California records driest year in a century
LA Times, LAURA ANAYA-MORGA: "In a year of both extreme heat and extreme drought, California has reported its driest water year in terms of precipitation in a century, and experts fear the coming 12 months could be even worse.
The Western Regional Climate Center added average precipitation reported at each of its stations and calculated that a total of 11.87 inches of rain and snow fell in California in the 2021 water year. That’s half of what experts deem average during a water year in California: about 23.58 inches.
The climate center tallies rainfall by averaging all of the measured precipitation in the state at the end of a water year, which runs Oct. 1 through Sept. 30."
Why more California women are running for office -- and winning
Sac Bee, LARA KORTE: "As a kid, Mayra Vega kept her head down.
Growing as part of a family of undocumented Mexican immigrants in Napa, Vega’s parents instructed her not to draw attention to herself. Fly under the radar, they said. Don’t get involved.
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“You just work hard, you save your money, and buy a house. That’s what success looked like,” she said. “It was never my parents’ aspirations for me to be in a leadership position. It was not something I was groomed to do or knew anything about.”"
SF Supe Aaron Peskin calls sobriety gratifying as colleagues report improved behavior
The Chronicle, MALLORY MOENCH: "Four months after San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin announced he was entering alcohol treatment and apologized for his tenor amid complaints about his behavior, he told The Chronicle he has stayed sober, saying he has entered a “new chapter.”
Many who work with him at City Hall and in the community said they’ve seen an improvement in Peskin’s demeanor. Mayor London Breed, who has been particularly critical of how some supervisors treat city staff members, declined to discuss Peskin specifically and said she will speak out if she has more concerns.
Peskin said in an interview that he regularly attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and therapy — both firsts for him. He said the pandemic exacerbated “everything for everybody, including myself” and he sought help after “interventions of friends and colleagues.”
Meet some of the women who run California municipal governmet
Sac Bee, JENN MOLINA: "From Sacramento to Woodland to Elk Grove, these leaders are poised to join a pipeline of women who've gone from city government to legislative office, following the likes of Sens. Boxer and Feinstein and Vice President Harris."
As California continues to burn, politicians must have their feet held to the fire
LA Times, GEORGE SKELTON: "Wildfires have always menaced California and that will never stop, especially with climate warming. What we can do is make them more controllable and less catastrophic.
That’s what Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature are attempting to achieve — a bit belatedly — by pouring unprecedented amounts of money into fire prevention.
Sacramento should have been doing this a long time ago. Blame internal squabbles, budget worries and a failure to prioritize the wildfire threat."
'Major cooldown' for Bay Area w/ downpours on the way
The Chronicle, JESSICA FLORES: "Dry conditions and crisp temperatures were in the forecast for Monday, ahead of a burst of rain that is anticipated to drench the Bay Area in amounts unusual for late October.
Forecasters expect a break Monday from the rain that began to fall in parts of the Bay Area and up to the Napa mountains on Sunday evening, ahead of heavier rainfall predicted for this week. Most of the region could see temperatures ranging in the low 50s to mid-60s, with inland areas reaching the low 70s, according to the National Weather Service.
A cold front was expected to bring showers to the Bay Area late Tuesday afternoon, potentially arriving first in the North Bay before spreading to other areas by nightfall."
Opinion: John Eastman isn’t going away quietly.
DAN MORAIN, Washington Post: "Today, Eastman is notorious as the author of a legal memo asserting that Vice President Mike Pence could delay election results from seven states, potentially creating a pathway for President Donald Trump to “win” the 2020 election.
But when I first met him, in 2010, he didn’t seem like a budding seditionist. Back then, the former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was running an uphill campaign to become California’s attorney general and came across as just your average eccentric law professor.
It was a mistake to write off Eastman then. And tempting as it is to dismiss him as a threat neutralized with Trump’s removal from office, it would be an even bigger error to write him off now."
Weather service predicts snow in Sierra Nevada, light rain across NorCal
Sac Bee, VINCENT MOLESKI: "Northern California could see some much-needed precipitation Sunday evening, with several inches of snow forecast over the Sierra Nevada and some light rain showers expected elsewhere.
The National Weather Service’s Sacramento office issued a winter weather advisory for Sunday at 5 p.m. and scheduled to last through Monday at 5 a.m. due to possible hazards over mountain passes as snow moves in.
The weather service is expecting 2 to 8 inches of snowfall in that time period at elevations over 5,000 feet. Lassen Peak could see up to a foot of snow."
More than 35K Bay Area PG&E customers w/o power
The Chronicle, ROLAND LI: "Around 35,000 Bay Area residents were without power on Sunday as rainy weather returned to the region.
PG&E said on its website that among those were 6,882 customers in South San Francisco and 5,264 in Richmond who lost power, with weather as the preliminary cause.
In some of the other affected areas, an additional 6,831 customers in the Dublin and Livermore areas lost power, along with 2,044 customers in Burlingame and San Mateo, 1,684 customers in San Francisco's South of Market, and 1,363 customers in San Leandro and San Lorenzo, PG&E said. The cause for those outages was under investigation."
Work to repair containment lines of California's Caldor Fire continues in El Dorado County
Sac Bee, USFS's CAMERON CLARK: "Fire crews repaired containment lines along the borders of the Caldor Fire in El Dorado County, California, aerial footage shared by USFS Caldor Fire on October 14, 2021 shows.
The fire, that was first reported on August 14, had burned 221,775 acres and was 98 percent contained by October 16.
According to the Eldorado National Forest, crews had repaired 166 miles of containment lines and 208 isolated areas the U.S. Forest Service as of October 13."
Kamala Harris to discuss drought, climate change at Lake Mead
AP, SUMAN NAISHADHAM: "Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday will highlight the problems caused by Western drought as she visits Lake Mead in Nevada and makes the case for the Biden administration's infrastructure and climate change proposals that have stalled in Congress.
Harris will be briefed by Bureau of Reclamation officials about elevation levels at the manmade reservoir that supplies drinking water to 25 million people in the American West and Mexico, White House officials said Sunday.
After a tour, the vice president will make remarks and meet with officials from the Interior Department and other federal and state agencies, including the Southern Nevada Water Authority. She will be joined by U.S. Reps. Dina Titus, Susie Lee and Steven Horsford of Nevada."
For Nancy Pelosi, maybe one last chance to do sonmething really, really big
LA Times, MARK Z BARABAK: "As a San Francisco resident, Nancy Pelosi knows a few things about earthquakes.
So in 2010 when Republicans won the Massachusetts Senate seat once held by Edward M. Kennedy, an upset high on the political Richter scale, it was Pelosi — cool, calm, collected — who sought to steady Democrats and put some starch in their spines.
The loss was widely seen as a referendum on the party’s tortured effort to enact the Affordable Care Act, the signature item on President Obama’s agenda. Many were ready to give up on the far-reaching healthcare law. But Pelosi, then in her first stint as House speaker, insisted capitulation was not an option."
Despite promises to lift some Trump sanctions, Biden leaves Cuba in deep freeze
LA Times, TRACY WILKINSON: "One of Cuba’s most senior diplomats switches from Spanish to English when he describes the pace at which many Cubans expected a new President Biden to ease restrictions on the island nation.
“Swiftly,” Carlos Fernández de Cossío said. Biden had campaigned with the vow of a fast rollback of many of the toughest policies imposed on Cuba by President Trump. But nearly nine months into the Biden administration, little has changed.
To punish Cuba and win political points in Florida, Trump took steps to reverse the diplomatic thaw started by President Obama. Trump suspended remittances, the money Cuban Americans and others send to relatives and friends on the island; made drastic cuts in travel by U.S. citizens to Cuba; blocked some oil shipments to the country; and, on one of the last days of his administration, placed Cuba on the very short list of countries that sponsor terrorism."
Colin Powell dies of COVID-19 complications
AP, ROBERT BURNS: "Colin Powell, who served Democratic and Republican presidents in war and peace but whose sterling reputation was forever stained when he went before the U.N. and made faulty claims to justify the U.S. war in Iraq, has died of COVID-19 complications. He was 84.
A veteran of the Vietnam War, Powell rose to the rank of four-star general and in 1989 became the first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In that role he oversaw the U.S. invasion of Panama and later the U.S. invasion of Kuwait to oust the Iraqi army in 1991.
But his legacy was marred when, in 2003, he went before the U.N. Security Council as secretary of state and made the case for U.S. war against Iraq at a moment of great international skepticism. He cited faulty information claiming Saddam Hussein had secretly stashed away weapons of mass destruction. Iraq’s claims that it had no such weapons represented “a web of lies,” he told the world body."
