Crushed by falling trees. Drowned in floodwaters. The deadly toll of California storms worsens
HAYLEY SMITH, LA Times: "A toddler crushed by falling trees. A 5-year-old swept away by floodwaters before his mother’s eyes and still missing. Three bodies recovered from inside or near submerged vehicles on a rural stretch of freeway.
As a series of storms continues to pummel California, officials say the havoc is a testament to the unexpected ferocity of extreme weather. By Tuesday evening, at least 17 people have been killed in circumstances directly related to a train of atmospheric rivers that has inundated the state since New Year’s Eve, bringing the death toll from the storms higher than the last two wildfire seasons combined.
“What we’re seeing is absolutely a result of weather whiplash,” said Brian Ferguson, deputy director of crisis communication at the California Office of Emergency Services."
Wind, rain and thunder headed for Sacramento. Here’s when next round of storms will hit
BRIANNA TAYLOR, SacBee: "Enjoy the couple of hours of quiet because Northern California will soon be hit with back-to-back storms packing heavy rainfall, gusty winds and thunderstorms.
The next storm will slam California Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service, increasing the risk of flooding, mudslides and high river levels. The rain is predicted to calm Tuesday night to make space for yet another “atmospheric river” storm Wednesday. In Sacramento, thunderstorms are likely Tuesday afternoon and will be coupled with heavy rain and wind gusts as high as 32 mph.
The next round of thunderstorms are forecast to roar between late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning.
‘It’s really devastating’: A tiny California town is underwater after storm deluge
JESSICA GARRISON and SUMMER LIN, LA Times: "The entire community of Planada, a town of about 4,000 people just east of Merced, was evacuated Tuesday morning amid rising waters from a breached levee.
By late morning, street after street was flooded with brown water that sent cars bobbing along like boats, drifting near half-submerged stop signs.
Merced County Supervisor Rodrigo Espinosa, who represents the area, said he spent Monday evening trying to lay sandbags in a fruitless attempt to hold back the water."
IRS gives drenched Californians an extra month to file tax returns
JON HEALEY, LA Times: "The Internal Revenue Service offered a lifeboat of sorts Tuesday to California residents and businesses floundering in the atmospheric river: More time to pay their income taxes.
The agency announced that taxpayers in any county covered by a federal emergency declaration would have until May 15 to file their income tax returns for 2022. So far, 31 of the state’s 58 counties are in that group, including Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego and Ventura counties; if the declaration is extended to more counties, the IRS will grant them the extra time as well.
The relief will be offered automatically to anyone whose address on file at the IRS is in a disaster area — no need to ask for help or alert the agency that you’ll be filing late. If the IRS sends you a penalty notice anyway because you missed a deadline that should have been waived, the agency advises you to call the number on the notice to have the penalty erased."
Will XBB.1.5, the latest Omicron subvariant, fuel another California COVID surge? What we know
LUKE MONEY, RONG-GONG Lin II, LA Times: "The latest Omicron subvariant — perhaps the most infectious yet — has gained a foothold in California, a potentially problematic development given the possibility of a post-holiday spike.
However, it’s unclear whether the circulation of this latest strain, XBB.1.5, will alter the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A slew of alphanumerically designated coronavirus subvariants, each more easily spread than the last, surfaced last year. Those emergent strains, while disruptive, did not come close to spawning the same sort of devastation seen in earlier waves."
Newsom budget includes naloxone for middle and high schools while largely avoiding cuts
HOWARD BLUME, DEBBIE TRUONG and TERESA WATANABE, LA Times: "Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday pledged to provide naloxone — the overdose reversal drug — to every middle and high school, a low-cost but pressing need in a proposed education spending plan that would sustain school budgets but largely end a massive recent expansion of K-12 and college funding.
The overall budget proposal for K-12 school systems was one of general stability in ongoing funds — although local officials are worried about the wind-down of one-time COVID-relief dollars, the effect of inflation and declining revenues from a weakened economy.
The state four-year college systems have concerns of their own, despite a proposed 5% increase in ongoing base funding. Because last year’s budget was boosted by one-time dollars, the cumulative effect would be a net decrease — and colleges also have been hurt by inflation. In addition, the University of California must pay for significant compensation increases for graduate teaching and research assistants — agreed to after a five-week strike."
California schools, community colleges tofaces slight drop in funding, first in a decade
JOHN FENSTERWALD, EdSource: "Funding for schools and community colleges will fall next year for the first time in a decade, under the first pass at the 2023-24 state budget, which Gov. Gavin Newsom released Tuesday. Both the University of California and the California State University would receive 5% base increases. (Go here for more details on higher education funding.)
Newsom projected a drop of $1.5 billion below the $110.4 billion the Legislature approved last June for Proposition 98, the formula that apportions how much of the state’s general fund goes to TK-12 and community colleges.
He said that the state would meet the statutory requirement to pay a projected 8.1% cost of living adjustment, the highest rate in four decades. School organizations have reiterated that funding COLA would be their top budget priority this year."
Amid heavy rain, Bass takes on a huge, long-standing homeless encampment in Venice
DAVID ZAHNISER and GENARO MOLINA, LA Times: "Savanna Moran took about an hour to weigh the offer made by homeless outreach workers: Move into a warm motel room about a dozen miles away — but in exchange, give up her tent on Hampton Drive.
After years of living on the streets, the 30-year-old was ready to make a change. Heavy rain was on the way, and she didn’t want to be out in it.
When the time came, Moran and her boyfriend held on to their phones, headphones, bicycles, audio speakers and some of their clothes. They recorded a video for the city agreeing to let sanitation crews toss everything else, including the tent."
Bird strike forces flight with UC Davis men’s basketball team to return to Sacramento
ROSALIO AHUMADA and JOE DAVIDSON, SacBee: "A Southwest Airlines flight to Southern California carrying passengers, including the UC Davis men’s basketball team, was forced Tuesday night to return to Sacramento after a bird struck one of its engines.
Southwest Flight 1096 had departed from the Sacramento International Airport at 5:47 p.m., according to FlightAware. Shortly after takeoff, a bird struck the left engine of the jet, said Scott Johnson, a spokesman for the county’s airport system. No injuries were reported.
The UC Davis basketball team was on its way to Hollywood Burbank Airport. The team was on a Los Angeles-area road trip to play against California State University, Northridge, on Wednesday and Cal State Fullerton on Saturday.
The Chronicle, GERRY DIAZ: "Following Tuesday’s thunderstorms across Northern California, the storm door is looking to remain wide open today. That’s thanks to a low-pressure system off the coast of the Pacific Northwest that will quickly funnel atmospheric moisture from Hawai’i toward Northern California and the Oregon border.
Thankfully, the bulk of that moisture is slated to stay north of the Bay Area, but remnant water vapor from yesterday’s thunderstorms will merge with some of today’s moisture and produce another round of showers in the region. And depending on how intense some of today’s isolated thundershowers become, the excess rain will only slow down the receding floodwaters that have been sitting over low-lying areas and floodplains for days.
The low-pressure system off the coast of the Pacific Northwest will quickly stream moisture toward Northern California today, behaving like a weak pineapple express type of atmospheric river. The most apparent impacts for the Bay Area will be light rain showers returning to the region from 10 a.m. through 4 p.m., which will be the most pronounced in the North Bay. Marin, Sonoma, Napa and Solano counties will be the closest to both the atmospheric river and the low-pressure system, allowing for faster formation of rain bands there compared to the rest of the Bay Area."
The Chronicle, Julie Johnson/Sarah Ravani/Hannah Hagemann/Erin Allday: "The stubborn march of storms battering Northern California since New Year’s Eve took a stunning twist Tuesday afternoon as lightning, thunder and hail struck the Bay Area. And there is still more rain forecast for the days ahead.
San Francisco residents received a loud phone alert warning of the potential for thunderstorms around 12:15 p.m. Tuesday, and not long after, the skies opened up and thunder roared overhead. Lightning struck Sutro Tower. Pea-size hail collected in the streets. A massive tree tumbled into a Muni bus, though no one was injured.
The rare display of remarkable weather had moved past San Francisco on its way inland by midafternoon, though any reprieve from the violent storms that have hammered the region for a week and a half likely will be short-lived. Light precipitation, and possibly more thunderstorms, are expected to return Wednesday and continue over the next four days, potentially dropping another 2 to 6 inches of rain around the greater Bay Area."
The Chronicle, JOE GAROFOLI: "There is a big reason that Rep. Katie Porter’s first U.S. Senate campaign stop will be in the East Bay next week: Geography — perhaps as much as anything — will matter a lot in the 2024 Senate race that began in earnest with Porter’s announcement Tuesday that she’s in.
If the race is between two Southern California candidates with largely similar progressive records — like Porter of Orange County and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank — the voter-rich Bay Area will go a long way toward deciding the winner. If one or more other Democrats enter — including Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, or Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Santa Clara — then that math changes, analysts said."
The Chronicle, SARAH RAVANI: "The Alameda County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday recommended a recount of some of the county’s November election results after an unprecedented error in counting ranked-choice votes changed the outcome of an Oakland school board seat.
But it’s unclear if the Registar of Voters can legally do a recount.
The dispute is already headed to the courts after one of the candidates filed a petition in Alameda County Superior Court."
The Chronicle; JILL TUCKER: "The drama and intrigue over who will be the next San Francisco school board president will have to wait two weeks after the board failed Tuesday night to achieve a super-majority to elect the next person to lead the seven-member body.
Following emotional public comment, the board split in its vote, with the four more progressive-leaning members backing current Vice President Kevine Boggess and the three more moderate members, all allies of the mayor, siding with President Jenny Lam.
The president needed five votes to be elected Tuesday, but that will change at the next board meeting in January. That means Boggess is on track to become president because a simple majority will be enough to elect a new leader at that time."
The Chronicle, J.D. MORRIS: "San Francisco Police Commissioner Cindy Elias has been reappointed to her seat months before the end of her current term, despite objections from moderate city supervisors who wanted to delay the decision or opposed it entirely.
The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday granted another term to Elias in a 7-4 vote that reflected her broad support from the board’s progressive majority. Elias currently serves as president of the 7-member commission, which oversees the Police Department and conducts disciplinary hearings into the conduct of officers."
AP, MICHELLE CHAPMAN: "Thousands of flight delays and cancellations rippled across the U.S. early Wednesday after computer outage led to a grounding order for all departing aircraft by the Federal Aviation Administration.
The FAA is working to restore what is known as the Notice to Air Missions System.
Before commencing a flight, pilots are required to consult NOTAMs, or Notices to Air Missions, which list potential adverse impacts on flights, from runway construction to the potential for icing. The system used to be telephone-based, with pilots calling dedicated flight service stations for the information, but has now moved online."
The Hill, DANIEL DE VISE: "Never in recent history, perhaps, have so many Americans viewed the Supreme Court as fundamentally partisan.
Public approval of the nine-justice panel stands near historic lows. Declining faith in the institution seems rooted in a growing concern that the high court is deciding cases on politics, rather than law. In one recent poll, a majority of Americans opined that Supreme Court justices let partisan views influence major rulings.
Three quarters of Republicans approve of the high court’s recent job performance. But Democrats’ support has plummeted to 13 percent, and more than half the nation overall disapproves of how the court is doing its job."
