearby a week earlier, a man leaning out of a Buick was shot in the head.
It was a particularly violent summer in south Sacramento, part of an especially deadly year in a region gripped by gun violence. After years of somewhat less attention to gangs and fewer high-profile homicides, the region was again facing a reckoning over a long-simmering problem.”
California Republicans have little power, but lots of confidence at state convention
The Chronicle, JOE GAROFOLI: “For a party that holds so little power in the state, California Republicans sound awfully confident about winning big in November.
Perhaps the most confident is the nation’s top Republican, House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield.
More than 500 supporters at the three-day California Republican Party convention that ended Sunday greeted McCarthy with a standing ovation before he addressed them Saturday, a sign that few cared about him being caught in a lie by reporters for saying he was going to ask President Donald Trump to resign in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Trump reportedly doesn’t hold a grudge toward a loyal acolyte he has fondly referred to as “My Kevin.””
After California postponed its COVID vaccine mandate for kids, experts ponder: Will shots ever be required?
The Chronicle, ERIN ALLDAY: “For a few weeks last fall, mandates that would require all K-12 students to be vaccinated against COVID-19 were becoming ubiquitous.
Dozens of districts across California said they would soon put in place such orders, in some cases as early as January this year. Even before the first vaccines had been authorized for children under age 12, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced plans for a statewide mandate that officials hoped would go into effect this July, on the assumption they’d be formally approved by then
But the path toward school vaccine mandates for COVID has proved rockier than anticipated, and earlier this month, the state announced that it would delay implementation of its mandate until at least July 2023.”
As the City Council bickers, Westminster careens toward bankruptcy
LA Times, ANH DO: “On March 9, the Westminster City Council met until midnight, sparring bitterly about whether local Vietnamese-language YouTube broadcasts were spreading “fake news.”
By then, it was too late in the evening to address another item on the agenda: saving the city from bankruptcy.
At another meeting five days later, the council came no closer to moving forward with the renewal of a 1% sales tax or finding some other way to keep the city afloat.”
Truck convoy protests outside the home of East Bay legislator proposing vaccine mandate, abortion bills
The Chronicle, RICARDO CANO: “A group of people who oppose vaccine mandates drove their trucks and vans in Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood and protested outside the home of an East Bay state legislator while she was reportedly inside.”
The protest, captured in online videos, involved a convoy of about 20 vehicles, according to the California Highway Patrol. Protesters gathered, apparently, in opposition to a pair of bills written by Assembly Member Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, that would, separately, require California businesses to mandate COVID vaccinations among their employees and end a state requirement that coroners investigate stillbirths. Wicks already announced in late March that the vaccination bill was being put on hold.
Officer David Arias, a CHP spokesperson, said protesters remained peaceful and no arrests or citations were issued. The protest convoy remained in the area for about an hour, Arias said, and caused temporary traffic congestion.”
Oakland school district warns union against Friday walkout to protest school closures
The Chronicle, SAM WHITING: “The Oakland Unified School District is threatening legal action against its teachers union if members proceed with the union’s planned one-day strike on Friday to protest the planned closing of district schools.
In a sharply-worded letter sent Saturday to Keith Brown, President of the Oakland Education Association, the school district’s chief governance officer, Joshua Daniels, demanded that the union “immediately cease and desist from moving forward with this strike.”
The union voted overwhelmingly in an electronic poll late last week to authorize the one-day walkout and it’s going ahead on Friday, Brown confirmed to The Chronicle on Sunday.”
One artist’s garage eviction is a cautionary tale of the shifting Bay Area housing crisis
The Chronicle, LAUREN HEPLER: “Andrés Rojo cracked open his sketchbook just before noon at his longtime creative home in technicolor Balmy Alley.
Rojo is a 54-year-old artist from Veracruz also known as Speedy Corona. Some neighbors call him the “mayor” of the mural-adorned alley in San Francisco’s Mission district, where he runs an art studio and bike shop out of a garage full of paint, tools and Burning Man-style, extra-tall bikes.
When the pandemic hit, the garage took on another role: Rojo started living full-time in a back office with worn carpet and no bathroom, heat or running water, he said in a recent eviction lawsuit.”
Warren calls McCarthy a ‘liar’ and ‘traitor’ over Jan. 6 tape
LA Times, HOPE YEN: “Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren is slamming Rep. Kevin McCarthy as a “liar and a traitor” over recordings that show the House Republican leader — despite his denials — placing responsibility on then-President Trump for the Capitol riot and suggesting Trump should resign.
It’s unusually strong language to use against the House Republican leader, who is in line to become speaker — second in presidential succession — if Republicans win control of the House in the November elections.
But Warren’s statement reflects a swell of Democratic criticism against McCarthy. They point to his recorded comments in January 2021 as proof that GOP lawmakers at the highest levels privately acknowledge Trump’s role in the insurrection at the Capitol yet continue to defend him in public.”
Ukraine official: Zelenskyy meets top-level US delegation
AP, DAVID KEYTON: “The U.S. secretaries of state and defense met Sunday night with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the highest-level visit to the country’s capital by an American delegation since the start of Russia's invasion.
The meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, which was confirmed by a senior Ukrainian official, came as Ukraine pressed the West for more powerful weapons against Russia's campaign in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, where Moscow's forces sought to dislodge the last Ukrainian troops in the battered port of Mariupol.
“Yes, they’re meeting with the president. Let’s hope something will be decided on further help,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych told Russian lawyer and activist Mark Feygin on his YouTube show “Feygin Live.” The United States has not yet commented.”
As Finland considers NATO membership, citizens mobilize for an invasion by Russia
LA Times, MICHAEL HUNT: “When the Finnish Reservists’ Assn. recently announced wartime defense courses for civilian women in the southern town of Haemeenlinna, the 400 slots filled almost immediately, with a waiting list of 500 more.
Topics will include shooting, cybersecurity and how to manage the first several days of an invasion from abroad.
“I wouldn’t call it fear,” said Sgt. Sonja Airikki, a 39-year-old reservist who will lead the training next month. “It’s more about being prepared.””