Next year, booklovers at UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) will be encouraged to read “Crying in H Mart,” a bestselling memoir about cultural identity and grief, the university announced this week.
As the university’s community-reading initiative, UCSB Reads, which invites students and faculty to read the same book for discussions every year, has selected “Crying in H Mart” as the 2026 book.
In “Crying in H Mart,” its author Michelle Zauner (also the frontwoman of the indie pop band Japanese Breakfast) explores grief and losing her Korean mother to terminal cancer.
Zauner, a biracial Korean American who grew up in Oregon, stayed connected to her roots through Korean food, especially after her mother’s death. In her New York Times bestselling memoir, Zauner processes her grief by embracing the Korean traditions with the backdrop of Korean grocery chain H Mart.
Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast at The 16th Governors Awards held at The Ray Dolby Ballroom at Ovation Hollywood on November 16, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images)
“In a series of personal essays, Zauner recounts growing up as one of a few Asian-Americans in her Oregon town and reconnecting with her Korean identity as a young adult,” UCSB Reads said in explaining its 2026 pick. “The book chronicles her coming of age and complex family dynamics, showing how she navigates the profound grief of a parent’s illness and death by embracing the traditions that define her.”
UCSB Reads 2026 will launch in January, giving away free books to students. Then, readers can attend free and social events to explore the book together throughout the winter and spring quarters.
Instructors are also encouraged to incorporate the book into their courses, the university said. Free copies of the book will be available for students through the university library as well.
Zauner herself will speak at a free public event at the school in May 2026.
Published in 2021, “Crying in H Mart” was a critical and commercial hit as it spent 60 weeks on the New York Times hardcover non-fiction bestseller list and was named a top book by TIME and the Atlantic.
FBI officials and Santa Barbara County investigators searched the home of a missing 9-year-old girl.
Melodee Buzzard was last seen with her mother, Ashlee Buzzard, as recently as Oct. 7, according to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department. The search began on Oct. 14 when a school administrator reported that Melodee had been absent for a long time.
Federal and local investigators Thursday served the search warrants at the home on Mars Avenue near Constellation Road in Lompoc. They also look through a storage locker and the rental car in which Melodee was last seen
Detectives also believe Buzzard and her daughter left Santa Barbara County in a white Chevrolet Malibu rental, driving out as far as the state of Nebraska.
While searching the Buzzard residence and other places, Melodee’s mother, Ashlee, was escorted to an “alternate location that would not interfere with their ability to
conduct a thorough search,” the sheriff’s department said.
“In cases like this, every detail matters and it is invaluable to have additional resources and specialized expertise,” said Lt. Chris Gotschall from the sheriff’s department. “Collaboration with our federal partners allows us to ensure we’re using every available tool to help bring resolution to this case.”
Investigators have said Ashlee Buzzard was uncooperative with the investigation.
Law enforcement on Friday released new surveillance images of a young Santa Barbara County girl who’s been missing.
Investigators began searching for 9-year-old Melodee Buzzard of Lompoc on Oct. 14 after a school administrator reported her long absence. In an update provided on Friday, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office said it obtained surveillance image stills of Buzzard at a local car rental business on Oct. 7.
In the images, the young girl is seen wearing a gray hooded sweater with the hood pulled up and what appears to be a wig. Authorities described the wig as “darker and straighter” than Buzzard’s natural hair and added that investigators believe it may have been used to alter her appearance.
Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office
Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office
Melodee Buzzard, as seen on Oct. 7, 2025 in Santa Barbara County.
Last week, officials said evidence shows the girl was with her mother, Ashlee Buzzard, as recently as Oct. 7. They believe the two left the region in a rental car and drove out to Nebraska, with the return trip including the state of Kansas. Ashlee was seen returning to her Lompoc home in the same vehicle on Oct. 10, but her daughter was not in the car.
Sheriff’s deputies said Ashlee has not been cooperating with the investigation.
“Our detectives are following every lead in this case. We continue to seek information from the public that could help us find Melodee,” Sheriff Bill Brown said in a statement. “We remain determined to bring her home safely.”
Melodee is described as standing at 4-feet-6-inches tall, weighs about 60 pounds and has brown hair and brown eyes.
Anyone with information on the case is urged to contact detectives at 805-681-4150. Anonymous tips can be made by contacting 805-681-4171.
The man is scheduled to appear in court for sentencing Dec. 4, according to prosecutors.
Getty Images/iStockphoto
A man “repeatedly abused” his girlfriend’s 3-year-old daughter, ending with a “violent assault” that caused her “rapid death,” California prosecutors say.
Elvis Alberto Lopez, 27, was convicted of first-degree murder in Mila Solis’ 2023 death, the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s Office said in an Oct. 1 news release.
In an Oct. 2 email to McClatchy News, George L. Steele, Lopez’s attorney, called the case “heartbreaking,” adding that he respected the jury’s service.
“But the fact remains: there was no direct evidence that Mr. Lopez ever harmed Mila,” Steele wrote. “He called 911, followed instructions, and tried to save her life.”
Lopez pleaded not guilty at his February 2023 arraignment, KSBY reported.
“This was a horrific case involving the senseless death of a young child who deserved love and protection,” District Attorney John T. Savrnoch said in the release.
The girl was taken to a nearby hospital, where she was pronounced dead, police said.
With help from the Santa Barbara County Coroner’s office, police said its detectives investigated the toddler’s death.
Investigation into the “heinous crime” led detectives to identify Lopez as a suspect, police said, adding that he was arrested after a warrant was issued Feb. 11, 2023.
Lopez is accused of “repeatedly” abusing the toddler in the months leading up to her death, prosecutors say.
“On February 4, 2023, the abuse culminated in a violent assault that severed Mila’s spine and ruptured her aorta, causing her rapid death,” prosecutors said.
During trial, Dr. Manual Montez, a pathologist with the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Coroner’s Bureau, testified in court and likened the girl’s injuries to those resulting from a traumatic accident, Noozhawk reported.
“I have seen these in car accidents,” Montez said, the outlet reported. “I have seen this in multi-story falls. I have seen this with weapons.”
Montez went on to say the “injury to the spinal column was the result of a swift force to the back” and not from a fall off a bed, the outlet reported.
In addition to murder, prosecutors said a jury also found Lopez guilty of assault on a child under 8 causing death and four counts of corporal injury to a child.
“Mila was a beautiful, loving child, and while nothing can bring her back, this verdict ensures that the defendant is held accountable for his violent actions,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Karapetian said in the release.
In his statement, Steele said prosecutors’ theory was based “on assumptions, not proof.”
“They do not know the mechanism of death,” Steele said. “We will be pursuing an appeal to ensure that the courts fully examine the problematic issues in this case. Justice requires certainty, and this case leaves too many unanswered questions.”
Lopez is scheduled to appear in court for sentencing Dec. 4 and faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole, according to prosecutors.
Daniella Segura is a national real-time reporter with McClatchy. Previously, she’s worked as a multimedia journalist for weekly and daily newspapers in the Los Angeles area. Her work has been recognized by the California News Publishers Association. She is also an alumnus of the University of Southern California and UC Berkeley.
What began as a theft at a beauty store in Goleta ended with a freeway traffic stop and the arrest of three men accused of stealing nearly $2,000 worth of designer fragrances, according to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office.
Deputies were called to the Ulta Beauty in the Camino Real Marketplace around 2:12 p.m. on Friday after receiving reports of suspects running from the store with stolen cologne and perfume. Witnesses said the men fled in a red sedan headed toward Highway 101 southbound.
Sheriff’s deputies quickly located the car and stopped it near the Castillo Street off-ramp, officials said.
As they approached, deputies reported being met with an “overwhelming scent of cologne” coming from inside the vehicle. A search turned up about $1,900 in stolen merchandise, linking the three occupants to the theft, according to the department.
Three men were arrested after deputies recovered nearly $2,000 in stolen merchandise following a freeway traffic stop linked to a retail theft. (Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office)
The suspects — identified as 33-year-old Rigoberto Aguirre Andrade of Santa Clara, 32-year-old Miguel Tinoco Hernandez of Santa Barbara and 37-year-old Jose Encarnacion Reyes of San Jose — were taken into custody without incident.
All three were booked on suspicion of felony organized retail theft. Andrade is also being held on two out-of-county warrants for theft-related crimes, with bail set at $325,000. Hernandez faces an additional misdemeanor charge of providing false information to an officer, with bail set at $200,000. Reyes was also booked on a misdemeanor charge of providing false information to an officer, as well as three out-of-county theft-related warrants. His bail was set at $310,000, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
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A whale-watching tour got the photo opportunity of a lifetime when they spotted a rare white shark feeding from an elephant seal about 30 miles west of Santa Barbara.
The group of about 50 people were aboard the Condor Express, which conducts whale watching tours daily through the Santa Barbara Channel, according to Capt. Dave Beezer, who has been working for the company for nearly 20 years.
On Aug. 30, the group spotted the floating carcass of a dead elephant seal about 14 miles off the coast of Gaviota and Beezer knew to stick around in the area, he said. The seal’s head was missing so he thought a predator could be involved. Soon after, a 16-foot adult white shark emerged from the water and started feeding on the carcass.
The Condor Express whale-watching tour near Santa Barbara spotted a white shark feeding on an elephant seal on Aug. 30.
(Robert Perry / CondorExpressPhotos.com)
“It was digging its jaws into the side of the seal and taking out big chunks and then it would go out of sight,” he said.
White sharks, sometimes called great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias), are the species featured in the 1975 classic film “Jaws.” The northeastern Pacific white shark population is on the rise and not at risk of becoming endangered in U.S. waters, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The shark circled the boat and surfaced about four or five times to take a bite out of the seal. Robert Perry, who has been photographing the ocean since the late 1960s, was also onboard, acting as the Condor Express’ staff photographer. The only time he’s ever taken photos of white sharks was when they were swimming around or under a dead whale so they weren’t fully visible.
Perry managed to capture several images of the white shark feeding.
“It was completely mind-blowing and a rare opportunity,” Perry added. “It was the shot of a lifetime.”
Beezer said he’s seen a white shark feed about four or five times in his lifetime. He emphasized the importance of the white shark to the region. Because San Miguel Island serves as a breeding ground for seals, the area has some of the largest seal populations in the world. White sharks keep some of those populations in check, he said.
“It’s not this mindless, killing machine that we should all be terrified of,” he added. “It’s a calculating predator that plays an important role in the ocean ecosystem.”
The Lake Fire continues to burn tens of thousands of acres in Santa Barbara County, according to Cal Fire.
With about 34% containment, the fire has scorched 38,430 acres as of Monday morning.
The fire was first reported on July 5, at approximately 3:48 p.m., according to Cal Fire’s incident report.
As of July 13, evacuation orders were lowered to evacuation warnings for the following areas:
The area north of Chamberlin Ranch and properties located southwest of the 5200 block of Figueroa Mountain Road. This excludes the area to the east of Lisque Creek and north of the Sedgwick Reserve facilities, which remains in Evacuation Order.
The Woodstock community and eastern parts of Oak Trail Estates.
The area of KP Ranch west of Alisos Road, and includes parts of Estelle Vineyard Drive, Santa Agueda Creek, and Brinkerhoff Avenue.
The following areas remain under evacuation order:
The area east of La Brea Creek and Forest Route 10N06, south of the Los Padres National Forest boundary, and north of the Sisquoc River
The area to the east of Lisque Creek and north of the Sedgwick Reserve facilities.
Goat Rock Areas (Area of Goat Rock, east of Figueroa Creek, north of the US Forest Service entrance at Happy Canyon Road, and south of Cachuma Mountain)
SB Ranger area (remote forest area east of Goat Rock)
Parts of the Figueroa Mountain area as follows: south of Tunnel House at Sisquoc River, east of Figueroa Creek, north of the southern end of Cachuma Mountain, and west of Los Padres National Forest areas
All areas from Figueroa Mountain Road at Junction Camp (including Tunnel Rd) to Chamberlin Ranch and all areas from Zaca Lake Rd. at Foxen Canyon Road north to the Sisquoc River
For those who need shelter for their animals, they are located at:
1501 W Central Ave, Lompoc
548 W Foster Rd, Santa Maria
5473 Overpass Rd, Goleta
Road closures include:
Happy Canyon Road at the Forest Service Boundary
Figueroa Mountain just north of Midland School
Forest Route 10N06
Zaca Lake Road east of Foxen Canyon Road
For more details on evacaution and shelter information click here.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
Late spring winds whipped through Southern California over the weekend and fanned multiple brush fires while also dashing the hopes of music festival-goers in Redondo Beach.
The forecast for Monday and Tuesday promises to bring more strong gusts in smaller pockets of the region. That includes the Interstate 5 corridor near the Grapevine and parts of Santa Barbara, according to the National Weather Service, with projected gusts reaching 40 mph to 50 mph in the evening.
The Antelope Valley is also expected to receive wind gusts up to 30 or 40 mph around the same time, forecasts show.
A storm system brought cooler temperatures and light rain alongside the formidable wind gusts to the region, starting Saturday. While the winds were nothing to sneeze at, the gusts are common in late spring.
“It was a pretty good wind event, but it wasn’t what I would call record-breaking,” meteorologist David Gomberg with the National Weather Service in Oxnard said.
Gusts reached 68 mph at a weather station in the mountains east of the Cajon Pass, 55 mph in Santa Barbara Island and 53 mph in Montecito Hills north of Santa Barbara over a 24-hour period starting Saturday, according to the National Weather Service.
The widespread winds arrived with the weak storm front that passed through the region, Gomberg said.
The timing was unfortunate for fans of My Morning Jacket and Courtney Barnett, whose performances at the BeachLife Festival in Redondo Beach were canceled along with the rest of the event’s third day due to the “serious wind event that put the general public at risk,” organizers said in a Facebook post. Fans were able to attend shows on Friday and Saturday, where Sting and Incubus were among the performers.
“While we take extraordinary measures to keep our fans, staff and artists safe, and while absolutely none of our engineered structures or systems failed, winds quickly reached very dangerous speeds and we put safety first,” organizers said in their post.
The wind did not discriminate with its ruination.
Strong winds toppled a scaffolding four to five stories tall onto a set of power lines in the 1000 block of North St. Andrews Place in Hollywood on Sunday, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department. The scaffolding was erected against a building, but was swept out by the wind around 2 p.m., forcing emergency responders to divert traffic and pedestrians away from area.
There were no reported injuries as firefighters responded to the scene, and no one was on the scaffolding during the incident, according to the fire department.
LAFD firefighters also had to respond to a quarter-acre brush fire fanned by persistent winds in North Hollywood shortly before 3 p.m. near the 170 Freeway at Burbank Boulevard. Firefighters were able to contain and put out the fire within 25 minutes, LAFD said.
Roughly 30 minutes later, firefighters responded to reports of a brush fire in the Sepulveda Basin in the 6100 block of North Woodley Avenue. Dry vegetation burned near an archery range, forcing employees and customers to temporarily leave the area; firefighters put out the blaze in about 70 minutes, LAFD said in a news alert. The flames were fanned by wind gusts of 20 mph to 30 mph, according to the fire department.
Starting Wednesday, Southern California will see a light offshore event that will bring north and northeast winds to Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
The winds will bring “very light and breezy conditions,” Gomberg said. Those winds will be coupled with decreased humidity and warmer temperatures, but thanks to the recent rains, vegetation in the region should not become too much of a fire hazard, he said.
Southern Californians are not the only ones who will be battling headwinds. The National Weather Service in Sacramento cautions drivers that gusty winds are expected to kick up starting Tuesday from Vacaville north to Redding, with a high probability for wind gusts to reach 40 mph.
No matter where drivers are heading during strong wind events, Gomberg said, they should be on the lookout for downed branches, fallen power lines and other wind-blown hazards in their general surroundings.
Los Angeles County can expect to see rain across the region beginning Sunday night and continuing through Wednesday, with the latest winter storm system forecast to bring the heaviest rain and threat of flooding along the Central Coast.
Compared with the historic storm that pummeled the region earlier this month, forecasters expect “much less rain” for the county this time but warned that the most intense precipitation will hit during the day Monday and Tuesday night. Over the next three days, downtown could see up to 2.4 inches of rain; Santa Clarita, 2.19 inches; Long Beach, 1.8 inches; and Torrance, 1.97 inches.
The rain may not be as intense as some areas farther north, but there are still concerns about the prospect for flooding, landslides and mudflows — particularly in the Santa Monica Mountains and Hollywood Hills — because of the soaking Southern California received from the previous storm, David Gomberg, a weather service meteorologist in Oxnard, said during an online media briefing Sunday afternoon.
A flood watch was in effect across broad swaths of California.
“Debris flows, mudslides, and landslides could happen just about anywhere within the flood watch area, as even L.A. County — which is expecting somewhat lower rainfall totals — took the brunt of the last storm, leaving them more susceptible to this kind of activity,” the weather service office in Oxnard said Sunday night.
Residents are urged to move parked cars out of low-lying flood-prone areas, to be alert for mudslides and rock slides on or below canyon roads and to prepare for possible flooding and power outages, the weather service said.
The slow-moving storm system began moving into the Central Coast region Saturday night, bringing light rain to Santa Barbara and western San Luis Obispo counties, officials said. The second, more powerful wave of the storm had arrived in Santa Barbara by Sunday evening. Officials warned of gusty winds, an increased chance of thunderstorms, and the possibility of high surf and coastal flooding.
By 8:20 p.m. Sunday, forecasters reported rainfall rates of between 0.3 to 0.5 inches per hour across the Santa Barbara area.
The Central Coast is expected to feel the brunt of this storm, according to the weather service. Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo county foothills and mountain ranges could see 8 to 10 inches of rainfall. The city of Ventura can expect to see up to 3.01 inches, and the city of Santa Barbara 5.66 inches.
High surf advisories are in effect through Tuesday across all beaches in the region, with waves of up to 20 feet expected in some areas. Strong rip currents are expected with large breaking waves at Morro Bay, Port San Luis and Ventura harbors.
There is also a brief risk of “weak tornado activity” during this period in San Luis Obispo County, Gomberg said Sunday.
The greatest threat for coastal flooding — particularly in Malibu and Santa Barbara — will be Tuesday morning, Gomberg said.
Once the system has passed, the state will have a few days to wring itself out before the arrival of another possible system next weekend, Gomberg said, this time coming out of the north and potentially colder.
Times staff writer Thomas Curwen contributed to this report.
Chilling rain, swirling gray clouds and blustery winds rolled into Southern California on Sunday as the strongest winter storm of the season geared up to deliver near-record rainfall and life-threatening flash flooding in the region through Tuesday.
The slow-moving atmospheric river was gathering strength Sunday afternoon, spurring the declaration of a state of emergency from Gov. Gavin Newsom in eight Southern California counties, including Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura. The National Weather Service in Oxnard warned that “all systems are go for one of the most dramatic weather days in recent memory.”
“Storms can change quickly, but let me be clear: This storm is a serious weather event,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said during a news conference. “This has the potential to be a historic storm — severe winds, thunderstorms, and even brief tornadoes.”
Palm trees in Santa Barbara bend in the wind on Sunday as hurricane-force gusts battered the seas off California.
(Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Indeed, forecasters said the brunt of the storm appears focused on the Los Angeles area, where the system could park itself for an extended time over the next few days. The storm could drop up to 8 inches of rainfall on the coast and valleys, and up to 14 inches in the foothills and mountains. Snowfall totals of 2 to 5 feet are likely at elevations above 7,000 feet.
“Los Angeles County now seems to be the area of most concern, where the heaviest rain will last the longest,” said Ryan Kittell, a meteorologist with the NWS in Oxnard. The agency has issued dozens of flood watches and storm advisories across the region and the state, including urgent flash flood warnings in parts of Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.
“If anyone has an opportunity to work remotely on Monday, that’s definitely the day to do it,” he said.
At the Ventura Harbor just north of L.A. County, as the storm moved into the region, rain was beating down on shops and restaurants that ordinarily draw tourists. It had been hours without a customer at Harbor Market and Liquor, and at a nearby hair salon, stylist Danielle White was weighing whether she should hit the road, worried that flooding could strand her there.
“We’re clearly not going to get any inquiries,” she said, gazing out at the rainfall.
Here’s the latest rain timing/intensity graphic, indicating some minor changes. – Rain totals have been increased: – 4-8″ for coasts/valleys and 8-14″ foothills/mountains – Lower totals for San Luis Obispo County – FLOOD WATCH still in effect for all areas #CAwxpic.twitter.com/YR4WwgWGsA
The storm is expected to “bring a multitude of dangerous weather conditions to the area,” forecasters said.
Evacuation warnings and notices were issued in portions of Ventura, Santa Barbara, Monterey and Los Angeles counties — including parts of Topanga near the Owen and Agua fire burn scars; the Juniper Hills and Valyermo areas near the Bobcat fire burn scar; the Lake Hughes and King Canyon area near the Lake fire burn scar; and the La Tuna Canyon area of Sun Valley near the Land fire burn scar.
Burn scars are subject to an increased risk of flooding and debris flows, and officials urged Angelenos to heed all evacuation orders.
“Make your personal safety your top priority,” said Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley. “Follow all evacuation orders, avoid travel … If you do have to travel, please, please, slow down and avoid any flooded areas.”
Swift-water rescue teams, urban search-and-rescue teams and other personnel were standing by in preparation for the storm, Crowley said.
Newsom also mobilized a record 8,500 emergency response personnel across the state to assist communities in the path of the storm, his office said.
In addition to a high risk of flash flooding and excessive rainfall, the storm also has the potential to deliver damaging winds. That includes gusts of up to 70 mph in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties through 6 p.m. Sunday, with isolated gusts of up to 90 mph possible in mountain areas.
Ventura and Los Angeles counties could see wind gusts of up to 50 mph between 1 p.m. and 1 a.m., with isolated gusts of up to 70 mph in mountains and hills. The Ventura River is expected to swell and reach its flood stage around 11 p.m. Sunday night.
Inside Ventura’s Pierpont Tacos on Seaward Avenue, Joseph Kenton and Anna Tyler were taking a break from delivering firewood from Ojai on Sunday morning.
“People were freezing in this weather,” said Kenton, who had been out driving for hours making deliveries, between bites of his tacos. “They want wood to stay warm. Anna got up at 5 o’ clock and started splitting wood.”
As the rain started to fall, “it was real dangerous,” he said. “We had to go real slow.”
On Sunday evening, celebrities also began arriving for the 2024 Grammy Awards at Crypto.com Arena in downtown L.A. as the storm began to churn. Several stars were spotted scrambling from their cars to the red carpet with umbrellas.
Waves crash over a breakwater in Alameda, Calif., with the San Francisco skyline in the background on Sunday.
(Noah Berger / Associated Press)
The storm barreled through Northern and Central California before making its way south.
In Northern California, monster winds and downpours began to inundate the region late Saturday, with the worst of the weather kicking into high gear early Sunday. Thousands were without power by late morning, with officials scrambling to respond to downed trees and power lines across the Bay Area and Central Coast, as well as growing concerns about increased flooding.
Delays and cancellations at San Francisco International Airport led the nation Sunday morning, with almost a third of incoming and outgoing flights delayed as of noon Sunday, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.
Bob Rotiski, spokesperson for the airport, said the airport reduced its capacity for flights because of the weather, expecting continued delays through 1 a.m. Monday. He said the average flight was delayed more than 4 hours as of noon Sunday, with the possibility for that to increase.
In Sonoma County, a tree early Sunday fell onto a home; in Palo Alto, a massive tree blocked the eastbound lanes of the Oregon Expressway. Downed power lines closed a stretch of State Road 1 in San Mateo County, and in San Francisco, fallen lines forced traffic detours.
Some of the highest winds early Sunday were recorded in the Big Sur area — up to 88 and 85 mph, said Sarah McCorkle, a National Weather Service meteorologist in the Bay Area. But gusts had also reached as high as 60 mph in the East Bay and were expected to remain a major threat throughout the day, with a high wind warning in effect for much of the state through late Sunday or Monday.
In San Jose, city officials declared a state of emergency ahead of expected flooding along the Guadalupe River, fueled by heavy rains in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where 6 inches of rain is expected through Monday. Officials there ordered the evacuation of people living along the river’s banks, offering free rides and shelter. The river is forecast to peak over 11 feet — almost 2 feet over its flood stage.
Fallen trees and power lines block a road in Pebble Beach, Calif., on Sunday.
(Ryan Sun / Associated Press)
The Carmel River at Robles Del Rio in Monterey County was also expected to flood, reaching almost a foot over its 8.5-foot flood stage by Sunday night, according to the California Nevada River Forecast Center.
McCorkle said the massive winter storm uniquely strengthened directly off the Northern California coast, where a low pressure system dropped down from the Pacific Northwest to merge with a moisture-heavy system moving in from the eastern Pacific.
“That helped intensify the storm from the eastern Pacific,” she said. That rapid intensification Saturday could mean the storm underwent a bombogenesis, often referred to as a bomb cyclone, but McCorkle said that will require post-analysis to confirm.
“Once it strengthened, [the low pressure system] helped draw in the moisture from the subtropics,” McCorkle said, forming a type of atmospheric river that has become known as a “Pineapple Express.” Those two dynamics — the intensified low pressure system and heavy moisture — have helped drive the dangerously high winds and severe rainfall moving across the state, she said.
Although the Bay Area and Central Coast have experienced some significant impacts, “it will be a different story when the storm moves into Southern California,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with UCLA.
“This will have a broader contiguous band of heavy rainfall developing from about Santa Barbara County eastward, and it’s going to be very slow moving,” Swain said during a briefing Sunday.
A man swims chest-deep through flood waters with his cellphone near cars that are submerged in the 2300 block of West Willow Street in Long Beach on Thursday after rain flooded several areas of the city.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Areas south and east of Los Angeles also will not be spared. Conditions in Orange County, the western Inland Empire and the San Bernardino Mountains were expected to deteriorate Sunday into Monday as the storm moves toward San Diego and the Mexican border, according to the National Weather Service in San Diego.
“Precipitation intensity will only increase across these areas on Monday, and life-threatening flash flooding will be possible. By Monday night into Tuesday, the axis of the moisture plume begins to shift farther south and east, reaching Riverside and San Diego Counties,” the agency said.
Rainfall rates in the southernmost part of the state will be modest — up to 0.30 inch per hour — but the relentless nature of the rain will still lead to impressive totals through Tuesday, the agency said.
That includes up to 7 inches in the Santa Ana Mountains; 5 inches in Orange County; 4 inches in the Riverside County Mountains; 2 inches in the Apple and Lucerne valleys; 1.5 inches in the Coachella Valley and 0.75 inch in the San Diego County deserts. The San Bernardino County mountains could see up to 11 inches on south-facing slopes.
Regional public utilities, including California Edison and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, were preparing to respond to service outages and downed power lines. More than 380,000 people were without power statewide by Sunday afternoon.
“We are taking this storm system very seriously to ensure we are accurately prepared,” Edison spokesman Jeff Monford said. “Our meteorologists discuss the current conditions and the forecast with the teams handling operations and grid management so we can place crews in the most affected areas. We do this to get crews in location before roads may be closed due to flooding or ice.”
The LADWP “will monitor the storm system closely and respond accordingly, with the ability to schedule crews to be available around the clock,” the utility said in a statement. It has also beefed up staffing at call centers to respond to potential increases in calls from customers without power.
“During the storm, winds could blow down large objects such as trees, or cause branches and palm fronds to strike power lines, which could cause power outages,” LADWP said. “This is especially true when soil becomes oversaturated by the rain, causing it to loosen and uproot trees.”
In addition to downed trees, flooding and water intrusion into underground electrical systems may also cause power outages. Repairs may be slower if the affected equipment is underground and crews need to go from vault to vault to identify the source of the damage before repairs can take place.
The utilities urged people to be careful around downed power lines, which can electrify puddles, wet grass and surrounding areas.
“Always assume a downed wire is energized,” Edison said. “Stay away and call 911 immediately.”
As steady rain fell on Sunday, George Camarena, a lifeguard and longshoreman in Ventura, brought his Nintendo down to play video games with friends inside Pierpont Tacos. Earlier in the day, he had gone out to keep an eye on the beach.
“You never want to see someone down in the water” in this weather, he said. A faraway seal had made him look twice, but he was relieved to see no one in the water, just a few neighbors walking their dogs on the beach.
When a rogue wave hit the same area back in December, he had seen people standing on top of their trucks to avoid the water; elderly people with scraped faces; women who wanted to leave but whose keys had been swept away from them, he said.
“Today I’m just keeping my eye out,” he said.
Times audience engagement editor Nicholas Ducassi contributed to this report.
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Hayley Smith, Grace Toohey, Emily Alpert Reyes, Roger Vincent
A dangerous, intense storm will move into Southern California this weekend, bringing the potential for widespread flooding, mudslides and debris flows.
Officials are urging caution during the most treacherous periods of the storm Sunday and Monday.
The National Weather Service says flooding from the atmospheric river could be “life-threatening.”
“This will probably be categorized as our biggest storm this winter so far,” said Emily Montanez, associate director with the L.A. County Office of Emergency Management. “Take your individual precautions, but also if people are able to telework and get those plans in place so that we’ve got an easier commute Monday morning, that’s what we’re really encouraging.”
The forecast
Weather officials are expecting 3 to 6 inches of rain across Southern California, particularly in Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties, which are expected to see some of the worst flooding.
“L.A. could see somewhere from a third to half of the average annual precipitation from this single storm coming up,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with UCLA. “It looks like it may rain continuously in L.A. County from around Sunday afternoon to Wednesday morning. … It may not be extremely intense the whole time, but it will be a pretty long-duration rain event.”
In addition to rain, “high surf, large battering waves” could contribute to coastal flooding, according to Ryan Kittell, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Oxnard. And if the pounding waves aren’t enough, “potentially deadly rip currents” should keep everyone out of the water.
The storm’s effects will be felt statewide, with forecasts showing more than 3 inches of rain possible from the Mexico border to the Bay Area from Sunday through Tuesday — well over the average for the entire month in many areas.
Timeline
Saturday: Rain will begin in the evening in Northern California, primarily along the coastal Bay Area, before heading south.
Sunday: Heavy rainfall is expected to begin in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties, moving into Ventura and Los Angeles countiesby late in the day. Strong bands of sustained rainfall will create widespread flood threats.
Monday: The storm is expected to continue, bringing added danger from sustained rainfall on already saturated ground. The highest risk of flooding will be Sunday night through Monday evening.
The heaviest rain will come in areas east and south of Los Angeles County, with up to 4 inches predictedin the Inland Empire and Orange County, and closer to 2 or 4 in San Diego County, according to Adam Roser, a National Weather Service meteorologist in San Diego.
Tuesday to Wednesday: Lighter rain is in the forecast.
Conditions:
Danger zones
Officials say residents should expect street flooding and mudslides in vulnerable areas.
Some evacuations and road closures are expected.
Thunderstorms and heavy rain bands could bring flash flooding.
The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services has deployed personnel and resources to many areas in the path of the storm, including more than 550 firefighters and 19 swift-water rescue teams in 19 counties, officials said. Two million sandbags have been pre-positioned across the state.
“As we look ahead to the next few days, we encourage all Californians to take steps now to prepare for incoming weather,” agency spokeswoman Alicia de la Garza said in a video posted on X.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday that “California has more than 8,300 boots on the ground as we prepare for this next set of serious storms.” He cautioned all in the storm’s path — especially those in Southern California — to prepare now and follow the guidance of local government officials and first responders.
Santa Barbara County: Officials are urging residents to stay away from rivers, creeks, flood-prone low-lying areas and wildfire burn scars, which can turn into dangerous mud and debris flows during heavy rains. Beaches, bluffs and harbor areas may see coastal flooding and erosion, and residents and visitors are being advised to stay away.
Los Angeles County: Officials are keeping a close eye on the Palos Verdes peninsula, which saw devastating land movement last summer and a mudslide Thursday, as well as Long Beach and areas along the San Gabriel Mountains, Montanez said.
“We’re always keeping an eye on that area, especially with recent burn scars like in Duarte, with the Fish fire,” Montanez said. “In burn scar areas, within three years post-fire, there’s always a chance for mud and debris flow.”
The county’s Public Works Department is working to clear storm drains and flood control channels in preparation for an influx of water, she said. The agency is expected to issue phased warnings for areas in the path of the storm. That may include potential evacuation notices in Duarte, Azusa, the Santa Clarita Valley and other at-risk areas.
She added that the county is positioning Sheriff’s Department officials in case door-to-door evacuation notices are warranted, as well as fire and emergency response personnel. The county is also readying an outreach team for unhoused populations, she said.
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass urged residents to monitor the storm and be mindful of extreme weather warnings.
“We know the severe impact that weather can have on our communities, and we are making sure Los Angeles is prepared on behalf of our residents, including the unhoused Angelenos living on our streets, to get through this storm,” she said.
Concrete, glass and steel come together to create a modern masterpiece in Santa Barbara County wine … [+] country.
Village Properties
Do you love modern contemporary style but crave country ranch life? You’ll find both at a $4.25-million property on 20 acres in California’s Santa Ynez Valley. The sprawling concrete, glass and steel structure was built to capitalize on sweeping views of the surrounding rolling hills and native oak trees.
The house at 1270 Poppy Valley Road in Buellton stands out for its design by architect Jan Hochhauser of Santa Barbara-based Hochhauser Blatter Associates. Homes in the area tend to follow Spanish or Mediterranean styles. “We don’t get this kind of architecture,” said listing agent David McIntire of Village Properties. “It’s pretty uncommon.”
The modern design is something of an outlier in Santa Barbara County, which is known for its … [+] Spanish- and Mediterranean-style properties.
Village Properties
The home is located inside Jonata Springs Ranch, a gated community in Santa Barbara County that consists of 44 large parcels on more than 800 acres. Built in 2006, the modified box design captures natural light throughout the three bedrooms and three bathrooms in 3,800 square feet.
The home is located inside the gates of Jonata Springs Ranch in Buellton.
Village Properties
The house is close to 101 Freeway (15 miles from the ocean and 45 minutes from Santa Barbara) yet set back far enough to be ultra private. “It’s really a sweet spot,” McIntire said.
The Jonata Springs Ranch community consists of 44 large parcels on more than 800 acres.
Village Properties
Inside, glass walls and cathedral ceilings in the living room and dining room keep the outdoors close. Views from just about every room reflect a rugged, hilly landscape.
Poured concrete steps lead into a forest of mature oaks.
Village Properties
A chef’s kitchen features light wood cabinets and a center island topped with dark granite, which has room for casual dining. A large patio outside offers easy access for entertaining. The primary bedroom is located on an upstairs level. There’s also a guest wing with its own den and balcony.
Glass walls and cathedral ceilings bring light and stunning views inside.
Village Properties
Amenities on the property include a boutique vineyard planted with syrah grapes (for wannabe winemakers) and a roomy wine cellar. The finished garage accommodates four vehicles. It also has a multipurpose room and bathroom and could be transformed into an accessory dwelling unit.
A chef’s kitchen features light wood cabinets and a center island topped with dark granite.
Village Properties
Drought-tolerant landscaping surrounds the house, which also has a bocce court on one side.
Wood details create a calming vibe within.
Village Properties
McIntire sees the potential buyer as “someone who appreciates the architecture and the style” of the home and someone who values privacy as well as access to Los Angeles, about 120 miles away.
There are three bedrooms and three bathrooms.
Village Properties
Inside the gated community, residents may go horseback riding and hiking on the 10 miles of trails that start outside their back doors. Red-tailed hawks, bobcats, coyotes and deer also make their home here.
Residents of the community have access to private hiking and riding trails.
Village Properties
Jonata Springs Ranch has its own water company and paved roads. The home is within two miles of an elementary school and a middle school while Santa Ynez Valley Union High School is about six miles away. Lompoc, the Danish-themed town of Solvang as well as wine country towns of Ballard and Los Olivos are nearby.
The home was designed by architect Jan Hochhauser of Santa Barbara-based Hochhauser Blatter … [+] Associates.
Views from the courtyard of the Hope Ranch house take in the Santa Ynez Mountains.
Village Properties
In the Southern California housing market, a 1925 home with an architectural pedigree is sure to pique interest. But in the Santa Barbara enclave of Hope Ranch, a classic Spanish-style hacienda designed by the same man who shaped local landmarks such as the Montecito Inn and the former fire station raises the stakes.
“That it is amongst one of the first homes built in Hope Ranch by a renowned architectural designer, A.B. Harmer, is something to be proud about,” says listing agent Tiffany Doré of Village Properties.
Original details include the beamed ceiling above the living and dining rooms.
Village Properties
An associate of architects Wallace Neff and Garrett Van Pelt Jr., Harmer was known for working with the topography of a property and, in a practice that resonates today, sometimes using beams salvaged from other projects. A map of Hope Ranch from the 1930s shows that 11 homes were already his designs. Harmer homes, including Colonial Revival designs, are also found in Ojai, Pasadena and Beverly Hills.
“The original features, the location within the Ranch and the fact it is that Spanish hacienda most buyers are dreaming of when locating to Santa Barbara” all add to the appeal, says Village Properties’ Cathy O’Neill, who shares the listing with Doré.
A vine-shaded patio creates a spot for al fresco dining.
Village Properties
Set on 1.3 fruit tree-studded acres with the Santa Ynez Mountains as a backdrop, the home is sheltered by mature oak trees and features extensive outdoor living spaces. French doors off the U-shaped structure open to a flagstone courtyard with a central fountain. Terra cotta tile steps lead to a swimming pool and spa surrounded by multiple seating areas.
At the heart of the 4,240-square-foot home is a grand living room with high vaulted ceilings, exposed oak beams and a central fireplace. The dining room overlooks the space.
The family room has more intimate proportions.
Village Properties
More oak beams and another fireplace grace the more intimate family room for a total of five fireplaces throughout.
Of the three bedrooms is the primary bedroom suite with an office and two additional ensuite bedrooms.
The detatched studio houses a massive wine cellar.
Village Properties
A detached 1,600-square-foot studio/media room contains a full bathroom, office and 2,000-bottle wine cellar. Parking includes a three-car garage and two-spot carport.
Among community amenities are a security patrol, miles of walking paths and equestrian trails and tennis courts.
Steps off the courtyard lead to the swimming pool area.
Village Properties
“There is a private beach with restrooms, floating raft in the ocean to swim out to, a snack shack open all summer long and a large picnic area equipped to host a fun gathering,” Doré says. “Historically, the inventory for homes to purchase is low and prices continue to rise. Homeowners typically do not move out of the community but move up in size or downsize once they become empty nesters.”
Homes in Hope Ranch have sold this year for between $5 million and $19 million, says O’Neill, who envisions 929 Canon Road being used as a primary residence. The property is priced at $7.185 million.
The community has private beach access and walking trails.
Village Properties
Adds Doré: “I see either a current Hope Ranch owner moving into this house who is seeking single level … or an out-of-town buyer who is wanting an authentic Santa Barbara home.”
The California ranch estate is in the heart of the Santa Ynez wine country.
Zach Brown, Atlas Imagery / Village PropertiesForbes Global Properties
Woodstock Ranch in Santa Ynez, California, is a private equestrian community offering peaceful country living within some 2,400 acres. Old-growth oak trees dot hillsides green from the winter rains. Spring brings bright patches of wildflowers. Cattle meander lazily in the summer sun.
For some homeowners, whose parcels range from about 20 to 60 acres, fencing keeps horses in their own individual pastures. For others, fences keep the cows out.
Wraparound terraces and sets of French doors enable indoor-outdoor living.
Zach Brown, Atlas Imagery / Village Properties
“Cattle openly graze the ranch,” says listing agent Michelle Glaus of Village Properties. But it is the horses and their riders who benefit the most. “Miles of maintained trails along roadway right-of-ways allow long, uninterrupted rides without gates.”
Set in the foothills of the San Rafael Mountains, the community’s location next to the nearly 5,900-acre Sedgwick Reserve accounts for the variety of wildlife as well. Deer, bobcats, foxes, badgers and rabbits make the preserve their home and can sometimes be spotted within Woodstock Ranch.
Wide plank floors and wood ceiling beams unite the main living spaces.
Zach Brown, Atlas Imagery / Village Properties
Among the handful of properties currently for sale is a French country-influenced estate on 20 acres. “The home’s location, tucked into the hillside vs. a ridge line, provides incredible privacy,” Glaus says, “and protection from the afternoon winds.”
Built in 2007, the reenvisioned house at 4199 Tims Road is newer for the area, she says, where most homes were built in the 1980s. “As such, the home has modern conveniences and safety features, including fire sprinklers, throughout.”
A roomy kitchen with ample eat-in space anchors one corner of the open-plan main floor.
Zach Brown, Atlas Imagery / Village Properties
A wraparound veranda defines the base of the two-story farmhouse, which has a wide balcony above. French doors access the spaces from both levels.
Three sets of oversized glass doors and an abundance of windows bring natural light into the open-concept living areas on the main floor. Hand-hewn beams, wide-plank cedar flooring, fine millwork, custom cabinetry and a wood-burning fireplace are among the details.
Chandeliers add a touch of elegance in the kitchen-adjacent dining room.
Zach Brown, Atlas Imagery / Village Properties
The kitchen is equipped with a large center island, high-end appliances, marble countertops and walk-in pantry.
The upstairs primary suite features a fireplace, sitting area, oversized marble shower and soaking tub. Two more bedrooms with a shared bathroom complete the top floor.
The primary suite features a fireplace, sitting area and terrace access.
Zach Brown, Atlas Imagery / Village Properties
The basement contains the laundry room and a bonus area that could be used to accommodate guests or as a game room. An elevator serves all three levels.
The room above the oversized detached three-car garage is outfitted as an overflow bunkhouse with a kitchenette and living and dining areas.
Lawn surrounds the swimming pool area, which has a resort-like vibe.
Zach Brown, Atlas Imagery / Village Properties
A swimming pool has a spa. An outdoor dining area includes a built-in barbecue, television and wood-burning fireplace.
“The home is well-suited for a large family or someone wanting the ability to accommodate family and friends,” says Glaus, who envisions it working as a full-time residence or weekend retreat. There’s ample space near the house for a kitchen garden or barn.
Woodstock Ranch’s 20 acres are studded with oak trees.
Zach Brown, Atlas Imagery / Village Properties
Gourmet restaurants in Santa Ynez and Los Olivos are within a 15-minute drive. Wineries are also nearby.
A rarie estate in the Ortega Ranch neighborhood of Montecito makes the most of California’s sunny skies with wide-lens views of the Pacific Ocean that span the horizon.
One of only 14 homes in the private enclave, the newly renovated home sits on about 5 acres of lushly landscaped grounds. Quiet roads, access to a walking trail and proximity to Montecito, Santa Barbara and Summerland are among the perks of the neighborhood. Nearby Loon Point Beach, a swath of sand tucked up against the bluffs, is a local gem.
The Ortega Ranch Retreat is a private oasis located just minutes from the best spots in Montecito, … [+] Summerland and Santa Barbara.
Jim Bartsch | Village Properties
While the ocean view also captures the Channel Islands, from other vantage points the Santa Ynez Mountains, Santa Barbara foothills and even the tip of Malibu are visible.
Single level and approaching 10,000 square feet when combined with the guest house and pool cabana, the sprawling home comes with a price tag that homes in this elite market can command: $16.25 million.
The sprawling single-story home, which was recently renovated, features epic views in every … [+] direction.
Village Properties
Designed for both entertaining and intimate family life, the estate contains expansive public rooms, covered terraces and private space. The foyer opens to the living room and a gallery hall on either side.
An entire wall of pocketed glass doors slides away in the massive living room, connecting to outdoor space. A vaulted beamed ceiling, oversized fireplace and built-ins are among other features. The gas fireplace is one of three indoors. Outside are a wood-burning fireplace and gas fire pit.
The ocean-view living room provides the perfect spot for taking in the scenery.
Village Properties
Set right off the formal dining room, the center island kitchen features marble countertops, stainless-steel appliances, a breakfast area and butler’s pantry.
Built in 1998, the main house was remodeled in 2019 and has three bedrooms, three bathrooms and a powder room within nearly 8,000 square feet. Stone, pine and French limestone floors carry throughout.
Ortega Ranch sits on 5 acres of grounds with ample outdoor living spaces and a spectacular pool.
Jim Bartsch | Village Properties
The primary suite and dressing room are set on one side of the house as is an office. The other bedrooms and a sitting room are on the other.
Both the guest house and pool cabana were added in 2018. The 900-square-foot guest house includes a living room, kitchenette, bedroom and full bathroom. The cabana contains a gym, media room and full bathrooms in 858 square feet.
Manicured gardens dot the landscape.
Jim Bartsch | Village Properties
The swimming pool and spa give the property a resort feel. Citrus, avocado, cherimoya, peach, persimmon and apple trees fill the manicured grounds, which are fully fenced and have wide stretches of lawn.
Newswise — (Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Gene editing is a powerful method for both research and therapy. Since the advent of the Nobel Prize-winning CRISPR/Cas9 technology, a quick and accurate tool for genome editing discovered in 2012, scientists have been working to explore its capabilities and boost its performance.
Researchers in UC Santa Barbara biologist Chris Richardson’s lab have added to that growing toolbox, with a method that increases the efficiency of CRISPR/Cas9 editing without the use of viral material to deliver the genetic template used to edit the target genetic sequence. According to their new paper published in the journal Nature Biotechnology, their method stimulates homology-directed repair (a step in the gene editing process) by approximately threefold “without increasing mutation frequencies or altering end-joining repair outcomes.”
“We’ve found a chemical modification that improves non-viral gene editing and also discovered an intriguing new type of DNA repair,” Richardson said.
Find, Cut and Paste
The CRISPR/Cas9 method works by capitalizing on a defense technique employed by bacteria against viral attackers. To do this, the bacteria snip a piece of the invading virus’s genetic material, and incorporate it into their own in order to recognize it later. Should the bacteria get reinfected, they can target the now-familiar genetic sequences for destruction.
In gene editing, this process uses the enzyme Cas9 as molecular “scissors” to snip sequences it recognizes, guided by the CRISPR system. This cut is also an opportunity to replace the severed genes with similar (homologous) but improved ones, utilizing the cell’s natural repair mechanisms. If successful, the cell should have modified expressions and functions thereafter.
To deliver the repair template DNA to the nucleus of the cell where its genetic material lives, oftentimes viruses are used. While they are effective, the researchers say, viral workflows “are expensive, difficult to scale and potentially toxic to cells.”
Nonviral templates are potentially less expensive and more scalable, although researchers still must overcome efficiency and toxicity barriers. In their study, the Richardson Lab found that introducing interstrand crosslinks into the workflow increased homology directed repair dramatically.
“Every workflow that we have put this approach into has worked better by roughly threefold,” Richardson said.
Interstrand crosslinks are lesions that keep the double strands of a DNA helix tethered to each other, making them unable to replicate. Cancer chemotherapies use this mechanism to interrupt tumor growth and kill cancer cells. Added to a homology directed repair template, however, these crosslinks were found to stimulate the cell’s natural repair mechanisms and increase the likelihood of editing success.
“Basically, what we’ve done is taken this template DNA and damaged it,” Richardson said. “We’ve in fact damaged it in the most severe way I can think of. And the cell doesn’t say, ‘Hey this is junk; let me throw it away.’ What the cell actually says is, ‘Hey this looks great; let me stick it into my genome.’” The result is a highly efficient and minimally error-prone nonviral system of gene editing.
Their discovery, like many breakthroughs in science, was actually something of a happy accident. While working to purify proteins to study DNA repair, graduate student researcher and lead author Hannah Ghasemi noted unanticipated changes to the outcomes of their experiments.
“We were introducing these chemical modifications to the DNA templates in order to be able to pull them out of the cells and see what proteins were bound to them, and I was just checking to see if this modification had somehow affected the editing in any capacity,” she said. “I was expecting to either see no change or that it actually might have negatively affected the editing.”
What she found instead was a positive effect, up to three times the editing activity of the uncrosslinked controls. Furthermore, the team found that even with the increase in edits — and therefore the chances for errors — there was no increase in mutation frequency. They are still investigating the specific mechanisms leading to this result, but they have ideas.
“What we think happens is that the cell detects and tries to repair the damaged DNA that we’ve added this crosslink to,” Richardson said. “And in doing so, it delays the cell past a checkpoint where it would normally stop this recombination process. And so by prolonging the amount of time that it takes the cell to do this recombination, it makes it more likely that the edits will go to completion.” Studying this new process could also lead to a better understanding about how cells detect editing reagents and how they “decide” to accept them or not, he said.
This method will find the most use in ex-vivo gene editing applications, according to the team, that is, in the realm of disease research and preclinical work.
“We can more effectively knock down genes and insert things into genomes to study systems outside of the human body in a lab setting,” Ghasemi said. This development allows them to more efficiently build disease models and test hypotheses about how diseases work, which could lead to better clinical and therapeutic approaches.
Natural disasters can devastate a region, abruptly killing the species that form an ecosystem’s structure. But how this transpires can influence recovery. While fires scorch the landscape to the ground, a heatwave leaves an army of wooden staves in its wake. Storm surges and coral bleaching do something similar underwater.
These days, strolling through downtown New York, where I live, is like picking your way through the aftermath of a party. In many ways, it is exactly that: The limp string lights, trash-strewn puddles, and splintering plywood are all relics of the raucous celebration known as outdoor dining.
These wooden “streeteries” and the makeshift tables lining sidewalks first popped up during the depths of the pandemic in 2020, when restaurants needed to get diners back in their seats. It was novel, creative, spontaneous—and fun during a time when there wasn’t much fun to be had. For a while, outdoor dining really seemed as though it could outlast the pandemic. Just last October, New York Magazinewrote that it would stick around, “probably permanently.”
But now someone has switched on the lights and cut the music. Across the country, something about outdoor dining has changed in recent months. With fears about COVID subsiding, people are losing their appetite for eating among the elements. This winter, many streeteries are empty, save for the few COVID-cautious holdouts willing to put up with the cold. Hannah Cutting-Jones, the director of food studies at the University of Oregon, told me that, in Eugene, where she lives, outdoor dining is “ absolutely not happening” right now. In recent weeks, cities such as New York and Philadelphia have started tearing down unused streeteries. Outdoor dining’s sheen of novelty has faded; what once evoked the grands boulevards of Paris has turned out to be a janky table next to a parked car. Even a pandemic, it turns out, couldn’t overcome the reasons Americans never liked eating outdoors in the first place.
For a while, the allure of outdoor dining was clear. COVID safety aside, it kept struggling restaurants afloat, boosted some low-income communities, and cultivated joie de vivre in bleak times. At one point, more than 12,700 New York restaurants had taken to the streets, and the city—along with others, including Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia—proposed making dining sheds permanent. But so far, few cities have actually adopted any official rules. At this point, whether they ever will is unclear. Without official sanctions, mounting pressure from outdoor-dining opponents will likely lead to the destruction of existing sheds; already, they keep tweeting disapproving photos at sanitation departments. Part of the issue is that as most Americans’ COVID concerns retreat, the potential downsides have gotten harder to overlook: less parking, more trash, tacky aesthetics, and, oh God, the rats. Many top New York restaurants have voluntarily gotten rid of their sheds this winter.
The economics of outdoor dining may no longer make sense for restaurants, too. Although it was lauded as a boon to struggling restaurants during the height of the pandemic, the practice may make less sense now that indoor dining is back. For one thing, dining sheds tend to take up parking spaces needed to attract customers, Cutting-Jones said. The fact that most restaurants are chains doesn’t help: “If whatever conglomerate owns Longhorn Steakhouse doesn’t want to invest in outdoor dining, it will not become the norm,” Rebecca Spang, a food historian at Indiana University Bloomington, told me. Besides, she added, many restaurants are already short-staffed, even without the extra seats.
In a sense, outdoor dining was doomed to fail. It always ran counter to the physical makeup of most of the country, as anyone who ate outside during the pandemic inevitably noticed. The most obvious constraint is the weather, which is sometimes pleasant but is more often not. “Who wants to eat on the sidewalk in Phoenix in July?” Spang said.
The other is the uncomfortable proximity to vehicles. Dining sheds spilled into the streets like patrons after too many drinks. The problem was that U.S. roads were built for cars, not people. This tends not to be true in places renowned for outdoor dining, such as Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, which urbanized before cars, Megan Elias, a historian and the director of the gastronomy program at Boston University, told me. At best, this means that outdoor meals in America are typically enjoyed with a side of traffic. At worst, they end in dangerous collisions.
Cars and bad weather were easier to put up with when eating indoors seemed like a more serious health hazard than breathing in fumes and trembling with cold. It had a certain romance—camaraderie born of discomfort. You have to admit, there was a time when cozying up under a heat lamp with a hot drink was downright charming. But now outdoor dining has gone back to what it always was: something that most Americans would like to avoid in all but the most ideal of conditions. This sort of relapse could lead to fewer opportunities to eat outdoors even when the weather does cooperate.
But outdoor dining is also affected by more existential issues that have surmounted nearly three years of COVID life. Eating at restaurants is expensive, and Americans like to get their money’s worth. When safety isn’t a concern, shelling out for a streetside meal may simply not seem worthwhile for most diners. “There’s got to be a point to being outdoors, either because the climate is so beautiful or there’s a view,” Paul Freedman, a Yale history professor specializing in cuisine, told me. For some diners, outdoor seating may feel too casual: Historically, Americans associated eating at restaurants with special occasions, like celebrating a milestone at Delmonico’s, the legendary fine-dining establishment that opened in the 1800s, Cutting-Jones said.
Eating outdoors, in contrast, was linked to more casual experiences, like having a hot dog at Coney Island. “We have high expectations for what dining out should be like,” she said, noting that American diners are especially fussy about comfort. Even the most opulent COVID cabin may be unable to override these associations. “If the restaurant is going to be fancy and charge $200 a person,” said Freedman, most people can’t escape the feeling of having spent that much for “a picnic on the street.”
Outdoor dining isn’t disappearing entirely. In the coming years there’s a good chance that more Americans will have the opportunity to eat outside in the nicer months than they did before the pandemic—even if it’s not the widespread practice many had anticipated earlier in the pandemic. Where it continues, it will almost certainly be different: more buttoned-up, less lawless—probably less exciting. Santa Barbara, for example, made dining sheds permanent last year but specified that they must be painted an approved “iron color.” It may also be less popular among restaurant owners: If outdoor-dining regulations are too far-reaching or costly, cautioned Hayrettin Günç, an architect with Global Designing Cities Initiative, that will “create barriers for businesses.”
For now, outdoor dining is yet another COVID-related convention that hasn’t quite stuck—like avoiding handshakes and universal remote work. As the pandemic subsides, the tendency is to default to the ways things used to be. Doing so is easier, certainly, than coming up with policies to accommodate new habits. In the case of outdoor dining, it’s most comfortable, too. If this continues to be the case, then outdoor dining in the U.S. may return to what it was before the pandemic: dining “al fresco” along the streetlamp-lined terraces of the Venetian Las Vegas, and beneath the verdant canopy of the Rainforest Cafe.
The historic storms devastating much of California have turned entire neighborhoods into lakes, unleashed sewage into floodwater and killed at least 18 people.
And there’s more to come. About 5 million people were under flood watches Wednesday as yet another atmospheric river is bringing more rain to California.
“The state has been experiencing drought for the last four years, and now we have storm upon storm,” California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis said Wednesday.
“We’ve had six storms in the last two weeks. This is the kind of weather you would get in a year and we compressed it just into two weeks.”
It had already been “one of the deadliest disasters in the history of our state,” Brian Ferguson, California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services spokesman said Wednesday before the 18th death was reported.
“Yesterday, we had perhaps more air rescues than we’ve ever had on any other single day in the state’s history,” Ferguson said, adding that the Golden State is not out of the woods yet.
“While there is a bit of a break today, we continue to see additional storms prepared to come onshore in the next two days,” he said. “We’re continued to be concerned about our streams, our culverts and some of the areas that are prone to mudslides, particularly along our central coast.”
The flood watches Wednesday are primarily in Northern and Central California, including Sacramento, the North Bay and Redding. That barely leaves enough time for residents in flood-ravaged neighborhoods to assess the devastation before the next storm.
“It’s just brown water everywhere. And it’s just rushing through – it was going fast,” Fenton Grove resident Caitlin Clancy said.
“We had a canoe strapped up, that we thought if we needed to, we could canoe out. But it was moving too fast.”
The onslaught of recent storms came from a parade of atmospheric rivers – long, narrow regions in the atmosphere that can carry moisture thousands of miles.
“We have had five atmospheric rivers come into California over two weeks,” Kounalakis said.
“Everything is wet. Everything is saturated. Everything is at a breaking point, and there is more rain coming.”
In fact, four more atmospheric rivers are expected to hit California in the next 10 days.
Here’s what’s in store as another round of ferocious weather barrels down on the West Coast:
• The heaviest rain over the next seven days is expected in northern parts of California, where the National Weather Service predicts an additional 5 to 10 inches. On Wednesday, Northern California got a radar-estimated 1-2 inches of rain, with some higher elevations getting around 3 inches.
• The rain shifted north Wednesday afternoon, giving Central California a brief pause. There’s a slight risk – level 2 of 4 – for excessive rainfall Thursday for the northwest coast, and a marginal risk – level 1 of 4 – along the Pacific Northwest coast.
• Precipitation pushed inland to the Sierra Nevada Wednesday afternoon, dumping more snow. Snow was still falling Wednesday evening.
Another round of atmospheric moisture is expected to come onshore Friday, but less severe than earlier ones. A slight risk for excessive rainfall has been issued for the northwest coast of the state, with a marginal risk south, including the hard-hit Bay Area and San Luis Obispo.
National Guard members arrived Wednesday to help with the search, and more will be arriving Thursday, the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office said in a tweet Wednesday.
The sheriff’s office earlier urged the public to leave the search operation to the professionals to avoid the risk of volunteers needing to be rescued themselves.
As another storm looms, many residents are still grappling with devastation to their communities.
Rachel Oliviera used a shovel to try to push out some of the floodwater and thick mud enveloping her Felton Grove home.
But she was more concerned about her neighbors, whose homes were also covered in thick mud.
“A lot of us that live here in the neighborhood are elderly, and can’t actually physically do the cleanup.”
In the Los Angeles neighborhood of Chatsworth, several people had to be rescued after a sinkhole swallowed two vehicles Tuesday. In Malibu, a massive boulder came crashing down, shutting down a key roadway.
In parts of Santa Barbara County, “the storm caused flows through the sewer system to exceed capacity, resulting in the release of sewage from the system to the street,” County Supervising Environmental Health Specialist Jason Johnston said Monday evening.
The local health department warned the water could increase the risk of illnesses.
Another sinkhole was reported Monday in Santa Barbara County’s Santa Maria, where 20 homes were evacuated, CNN affiliate KEYT reported.
“The storms hit us like a water balloon exploding and just dropped water down through our rivers and creeks. So it’s been this excessive amount of flooding – it’s been the cycles over and over again,” Santa Cruz County spokesman Jason Hoppin told CNN.
Hoppin said 131 homes in the county received significant damage, but could be salvaged, while five others are not salvageable.
Trees have been toppling, claiming lives and causing property destruction and roadway obstructions. Sacramento officials estimate that about 1,000 trees have fallen since New Year’s Eve, Sacramento Department of Public Works spokeswoman Gabby Miller told CNN on Wednesday, adding that staff and crews have been working around the clock on cleanup.
In San Francisco, the public works department has logged about 1,300 tree-related incidents, which include downed trees, but also just limbs and branches, according to Rachel Gordon, director of policy and communications at San Francisco Public Works.
Parks that are home to some of the state’s iconic redwoods haven’t been spared, according to California State Parks spokesperson Adeline Yee.
“At Redwood National and State Parks and Big Basin Redwood State Park, we’ve seen some downed trees that are blocking roads and trails,” Yee said. “At this time, most of the trees that have come down are not the old-growth redwoods.”
In the state park system, 54 park units were closed as of Wednesday morning, and 38 were partially closed.
The recent atmospheric river storm system also has left dozens of state travel routes inoperable, and at least 40 are closed, according to Caltrans spokesman Will Arnold.
“Caltrans has activated our 12 Emergency Operations Centers throughout the state and more than 4,000 crews are running 24/7 maintenance patrols for road hazards like downed trees, flooded roads, mudslides/rockslides,” Arnold said.
The recent storms turned fatal after trees crashed onto homes and cars, rocks and mud cascaded down hillsides and floodwater rapidly rose.
At least 18 people have died in California storms in just the past two weeks. The latest victim was a 43-year-old woman, whose body was recovered Wednesday from inside a vehicle that had been washed into a flooded Sonoma County vineyard, officials said. Divers found the vehicle submergd in 8 to 10 feet of water.
“That’s more than we’ve lost in the last two years of wildfires,” the lieutenant governor said. “So this is a very significant emergency.”
Rebekah Rohde, 40, and Steven Sorensen, 61, were both found “with trees on top of their tents” over the weekend, the Sacramento County Coroner said. Both were unhoused, according to the release.
In the San Joaquin Valley, a tree fell on a pickup truck on State Route 99 in Visalia on Tuesday, killing the driver. A motorcyclist also died after crashing into the tree, the California Highway Patrol said.
Another driver died after entering a flooded roadway in Avila Beach Monday, the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office said.
“It only takes six inches of water to lose control of a car to be knocked over. In 12 inches, cars start floating away,” Kounalakis said this week.
“You’ve heard that creeks that have risen 14 feet just in the last day and in certain areas we’ve had over a foot of rain – just in the last 48 hours. So it is unbelievable.”
Several areas across the state have registered 50% to 70% of their average annual rainfall just since the parade of atmospheric river events began to impact the state on December 26, according to the National Weather Service. Oakland got 69% of its annual average, Santa Barbara 64%, Stockton 60%, and downtown San Francisco 59%.
Downtown San Francisco, Oakland and Santa Barbara have each gotten more than a foot of rain, according to the NWS.
Though none of the coming storms are expected to individually be as impactful as the most recent ones, the cumulative effect could be significant in a state where much of the soil is already too saturated to absorb any more rain.
And the state’s ongoing drought has parched the landscape so much, the soil struggles to absorb the incoming rainfall – which can lead to dangerous flash flooding.
A powerful storm battering California has forced thousands to evacuate – including an entire community – and prompted dozens of water rescues as floodwater inundated roadways, swept away vehicles and caused widespread damage.
Streets turned into rivers, trees came crashing down, homes lost power, rivers swelled and major roadways were shuttered as the storm unleashed powerful winds and heavy downpours. Parts of the Pacific Coast Highway, a key sea-side California highway, were closed in Southern California due to the flooding, officials said.
One driver died after entering a flooded roadway in Avila Beach, according to the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office.
Elsewhere in the county, a 5-year-old child was swept away in flood waters near the Salinas River in San Miguel Monday morning. The hourslong search for the child was suspended in the afternoon “because the weather had become too severe and it was not safe anymore for first responders to be conducting the search,” San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office public information officer Tony Cipolla told CNN.
More than 34 million people were under flood watches early Tuesday after parts of the central California coast received 1 to 1.25 inches of rain per hour Monday, the Weather Prediction Center said.
As of late Monday, 2 to 7 inches of rain had fallen across lower elevations and up to 10 inches in the mountains over a 24-hours period, preliminary rainfall reports showed. Montecito received a whopping 9.89 inches over 24 hours, while Fillmore got 6.24 inches and Santa Barbara got 6.13 inches.
The threat isn’t over yet. The storm is trekking South, shifting the risk of mudslides, flooding and severe storms to the Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose and Los Vegas areas on Tuesday.
More than 30 million people across the Southwest were under a marginal threat of severe weather Tuesday.
“Isolated strong to severe thunderstorms capable of producing damaging winds and perhaps a brief tornado may occur today across parts of southern/central California,” warns the Storm Prediction Center. “Thunderstorms capable of isolated severe gusts will also be possible across parts of southeast Nevada, northwest Arizona, and southwest Utah.”
In central California, heavy downpours unleashed significant flooding, mudslides and debris flows, prompting calls for residents to flee.
The entire community of Montecito in Santa Barbara County was ordered to evacuate Monday, along with residents in parts of Carpinteria, Summerland and the City of Santa Barbara.
“LEAVE NOW! This is a rapidly evolving situation,” Santa Barbara County officials said. Officials warned residents to “be prepared to sustain yourself and your household for multiple days if you choose not to evacuate.”
Montecito – locked between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean – received the evacuation orders on the five-year anniversary of a mudslide in 2018 that killed 23 people as mud and boulders the size of houses plowed down the Santa Barbara hillsides, splintering more than 100 homes and rupturing a gas main, according to the state’s Office of Emergency Services.
Video from CNN affiliate KEYT showed cars traversing flooded streets as water raged in a nearby creek in Montecito and mud oozed down a hillside.
Santa Barbara city officials reported dangerous road conditions with numerous roadways impacted by boulders, debris and flooding.
Farther north in Santa Clara County, about 32,000 people were under evacuation orders Monday afternoon and more people could be asked to leave Tuesday.
In nearby Santa Cruz County, Felton resident Rachel Oliveira said she chose to stay home as water from the nearby San Lorenzo River rose, flooding her home.
“It just came really quick,” Oliveira said. “Like within a matter of minutes it was from across the street all the way into our yard and it went really fast.”
The storm is the latest in an unrelenting parade of atmospheric rivers to plague the West Coast in recent weeks, leaving California soils too saturated to absorb any more rain, and setting the stage for intense flooding and mudslides.
Warning that with the “worst of it still in front of us,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday asked the White House for an emergency declaration to support response and recovery efforts. President Joe Biden later approved the declaration.
Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown asked county residents to shelter in place Monday evening as travel became a nightmare with rockslides, flooded roads and closed highways.
Crews in Santa Barbara County have responded to more than 200 incident calls due to the heavy rains, according to Captain Scott Safechuck, spokesperson for a Santa Barbara County Incident Management Team.
Around 10 to 15 homes were damaged due to flooding in the county on Monday, according to Santa Barbara County Fire, which released images showing a flooded neighborhood and a sinkhole that developed.
To the north, Santa Cruz County saw widespread damage, according to images from Cal Fire. The San Lorenzo River swelled 14 feet in just over four hours Monday morning as heavy rain pounded the region, putting the river in major flood stage.
Fast moving water in Santa Cruz knocked out a bridge and flooded state parks, video showed.
The National Weather Service reported a “possible levee breach” along the Pajaro River Monday morning and warned of “life threatening flash flooding.”
Meanwhile, farther south in San Luis Obispo County, authorities urged residents south of the Arroyo Grande Creek Levee to evacuate to higher ground immediately Monday evening.
The deluge prompted numerous water rescues throughout the state Monday, as rising waters trapped drivers.
In Southern California, at least 18 people were rescued by Ventura County Fire Department, including multiple people who were stranded on an island in the Ventura River, fire officials said.
As the rainfall intensified Monday night, officers in Ventura County’s Moorpark were working to rescue stranded drivers on State Route 126, according to the California Highway Patrol. State Route 126 was closed from Fillmore City limits to Fairview Canyon.
In Monterey County in central California, the sheriff’s office and the Coast Guard rescued two people and a dog who were trapped by flood waters, the sheriff’s office said in a post on Facebook.
Ahead of the storm’s arrival, California Emergency Services Director Nancy Ward warned that “floods kill more individuals than any other natural disaster.”
“We’ve already had more deaths in this flood storm since December 31 than we had in the last two fire seasons of the highest fire acreage burned in California,” Ward said during a news conference Sunday.
The rains dropped into Southern California Monday night, threatening flash flooding and mudslides from Los Angeles to San Diego – particularly across fire-scarred areas.
Flash flooding will be likely in many areas in and around Los Angeles through much of the day, tapering off in the late afternoon and evening. Parts of downtown Los Angeles have already seen between 1-3 inches of rainfall with the higher elevations around the city seeing 2-5 inches by early Tuesday.
While storm-battered areas of central and Northern California will see some respite from the heavy rains early Tuesday, “it will be short lived as the next in the seemingly never ending parade of strong wet Pacific systems pushes more heavy precipitation across all of California on Tuesday,” the National Weather Service warned.
The additional heavy rainfall on Tuesday is expected to exacerbate ongoing flooding, according to the Weather Service.
“Nearly all of California has seen much above average rainfall totals over the past several weeks, with totals 400-600% above average values,” the Weather Service said. “This has resulted in nearly saturated soils and increasingly high river levels.”
Downtown Santa Barbara received 6.37 inches as of early Tuesday – the wettest day on record for the downtown area.
San Luis Obispo McChesney Field also had its wettest day on record, with daily rainfall of 4.10 inches surpassing the previous record of 3.68 inches. Meanwhile, Moorpark had its second rainiest day on record with 4.02 inches.
The rain is expected to wind down Tuesday night across much of the state, before another batch of heavy precipitation moves into Northern California and the coastal Pacific Northwest Wednesday.
