Good morning. It’s Tuesday, Nov. 19.
- Forecasts call for extreme rainfall across North Coast.
- Berkeley gets ready to join encampment crackdown.
- And parrots face pellet gun attacks in San Gabriel Valley.
Statewide
1.
An atmospheric river rolling off the Pacific this week could be the strongest to hit parts of Northern California in years, meteorologists said. The outlook was most ominous for the North Coast region, where the storm system is expected to stall for days, dumping as much as 20 inches of rain between Tuesday night and Saturday along with winds powerful enough to topple trees. Flooding is likely in the Sacramento Valley and along the coast north of Sonoma County as streams and rivers rise above their banks. “It’ll be a doozy,” wrote climate scientist Daniel Swain. Fox Weather | S.F. Chronicle
- Predicted rainfall:
- See forecast animation. 👉 Scripps
2.
During her campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris spent an astonishing $100 million per week. There were drone shows, millions of dollars directed to social influencers, and advertising on the Sphere in Las Vegas, pictured above. Yet despite a significant financial advantage, Harris became the first Democratic presidential candidate to lose the national popular vote in two decades, ceding every battleground state to Donald Trump. The New York Times tracked how Harris burned through $1.5 billion in 15 weeks.
3.
After Americans voted on Nov. 5, Florida finished counting its ballots in four days. Yet as of Monday, California still had nearly 700,000 unprocessed ballots. Two House races in the state remained undecided, leaving the size of the Republican majority an open question. The Washington Post editorial board said California’s agonizingly slow ballot-counting is “more than just an irritant” for political pundits: “The state’s vote-tallying pace risks diminishing public confidence in elections and impeding the presidential transition.”
4.
In a wonderful essay, the author Myriam Gurba wrote about Dorothea Lange’s iconic “Migrant Mother,” Florence Thompson, who became “a symbol of White women’s destitution” but was in fact Indigenous. On a research trip to Nipomo, where Thompson was said to have made camp, Gurba half hoped to find a shrine. Instead, she found indifference. “‘Migrant Mother’ shaped my moral imagination, and I think that that’s the photograph’s primary threat, the main reason we neither see nor hear much about Florence Thompson in Nipomo or Santa Maria,” she wrote. Places Journal
Northern California
5.
More than 75 cities have imposed new restrictions on homeless encampments since the Supreme Court upheld a ban on sleeping outdoors in June. Now Berkeley, a city so liberal that Vice President Kamala Harris downplayed her origins there, is getting ready to join the crackdown. People are frustrated, explained Mayor Jesse Arreguín: “We’re not going to arrest people. We’re going to be thoughtful, we’re going to offer alternatives — but we’re going to be firm.” New York Times
6.
One person died after a boat capsized near Bodega Bay on Monday, making it the third deadly capsizing in the area this month, authorities said. All told, seven people have died. Details about the latest incident were scarce. Officials said it involved a recreational boat with five people aboard navigating waters in hazardous conditions. The four other passengers were hospitalized. KGO | KRON
- Jude Khammoungkhoune, 13, is the sole survivor of the Nov. 2 sinking, which killed his father and four others. On Saturday, he returned to Bodega Bay for the first time since the tragedy to pray. Mercury News
7.
Four nights a week, a tiny band of biologists sling shotguns over their shoulders and slip into the redwood forests of Northern California to kill barred owls. They are part of an audacious effort to stop an invasive species from driving a native species, the northern spotted owl, into extinction. Madeleine Cameron, one of the owl hunters, said no one hates barred owls: “That’s probably the hardest part. We love them and appreciate them.” But she was willing to stop them. “You can’t be sitting front row to an extinction and not want to do something about it,” she said. Washington Post
Southern California
8.
Prospects for the release of the Menendez brothers have dimmed since election day. Nathan Hochman, who won the race for Los Angeles County district attorney in a landslide, has suggested that his predecessor sought resentencing for the men, who killed their parents in their Beverly Hills home in 1989, as a political ploy. He’s now planning to review the case himself, he said: “Any time a particular case gets this level of attention, it’s even that more important to get it right.” On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom said he would “defer” to Hochman’s review before making any clemency decisions. N.Y. Times | Daily Beast
9.
Twenty-two thrill seekers were left dangling in the air for more than two hours on Monday after their ride at Knott’s Berry Farm experienced a malfunction. The Sol Spin, a ride that twirls like a flying blender six stories above the ground, stopped mid-cycle, with some riders trapped in a near-vertical orientation. After being rescued, two of them were sent to the hospital for evaluation, the park said. KABC | A.P.
- See an aerial view captured by ABC7.
10.
In public comments last Friday, Los Angeles Times owner Soon-Shiong outlined plans to implement a “redo” of the newspaper that would include purging newsroom bias and opening up the opinion pages to “every American’s views.” In a Fox News interview, the billionaire owner said his journalists had “conflated news and opinion.” He continued: “If it’s news, it should just be the facts, period.” Terry Tang, the Times executive editor, later emailed staff about the interview. “I know there are concerns,” she wrote. TheWrap | Holllywood Reporter
11.
Someone is shooting wild parrots in the San Gabriel Valley with a pellet gun, local animal groups said. Cleo’s Critter Care, which cares for injured animals, said it had received at least a dozen injured parrots in recent weeks. Police are investigating. Since escaping from the exotic animal trade, red-crowned parrots have thrived for decades in Southern California neighborhoods, unnerving some residents with their loud squawking. FOX 11 | NBC Los Angeles
12.
Los Angeles’ mountain lions are becoming nocturnal to avoid humans. For a study published Friday in Biological Conservation journal, researchers tracked the movements of cougars in mountains surrounding the city for seven years. The animals were most likely to rest during the day and prowl at night in areas frequented by joggers and hikers, they found. “This flexibility we see in mountain lion activity is what allows us to share these natural areas together,” said lead author Ellie Bolas. Popular Science | LAist
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The California Sun is written by Mike McPhate, a former California correspondent for the New York Times.
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