Good morning. It’s Tuesday, April 25.
- Farming towns brace for floods as weather warms up.
- Silicon Valley bets big on the promise of limitless energy.
- And gorgeous pictures of aurora borealis in California.
Statewide
1.
“The big melt is now here.”
With forecasts calling for unusually warm temperatures this week, farming towns in the southern San Joaquin Valley are bracing for what is expected to be the season’s first major increase of snowmelt out of the Sierra. About 90 square miles is already underwater, a resurgence of long dormant Tulare Lake. Whether the levees surrounding communities such as Corcoran will hold is anyone’s guess. “People are scared,” said Kirk Gilkey, a local farmer. If “Corcoran floods, it’ll be a ghost town after. It won’t survive.” L.A. Times | Mercury News
2.
News organizations and California officials have repeatedly trumpeted what they described as the Sierra Nevada’s record — or near record — 2023 snowpack. But it was no record at all, explained data reporter Scooty Nickerson. That’s because the state has changed its baseline for comparison, expressed as “normal” snowpack, multiple times since the 1950s. Why does it matter? A corrected ranking, which pushes 2023 down to the No. 4 spot, provides a clearer view of the declining size of the snowpack over the time. Mercury News
3.
California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis announced Monday that she is running for governor in 2026, making her the first major candidate to seek to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom when he is termed out of office. Kounalakis, 57 — a daughter of Greek immigrants, former businesswoman, and onetime ambassador to Hungary — would be the first female governor of the nation’s most populous state. She’s expected to have a formidable campaign war chest thanks to the largess of her real-estate tycoon father. Politico | A.P.
- Hours after Kounalakis announced her bid, former Controller Betty Yee said she would run too. S.F. Chronicle
4.
An intense solar storm meant that the dazzling burst of colors known as the aurora borealis appeared farther south than usual on Sunday and Monday evenings, including parts of California. Michael Steinberg, a 20-year-old Cal State Chico student, shared his shot above, captured Sunday night in Orland, near Chico. L.A. Times | A.P.
Other standout photos:
- Castle Crags State Park, Shasta County
- Mendocino National Forest
- Lake Berryessa, Napa County
- Mammoth Lakes
- Death Valley
Northern California
5.
“There are no people here.”
In 2018, San Francisco unveiled its $2.1 billion Transbay Transit Center, one of the region’s biggest infrastructure projects in decades. Five years later, the grandiose structure often sits empty. Foot traffic is down more than 40% compared to early 2020. Ridership on the main transit provider, AC Transit, has plunged more than 75%. Notably, there are no trains. A plan to get them is another $6.7 billion and at least a decade away, wrote the S.F. Chronicle.
6.
The tech executive Bob Lee and Khazar Momeni, the sister of his alleged killer, visited the home of a suspected drug dealer hours before Lee was fatally stabbed in San Francisco on April 4, the SF Standard reported, citing an unnamed source. Momeni’s drug use may have worried her brother Nima Momeni, a friend who knew the siblings said. “A common theme that I’m seeing is heavy illegal narcotics use,” a defense attorney for Nima Momeni said. SF Standard
7.
“It’s the holy grail. It’s the mythical unicorn.”
Tech figures are investing hundreds of millions of dollars on the dream of harnessing the process that powers the sun to deliver almost limitless energy. They’ve been riding a wave of momentum since August 2021, when scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory made a major breakthrough in fusion power. Investors think fusion reactors could be built within years. Wall Street Journal
8.
Liset Garcia, 32, earned a degree in microbiology from UC Merced and a master’s degree in public health from USC. Then she decided to grow flowers in Fresno. Her journey has helped make her something of a local sensation on TikTok, where she posts regularly under the moniker Sweet Girl Farms. “The farm was like my therapy,” she said. “That’s why I started to grow a lot of flowers. It was to give me this therapeutic effect of starting over.” Fresno Bee
Southern California
9.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a case over whether Southern California school officials were within their rights to banish critics from their Facebook and Twitter feeds. After two members of Poway Unified blocked a married couple, they sued on free speech grounds. Lower courts ruled in the couple’s favor, saying that officials’ social media pages function as public forums. The officials argued that they are entitled to their own First Amendment rights, “which include the right to block abusive commenters.” A.P. | S.D. Union-Tribune
10.
Riverside County sheriff’s deputies sold 60 pounds of methamphetamine to a narcotics trafficker in an undercover sting, but he fled — with the drugs — and got away. The Sheriff’s Department declined to explain what went wrong. “It is pretty embarrassing,” said Michael Lujan, a retired captain from the department. “It’s unfortunate because now we have additional narcotics out on the street.” L.A. Times
11.
A bipartisan congressional group from California and Nevada urged the Biden administration on Monday to fast-track federal funds for the construction of high-speed rail between Victorville and Las Vegas. Brightline, a train company from Miami, had hoped the route through the Mojave Desert would be operational by 2020 but ran into funding troubles. The new projected start: 2027. Its electric-powered trains could potentially cut the four-hour trip in half. A.P.
12.
The Dodgers have been repeatedly renewing the contract of a player who fell into the clutches of schizophrenia and hasn’t played since 2018. Since failing to show up for spring training in 2019, outfielder Andrew Toles, 30, has lived on the streets and cycled in and out of mental health clinics. He had only been with the Dodgers a few years; the organization could have simply cut ties. Instead, they’ve renewed his contract every year so he can keep his health coverage. Sports Illustrated | KABC
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The California Sun is written by Mike McPhate, a former California correspondent for the New York Times.
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