The detail that gets me is cutting down trees on neighbors’ properties. The guy sounds like Trump with a chainsaw.

Disgraceful: "PG&E didn't immediately respond to multiple requests about the blackouts. Its first public response was posted to X at 4 p.m.: "We are working with first responders & city officials on an outage affecting 130,000 customers. We will share more information as it becomes available."

Rain will be just one aspect of this active pattern. Wind gusts Sunday will reach the 30-40mph range, not strong enough for any significant or widespread damage. However, gusts Tuesday evening and overnight could easily exceed 50-60mph, leading to tree damage, power outages, and flight delays. 4/6

Precipitation forecast thru Xmas morning via Calif.-Nev. River Forecast Center (www.cnrfc.noaa.gov). Forecast rainfall ranges from 4 to 5 in. in E. Bay valleys up to a foot for parts of the N.Bay. The forecast total for where I am in #Berkeley: 8 in., or more than 1/3 our average annual total. #cawx

One key point is that the initial days of this CA pattern shift will involve a very anomalously warm airmass--and there will be essentially no snow at all even in the higher mountains until Tue/Wed next week. Record low snowpack will persist, or become even lower, in meantime.

In NorCal, a prolonged period of light to moderate (and occasionally heavy, in the mountains) rain will occur over next few days as a very persistent & warm atmospheric river stalls overhead. Snow levels will generally be above 7k-8k feet, so even Sierra passes will see rain.

A woman en route to a UCSF medical center gave birth inside a Waymo robotaxi, marking one of the most unusual incidents yet in San Francisco’s closely watched driverless experiment.

For a transit agency depending on voters to rescue it from a catastrophic budget deficit, #BART disruptions are happening at the worst possible time. #transit

AP finds federal and state authorities in Louisiana are monitoring the online activities of ICE critics. Chilling. apnews.com/article/immi...

In a process completed in September, engineers opened up the massive main cables that support the bridge’s double-deck roadway between Yerba Buena Island and San Francisco’s Rincon Hill to check on conditions inside. The results from that exam are due by early next year. From @danbrekke.bsky.social

An interview with @carmitage: "You don't get out of tyranny without things getting rough. We will suffer more if we don't show courage now. That is the deal."

Senator Elissa Slotkin’s response to the president’s deranged threats to political opponents.

This innocuous-looking little cell over #Berkeley just produced .25 inches of rain in less than 15 minutes. #cawx

From a friend: "The Loony Left may criticize me for saying this, but I think white supremacy has a multiculturalism problem."

Firefighters had complained that the ground was still smoking in places and rocks remained hot to the touch when they were ordered to pack up their hoses and leave the area.

This morning's San Ramon #earthquake swarm. A 3.8-magnitude quake kicked off the sequence at 9:38 a.m. PST About 40 more shakes, most between magnitude 1.0 and 2.0, have occurred since. The same area experienced prolonged earthquake swarms in 1990 and 2015.

The "worst of the worst" now targeted by masked "police" now include preschool teachers.

will more than make up for the 2% of LA’s water that comes from Mono Basin streams. Construction is already underway. Board President Richard Katz said that once the recycled water starts flowing, “we won’t need Mono Lake water to meet the supplies in L.A.” www.monolake.org/today/major-...

I'm looking to speak to people who rely on SNAP about what this past week has been like. If that's you, please reach out, or pass along to others. Can be anonymous. Signal: marisakabas.04 Email: [email protected]

"This is the system we’re in, where people have been trained to immediately say, 'If we’re under nuclear attack, we need to respond.' There’s a lot of fog of war. You get, like, 10 minutes to decide. And if you make the wrong decision, the consequences can be catastrophic."

Helsinki goes a full year without a traffic death, largely by upgrading pedestrian and cycling infrastructure and reducing speed limits to 30kmph, via @semafor.com yle.fi/a/74-20174831

"Beneath the air of normalcy, a crisis is looming, say advocacy groups and former parks leaders who have repeatedly called to close the national parks during the government shutdown." Via @kqednews.kqed.org

Thank you, Sarah. Going to miss working with you, too!

@bart.gov Power & Support Audio: BART Transbay Tube Service Disrupted due to Breakers MCG and MEG Not Closing October 27, 2025 @danbrekke.bsky.social youtu.be/SiuQFohWhYE

Following a cool and wet October, a much warmer and drier November to come across California. Via @weatherwest.bsky.social #caweather #cawx #cawater

Mayor Lurie has it exactly right: Masked immigration agents "are deployed to use aggressive enforcement tactics that instill fear ... (and) are designed to incite backlash, chaos and violence, which are then used as an excuse to deploy military personnel.”

Just had another little shake -- 2.2 magnitude, the red dot on the USGS map -- along the Hayward Fault in #Berkeley. Yellow dots mark quakes from the past week; white dots show quakes since the series began with a 4.3 temblor on Sept. 22. #earthquakes @kqednews.kqed.org

Per @bart.gov radio: A train operator reported a small explosion in the Transbay Tube on the M2 track, Possibly due to a blown insulator. The train is going out of service. October 20, 2025, 5:45 AM @danbrekke.bsky.social

“There are large swaths where everything is dead — all the trees are dead. It will be a start-over event for this forest.”

Susan Stamberg, an original National Public Radio staffer who went on to become the first U.S. woman to anchor a nightly national news program, has died. n.pr/4qjVMDS

Caltrans told KQED there is no structural safety reason preventing trucks from using I-580 and that “the freeway was designed to be safe for all vehicular traffic.” Via @kqednews.kqed.org & @lauraklivans.bsky.social

This afternoon BART crews safety removed this tree and branches from the trackway. We are running single track service through the area and will make repairs overnight.

"The BART" instead of BART. Only an outsider would say "I'm going to ride the BART." A local would say, "I'm going to ride BART."

@bart.gov customers, here’s why Red Line service has been suspended today. #transit #bart

Encampments Are Polluting Bay Area Creeks. Can Those Who Live There Help Restore Them? Via @kqednews.kqed.org

In a series of veto messages, Newsom argued the bills were either unworkable, unnecessary or legally suspect. Via @kqednews.kqed.org

Subsidence photo op stirs bad feelings in already bitter San Joaquin Valley groundwater clash

A retired L.A. Fire Department battalion chief faults the agency for not coordinating with the city's water utility to prepare for the extreme fire weather that was forecast days before the deadly blaze swept through Pacific Palisades.

@bart.gov Audio Click: Bart plans to Encrypt its 🚓Police radio channels on October 12, 2025 The BART police radio is not available online. The cheapest radio to reliably listen to it costs $770 @danbrekke.bsky.social

"The fact and truth businesses are suffering economic headwinds driven by the bullshit and rhetoric businesses. The current administration is hostile to facts that conflict with the president’s claims and is driving his base’s distrust in any outlet that’s in the business of generating facts.'

Taking time out from our current slew of manmade disasters to consider one that could be much, much bigger:

@bart.gov's ridership in September topped 5 million, the first time that's happened since February 2020. Ridership for the month was up 9.7% over September 2024. Weekday average ridership: 195,057. That's 45.8% of BART's pre-pandemic September benchmark of 426,300. #transit

"The stakes are high: The Presidential Memorandum makes clear that DOJ intends to target tax-exempt organizations and their funders for investigation and potential criminal prosecution, including based on activities that have historically been viewed as protected by the First Amendment." #NSPM-7

🚨 NSPM-7 🚨

Some 511,877 vehicles in the state have active clean-air vehicles decals, according to the DMV. Forcing all of them to merge into general traffic will likely create gridlock. But the CHP has already announced a 60-day grace period before they'll begin ticketing solo CAV drivers in carpool lanes.

In the US, even a “cheap” transit bus costs 2-3x more than in Asia or Europe -- and one agency may pay twice as much as another for nearly identical vehicles. In Bloomberg, I explored a ripe opportunity to improve transportation by applying Abundance-coded, supply-side reforms. 🧵

This was at the north side of the intersection of Dearborn and Wacker if you're keeping track at home. ...

"After a retired senior officer, Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, tweeted that German generals were 'called to a surprise assembly in Berlin' in 1935 and 'required to swear a personal oath to the Führer, the defense secretary responded with sarcasm. “'Cool story, General,' Hegseth wrote.'

“What German Holocaust reparations started was to serve as a historical precedent for systematically addressing past atrocities and to say that a government is responsible for its actions or what actions it allows.” Via @kqednews.kqed.org

This Is the Feeling of Losing a Country. I Know It Well.