More rain and snow on the way // Most expensive home purchase of 2023

Good morning. It’s Wednesday, Jan. 3.

Forecasts call for several rounds of rain and snow.
San Fernando Valley’s last working orange grove nears end.
And Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s record-setting home in Malibu.

Statewide

1.

A shed surrounded by patchy snow at Phillips Station near Lake Tahoe on Tuesday. (Andrew Nixon/California Department of Water Resources)

California’s water officials marched into the mountains near Lake Tahoe on Tuesday to conduct the first snow survey of the season. It’s bleak, they reported. The Sierra snowpack, which provides much of California’s water supply, stands at just 25% of its historic average. That’s compared to 177% a year ago, when the officials delivered their readings while standing in 5 feet of snow. “Luckily,” said Sean de Guzman, a top water official, “our statewide reservoirs are still well above average this time of year, thanks partly to how wet it was last year.” KQED | A.P.

Forecasters said some relief is on the way. Two storm systems this week are expected to be the coldest so far this season, dropping snow levels as low as 3,000 feet. Accuweather | S.F. Chronicle

2.

California boasts strict rules around toxic-waste disposal. So companies and government agencies ship their waste to recycling plants in places like Mexico, where regulations are lax and the price is cheap. One such facility in Tecate has been accused of dumping waste in an open pit. After a chemical release in 2022, the smell was so pungent nearby residents closed windows and donned masks. State officials stonewalled reporters seeking information on the waste California sends there. CalMatters

3.

A new analysis showed that a surprising demographic has joined California’s exodus: people with graduate or professional degrees. Residents of lower incomes and education levels have long fueled the state’s outmigration, driven by the high cost of living. As recently as 2018, people with advanced degrees offset the population loss, as more of them entered the state than left. That’s now flipped. In 2021 and 2022, the cumulative net loss of people with advanced degrees was nearly 40,000 residents. S.F. Chronicle

4.

A Porsche and a pickup truck required rescue near Badwater Basin in Death Valley. (S. Solomon/National Park Service)

A few days before Christmas, two men had the bright idea to drive their rented Porsche SUV off-road toward a salt flat in Death Valley and promptly got stuck in mud. They hired someone to pull the car out with a pickup truck, which also got stuck. The fiasco tore up the scenic landscape and earned the men mandatory court dates, park officials said. A similar case a few years ago resulted in an order for $50,000 in restitution. Inyo Register | NBC News

Northern California

5.

Brittani Frierson, the mother of a 10-year-old boy who was fatally shot by another 10-year-old in the Sacramento area over the weekend, said on Tuesday that the boy opened fire after losing a bike race. Investigators said the suspect’s father, Arkete Davis, threw the gun into a trash can after the shooting. He and his son were both arrested. “He tried to cover it up,” Frierson said of the father. “He left my baby there. He will pay for this. He will. We’ll get justice for my son.” KCRA

6.

In San Francisco’s downtown, where the vacancy rate hovers around 36%, some are seeing evidence of a revival in a tower synonymous with the city: the Transamerica Pyramid. A New York real estate titan named Michael Shvo bought the triangular skyscraper in 2020 for $650 million then allocated another $400 million to turn it into an attraction for businesses and visitors, with cherry blossom trees, shops, and restaurants. “I’ve always believed in San Francisco,” Shvo said. “The difference was, I was optimistic with a billion-dollar check in my hand.” N.Y. Times

7.

When San Francisco rapper Chino Yang released a song on YouTube in December accusing Mayor London Breed of abandoning the city’s Asian American community, Black church leaders called a news conference to denounce the diss track. Yang apologized last week. But he now says he was bullied into doing so by the Rev. Amos Brown, a civil rights leader and Breed ally. “Brown allegedly conveyed a threat that, unless Yang repudiated the rap, the Rev. would turn the Black community against Yang,” the Asian Justice Movement said in an Instagram post. S.F. Chronicle | KRON

8.

A cake maker in San Francisco named Jasmine Rae de Lung spends anywhere between 12 and 200 hours on a single creation. Commanding prices as high as $10,000, her cakes are works of art as much as food, but everything is edible — “the highest form of integrity in cake making,” she said. A New York Times videographer captured de Lung at work in her Mission District kitchen.

See de Lung’s cakes. 👉 @jasmineraecakes

Southern California

9.

By 1920, Southern California citrus was second only to oil among the state’s industries. But as the population boomed, so did property values. The groves gave way to homes. Now a developer is preparing to remove most of the trees from the last working orange grove in the San Fernando Valley, the century-old Bothwell Ranch, to make room for 21 upscale homes. “The plans have prompted sadness, and an outcry from some,” the Wall Street Journal wrote.

10.

In 2020, George Gascón rode a wave of outrage over police brutality to become district attorney of Los Angeles County. He vowed to introduce ambitious social justice reforms. Three years later, with anxiety over crime surging, he faces a vastly altered reelection climate. The 11 candidates challenging him are nearly all doing so from his right. “I think that this race now for 2024 has gone back to, for a lot of people, law and order, lock ’em up,” Gascón said. N.Y. Times

11.

The compound has been called a minimalist masterpiece. (Anthony Barcelo)

Beyoncé and Jay-Z made the most expensive home purchase in 2023, an analysis found. The pair shelled out $190 million, a California record, for a 42,000-square-foot home atop a bluff in Malibu designed by the celebrated Japanese architect Tadao Ando. It’s been described as a sculpture as much as it is a building. Wall Street Journal

See photos of the mansion. 👉 Business Insider

California archive

12.

Lee Sing, left, Theodore Durrant, and John Miller met their ends at the gallows.

☝️ Here are a few of the men who taunted Amos Lunt, by his account, from beyond the grave.

San Quentin’s first executioner, Lunt, had hanged them and 17 others during five years in the post starting in 1894. Before accepting the job, he had served in a war and led the Santa Cruz police force. But the intimacy of the hangman’s duties, which included personally affixing ropes around the necks of condemned men, took a mental toll that precipitated his own doom.

By 1899, Lunt reported hearing voices of the men he had killed. “They are after me,” he whispered, according to a San Francisco Call article. “There are several under the bed now.” He was incarcerated in the Napa State Hospital for the Insane, where he was said to brood ceaselessly. He died a little more than a year later at the age of 55 after what one newspaper report described as “softening of the brain.” Journalist Don Chaddock recounted Lunt’s descent into madness for the California prison system’s internal newsletter. Inside CDCR

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