More than 17 million Californians have health insurance through their job, according to a survey released in November by the health information group KFF. The average cost of premium payments for an employee’s family plan rose 24% to $28,400 a year, the survey found. Meanwhile, the national inflation rate was 12%, and wages grew by 14%, KFF wrote.

Health insurance premiums have risen year after year for decades. But costs spiked after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, driven by industry consolidation, increasing use of Ozempic and similar weight-loss drugs and other factors, according to KFF. Together, these forces are putting pressure on families and businesses, while some major health insurance providers in California continue to post profits.

“People are paying more and more, it’s taking up more and more of their family budgets, and they’re getting less,” said Miranda Dietz, who leads UC Berkeley Labor Center’s health program.

Along with rising premiums, more California employees also face increasing out-of-pocket costs. Workers bear indirect costs, too, Dietz said. As businesses spend more on health plans, they spend less on wages and other benefits, she said. She cited a study that concluded the average family with employer-sponsored health insurance would have earned nearly $9,000 more in 2019 if the cost of care hadn’t increased disproportionately since the late 1980s.

Under the Affordable Care Act, businesses with at least 50 full-time equivalent employees must offer health insurance coverage that meets affordability and care requirements, or face fines. Workers and businesses split the cost, and in practice, businesses shoulder most of the burden: employers pay about three-quarters of a family plan premium, on average, and about 85% of single plans, according to KFF.

At the independent bookstore Booksmith in San Francisco’s storied Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, owner Christin Evans said four of her employees qualify for health benefits. She said she covers the full cost of her workers’ Kaiser Permanente care — one of her “top expenses” of doing business.

Her costs are rising, she said, by about 17% — to $3,250 each month in 2026 from $2,776 in 2025. Last year, premiums rose 7.5%, she said.

“Many small business owners will likely decide to cut benefit offerings and reduce wages,” said Bianca Blomquist, director of the advocacy group Small Business Majority California, in an email. “While some entrepreneurs may even close up shop and go work for someone else, mainly so they can access quality health insurance.”

Faced with high health insurance costs, owners could be unable to make other investments in their businesses, she said.

Matthew Rae, associate director of KFF’s health care marketplace program, led the California survey. Between January and July 2025, KFF oversaw interviews with 460 employee benefit managers at companies based in California or with workers here.

In an interview, Rae pinned part of the cost spike on the pandemic, which officially ended in May 2023. During the worst days of the pandemic, in 2020 and 2021, insurance costs grew slowly as patients delayed serious care, he said.

Then “pent-up” need for care arrived, inflation nationally drove up prices and health care workers fought for better pay and benefits, Rae said.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law in 2023 setting separate minimum wages for health care employees, which reached $24 per hour at hospitals with 10,000 or more full-time employees this year. (The state’s general minimum wage is $16.50 per hour.)

Meanwhile, more Californians began using expensive GLP-1s such as Ozempic or Wegovy to manage diabetes and lose weight, Rae said. The hospital industry became more consolidated nationally, he said, which contributes to rising costs by reducing competition. More than 400 hospital and health system mergers were announced from 2018 to 2023, KFF said.

Meanwhile, some of California’s biggest insurers are posting profits.

An analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit watchdog, found Kaiser Permanente put $27 billion into reserves in the last four years. The Oakland-based health giant reports several billion dollars of profit each quarter. Elevance Health, the publicly-traded parent company of Anthem Blue Cross, reported $1.2 billion in profit in the third quarter of 2025, up from $1 billion the year prior, the Wall Street Journal reported.

While health plan premiums rose for workers and employers over the past three years, the quality of the insurance declined. The KFF survey found that 75% of workers now have a deductible, up from 68% three years ago.

According to the UC Berkeley Labor Center, less than half of Californians in the private sector had a deductible 20 years ago. Rae said that it can strain workers and their families.

“There’s a lot of worry about the affordability of plans for even people who are working,” or who have a family member who is, Rae said. “You’re pushing people past their assets, because the deductibles are too high.”

At the same time, changes are happening outside of the employer-based health insurance market. The new KFF data arrived in November as public health experts and patients began to brace for a big shake-up in the individual health insurance market: the expiration of Affordable Care Act tax credits that have benefited enrollees since 2021. In California, monthly premiums for those plans will double on average, according to Covered California, the state’s Affordable Care Act marketplace.

Self-employed freelancers and contractors, in particular, can expect major price spikes when the credits expire at the end of December. But small business owners and their workers make up half of all Affordable Care Act enrollees nationally, said Blomquist, of the small business advocacy group.

The early part of LaBarbera’s Sunday shift is peacefully spent capturing, banding and releasing birds in what they call a “little oasis of trees.” But around 9:00 am every week, their team of volunteers hears a cacophony of car horns from I-880, less than half a mile to the east.

“You become really aware of the noise when you get away from it for a little bit,” said LaBarbera, a science director at the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory.

The Bay Area is a permanent or temporary home for 250 different species of resident and migratory birds. Noise can affect their stress response, interfere with their ability to listen for predators and prey, and alter their vocalizations. But for conservationists striving to preserve the region’s threatened bird populations, disturbance from traffic, airplane and other noise is an unavoidable backdrop—and one that, until recently, has been little studied.

“I realized we knew hardly anything about how birds respond to noise pollution,” he says.

Scientists’ understanding of the impact of urban noise on birds advanced during the COVID-19 pandemic, however. When the Bay Area shut down in March 2020, researchers like Jennifer Phillips — then working with Francis through a National Science Foundation Fellowship — had been studying the songs of white-crowned sparrows in San Francisco and Richmond. They were able to record how the songs changed when the noise subsided. In a paper published in Science magazine, they reported that male sparrows sang more quietly and used lower frequencies when not having to compete with traffic noise.

But the pandemic’s muting of urban noise is long gone. And while the wetland birds of the South Bay don’t sing, they have to compete with urban sounds when they use vocalizations to communicate with each other and ward off predators.

The South Bay’s Salt Pond Restoration Project — the largest tidal restoration effort on the West Coast — provides habitat to the threatened Ridgway’s rail, an elusive species of bird that spends most of its time hiding in the tidal marsh where it nests. The project area also hosts about 10 percent of the population of endangered western snowy plovers. These tiny shorebirds now depend on the salt ponds and tidal flats — as well as on their normal habitat of sandy beaches — for nesting and foraging.

But the salt ponds are located directly under flight paths from Oakland Airport and Moffett Federal Airfield. Nearby highways and Union Pacific railroad tracks mean birds in the project area are constantly impacted by noise from planes, trains and automobiles.

Chronic noise “shrinks an animal’s perpetual word,” Francis said. When noise increases, the distance over which birds can hear sounds reduces.

While the effect of noise on rail species has not been studied directly, they vocalize at fairly low frequencies, which transportation noise tends to drown out.

Plovers, on the other hand, may be more sensitive to sudden noises. A large truck zooming by an otherwise quiet area, a barking dog or a cellphone ringing can create the illusion of a threat, causing birds to react.

“Episodic or intermittent noise is, I think, a bigger deal for wildlife than something steady or constant like highway noise or a data center or whatever else,” said Dave Halsing, project manager of the Salt Pond Restoration Project.

Francis recalls baby plovers on the Oceano Dunes near Pismo Beach on the Central Coast spending their nights darting away from their habitats, disturbed by off-road vehicles. The inexperienced chicks interpret the noise as an immediate threat and expend energy trying to evade it.

Still, Bay Area ornithologists and bird lovers are preoccupied with addressing more immediate threats of habitat destruction from further development, which means noise pollution is a lower priority.

“In conservation, we’re usually worried about the absolute emergency situation,” LaBarbera said.

Urban noise isn’t going away, but small changes can make a difference. Francis points to the growing number of cities enacting leaf blower regulations, which while they are often aimed at curbing emissions also help to reduce noise pollution. Switching to electric vehicles, choosing tire materials that generate less road noise, and adopting quieter jet engines can all help.

Managers of the Salt Pond Restoration Project are doing their part, taking steps to reduce noise in their own construction work when making trails or fortifying levees to reduce flood risk. They try to use less intrusive construction equipment, such as vibratory pile drivers. Halsing said the project is also required to implement buffer zones of several hundred feet between their construction work and certain species, including rails.

It’s a time-honored practice in conservation: Working for wildlife, while keeping one’s distance.

For three days, Immigration and Customs Enforcement kept Valera in the metal-clad room on the sixth floor above the courtroom, according to a declaration he submitted to a judge. There were no beds, and the lights remained on at all hours. Detainees were forced to share a single toilet against the wall.

“They treated us like animals,” the 47-year-old Peruvian man told Bay Area News Group.

On Christmas Eve, five months after Velera’s arrest, a federal judge in San Jose temporarily barred ICE from making arrests at immigration courts across Northern California. Bay Area immigration advocates sued to halt the arrests, which they argue force those seeking refuge in the United States to choose between skipping their court dates, thereby increasing their chances of deportation, or attending the proceedings and risking detention.

“This ruling is a critical step in ensuring that immigrants can safely pursue their immigration cases without fear of arrest,” Jordan Wells, an attorney for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, said in a statement.

The decision by U.S. District Court Judge P. Casey Pitts applies to ICE’s San Francisco area of responsibility, encompassing Northern and Central California, as far south as Bakersfield, and Hawaii. Pitts found advocates raised credible claims that the arrests have a chilling effect on court attendance and undermine the immigration court system. 

He ordered the ruling remain in place until a final judgment is entered in the case. It’s unclear when the lawsuit could be resolved.

This year, there have been at least 75 documented immigration court arrests in San Francisco, including Valera, and at least 39 in Sacramento, advocates said in an October court filing. It was unclear how many people have been arrested at the Bay Area’s other immigration court in Concord.

Attorneys for ICE argue that a January directive allowing the courthouse arrests nationwide is legal “operational guidance” authorized by the Trump administration. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.

Under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, ICE arrests have surged, often topping 1,000 a day, according to data from UC Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project. About a third of those arrested this year had no criminal record, according to analyses of the data by NPR and other news organizations.

“We are making America safe again and putting the American people first,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement earlier this month. “We have secured the border, taken the fight to cartels, and arrested thousands upon thousands of criminal illegal aliens.”

Valera, who has asked a court to grant him asylum, came to the United States three years ago, leaving behind his wife and young sons after fleeing criminal groups that he says threatened his life in his home country. Valera said he obtained a work permit and that he has cooperated with immigration officials while applying for asylum to remain in the U.S.

But after walking out of his immigration hearing on July 25, ICE immediately apprehended him. Soon after being taken to the holding cell, Valera said he began to feel half of his body going numb. Handcuffed to a stretcher, he spent the next day under observation at a hospital in San Francisco.

After being taken back to the cell, Valera said he received only small burritos and a chocolate bar at each meal. He and other detainees did their best to keep the area clean, but a small trash can in the corner quickly overflowed. The air conditioning ran constantly, and the men slept huddled together in the cell.

“They made us sleep on the floor in handcuffs,” Valera said.

Now, agents overseeing the San Francisco cells must provide detainees beds, clean clothes, basic hygiene products, medically necessary diets and to dim lights during sleeping hours, among other requirements, following a November injunction secured by advocates in the courthouse arrest case. 

ICE did not respond to a request for comment on the cell conditions. But government attorneys told the court the agency is complying with the injunction.

From San Francisco, Valera was transferred to a holding cell in Oakland before being flown to a larger detention facility in Arizona. A judge ordered his release about a week later, determining he had been unlawfully detained, attorneys said.

Valera was dropped off at a bus station and used his own money to buy a ticket back to San Francisco for the next day. He booked a motel room, where he took his first shower since his arrest about two weeks earlier.

Despite the ordeal, Valera, who currently rents a space in a home in Daly City, said he plans to continue his asylum case in hopes of making a better life for himself in the U.S. He wants to one day bring his family to join him.

“There are people who have gone through things that are far worse than what I went through, and I don’t wish that on anybody,” he said. “It’s very traumatic, to be honest, and I hope one day this all ends, that it goes back to normal, and that they don’t treat us that way. You come to work, not to commit crimes.”

Sunny skies, calmer winds and cooler temperatures are forecast to return to the Bay Area on Saturday and linger into early next week, offering a respite from a weeklong parade of storms that felled trees, flooded roadways and caused power outages affecting thousands of people.

In the Sierra, clouds were expected to part beginning Saturday, potentially allowing skiers easier access over Interstate 80 and Highway 50 to take advantage of several feet of fresh powder around Lake Tahoe.

A few final rounds of rain and gusty conditions were expected throughout the day Friday, particularly around midday and into the early afternoon as a final band of storms sweep through the region.

But in a word, the weather should be “beautiful” for the last several days of 2025, said Dylan Flynn, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

“The sun will be shining, the wind will be light — it’s going to be really nice,” Flynn said. The only potential drawback will be cooler temperatures that could dip overnight into the 30s for parts of the Bay Area, making it “noticeable, especially compared to how warm it’s been,” he added.

The calmer forecast comes after a drumbeat of storms pummeled the Bay Area, bringing with them hurricane-force gusts that toppled trees and left many residents celebrating Christmas in the dark.

RELATED: Horse found roaming North Bay roadway during winter storm

Several thousand people were without power Friday morning, the vast majority in the Santa Cruz Mountains, along with other parts of the Peninsula and in the South Bay, according to Pacific Gas & Electric’s outage map. In all, the storms this week knocked out power to more than 777,000 people across PG&E’s California network, said Paul Moreno, a spokesman for the utility provider.

As of 10:45 a.m., more than 8,700 customers remained without power in the Bay Area, with nearly 5,000 of them being in the North Bay, PG&E reported. Another nearly 2,400 were without power in the Peninsula.

A blown transformer during the storm Wednesday evening forced the closure of two of the four bores of the Caldecott Tunnel connecting Alameda and Contra Costa counties on Highway 24. A Caltrans spokesperson said Friday afternoon that they hoped to re-open both bores by late Friday.

Overnight Thursday into Friday, the weather service received reports of downed trees affecting Highway 152 and several boats damaged in the Santa Cruz Harbor from more bands of storms that rolled through the area.

Radar indicated a possible water spout in Monterey Bay, just outside of Santa Cruz, on Christmas Day, Flynn said, though it was not immediately clear whether it came ashore and caused any damage. The weather service also issued a tornado warning over the Santa Cruz Mountains later in the day, though it later appeared unlikely that anything touched down. Formal survey teams had not yet been dispatched at midday Friday.

Perhaps the greatest damage to emerge late this week came at the Lick Observatory atop Mt. Hamilton, where gusts of up to 114 mph on Christmas Day ripped open the shutter to the 36-inch Great Refractor dome, the observatory announced Friday. The dislodged shutter, which weighs more than two tons, “fell outward onto the roof of the Great Hall, crushing several structural beams,” the announcement said.

The telescope itself — which was the world’s largest when it opened in 1888 — was not damaged. Yet repairs to the facility are expected to take months, particularly with the added complication of the telescope’s precision lenses and electrical systems now being “vulnerable” to precipitation, observatory officials said.

“It’s hard to imagine a structure that solid and large failing in such a way — it was just mind-boggling,” said Elinor Gates, senior resident staff astronomer at Mt. Hamilton. The damage will limit public access to the facility for the foreseeable future, she added, stressing that “we want to make sure it’s safe before we let anyone up to the main building and visitors center.”

In all, since the first storms came ashore last weekend, Oakland and San Francisco have received more than 4 inches of rain, while the Oakland and Berkeley hills — along with the Santa Cruz Mountains to the southwest — received between 5 and 8 inches of precipitation, the weather service reported. San Jose received about 1.75 inches of rain, while similar totals were measured in Mountain View and Palo Alto and slightly more than 2 inches fell over Fremont.

The highest totals came in the North Bay, where Mt. Tamalpais received 15.11 inches of rain over the last week, according to the weather service. More than 6 inches fell in Tiburon and Fairfax.

To the east, snow continued to fall over the Sierra, providing a direly-needed lift to Lake Tahoe-area ski resorts that had delayed their openings amid an unseasonably dry start to the season.

Several ski resorts reported another two feet of powder from early Christmas morning to just before dawn on Friday, according to Scott Rowe, another National Weather Service meteorologist. That latest dumping left Soda Springs with 72 inches of snow so far this week, while Kirkwood reported 59 inches of powder, and Bear Valley said it had received 58 inches of snow.

Borreal reported 47 inches of snow for the week as of early Friday morning, while 58 inches of snow had fallen at the summit of Palisades Tahoe.

Accessing those ski resorts remained difficult Friday. Caltrans continued to enforce chain controls over Interstate 80 over Donner Pass and Highway 50 over Echo Summit. Still, the new solid base layer of snow was a welcome sight.

Just a week ago, on Dec. 19, California’s statewide snowpack was at 12% of its seasonal average, with the state’s northern-most peaks registering just 4% of its normal snowpack total for that date, according to the California Department of Water Resources. Central California — including much of the Lake Tahoe region — also was at just 12% of average.

But as Friday, the state stood at 69% of its snowpack average for the day after Christmas, with northern California coming in at 44% of average and the Central Sierra reaching 73%. More snow was expected to continue falling Friday before easing off this weekend.

“We’ll take any snow at this point in time,” Scott said.

Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com.

What’s good for Riverside County is good for the whole state: After a pilot to automatically admit high school students into the California State University system in the Inland Empire county took off last fall, lawmakers this year passed a law to greenlight a similar program statewide next fall.

Leaders at the California State University last year launched the pilot to attract more students to the university system and to steer some to campuses that have been struggling with enrollment declines.

RELATED: Cal State East Bay receives $50 million donation from MacKenzie Scott

The pilot worked like this: University officials and high schools in Riverside County pored over student course completion and grade data to identify every county high school senior who was eligible for admission to the 10 of 22 Cal State campuses chosen for the pilot. Then the students received a brochure in the mail last fall before the Nov. 30 submission deadline, plus digital correspondence, telling them they were provisionally admitted as long as they submitted an application to one or more Cal State campuses, even those not in the pilot, and maintained their high school grades.

Starting next fall, all students in California will be eligible for the automatic admissions program, which will expand the roster of participating Cal State campuses to 16. Cal State will release more information on the program’s implementation in February, its website says.

In justifying the expanded program during a legislative hearing, bill author Sen. Christopher Cabaldon, a Democrat from Napa, said college should be as seamless a transition from high school as it is for students finishing one grade and advancing to the next. “It’s entirely an invention of us, the gap between 12th grade and college. … The same gap does not exist between elementary school and junior high or junior high and high school.”

The legislation, Senate Bill 640, passed without any opposition and was signed into law by the governor. The program doesn’t mean students can enter any major at the campuses they pick. Some majors may require students to show higher high school grades or tougher courses if those programs have fewer openings than student demand. For Californians, the standard minimum GPA for entry is 2.5 in a series of college-preperatory courses.

Students will also be free to apply to the six other over-enrolled Cal State campuses, though admission isn’t guaranteed. Those are Fullerton, Long Beach, Pomona, San Diego, San Jose and San Luis Obispo.

What the Riverside pilot did

High school counselors told CalMatters that the Riverside County pilot encouraged students who never considered attending a university to follow through with the automatic admissions process. Counselors also reached out to some students who were a class or two short of meeting the requirements for Cal State admission to take those, encouraging more students to apply to college who otherwise wouldn’t have. Younger students who were off the college-course taking track might be emboldened to enroll in those tougher high school courses knowing automatic admission is in the cards, the counselors said.

Silvia Morales, a senior at Heritage High School, a public Riverside County high school, got an automatic admissions letter last fall. “I was pretty set on going to community college and then transferring, because I felt like I wasn’t ready for the four-year commitment to a college,” she said. She eventually submitted her forms, encouraged by her high school counselor.

Following the Riverside pilot, Cal State campuses saw roughly 1,500 more applicants and 1,400 more admitted students in 2025 compared to 2024, though just 136 more students enrolled.

The data for Riverside County reviewed by CalMatters suggests that more applicants and admitted students through an automatic admissions policy doesn’t translate into more enrolled students. Colleges closely follow their “yield rates” — the percentage of admitted students who ultimately enroll. In 2024, the Cal State yield rate for Riverside County was about a third. But in 2025, it declined by a few percentage points, meaning a lower share of admitted students selected any Cal State campus.

This suggests that the system will have to work harder to convert admitted students into ones who actually enroll, said Iwunze Ugo, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, particularly with students who would not have applied were it not for the automatic admissions program.

Automatic admissions doesn’t mean automatic enrollment

While admission to a college overcomes a major hurdle to eventually enrolling, there are numerous steps necessary before students sit down for their first college course. Accepted students must submit additional grades, put down a deposit, complete registration forms and actually show up for the fall term. Students who were less engaged in the college-going culture are more likely to “melt” during the process between acceptance and enrollment, some studies show, though researchers say this can be reversed with additional outreach to students at risk of not enrolling.

And even with an automatic admissions program, students must still register online and complete the application, which many students under the Riverside pilot didn’t do. Cal State sent out more than 17,000 automatic admissions notices to students, and just under 12,000 formally applied to at least one Cal State campus. Those who didn’t apply may have chosen another option, such as the often more selective University of California, private campuses, community colleges, or no college at all.

“I think that’ll be incumbent on the CSU to pick up some of that slack and encourage students admitted through this path to go through the rest of the process and ultimately end up at a CSU campus,” Ugo said.

Cal State officials also recognize this. “Students who apply independently tend to have stronger self-directed interest, and therefore stronger intent to enroll,” said April Grommo, a senior Cal State official who oversees enrollment management. More direct engagement with students admitted through this program will be necessary, she said.

Some campuses with a recent history of declining enrollment got a tiny pick-up from the pilot. San Francisco State saw 311 more applications from Riverside County in 2025 than in 2024. That translated to 11 more enrolled students, a review of Cal State data shows.

A statewide program may steer more students to attend campuses with enrollment woes, even if the “yield rate” declines. That’s because if the rate of new students enrolling doesn’t rise as quickly as the number of students admitted, the yield rate drops.

Under the expanded statewide program, Grommo said the system anticipates “enrollment growth as well, but not necessarily at the same rate as applications and admits,” she added.

And as the economy shows signs of decay, the prospect of a college degree may compel more high schoolers on the fence to attend Cal State; System data show students from there earn a typical salary of $71,000 five years after graduating with a bachelor’s degree. Postsecondary enrollment tends to rise as the number of available jobs decreases, a social science phenomenon in which employers are more selective about who they hire, compelling many job-seekers to hit the books to show they’re more trained.

Of course, souring economies often result in less public funding for colleges as state budgets are beleaguered, which may lead to fewer professors and staff for a growing cadre of students. “But I think generally, having more students is not a problem,” Ugo said.

Over the last two seasons, Archbishop Riordan and Salesian have separated themselves as the Bay Area’s basketball elite. 

Both programs have represented Northern California in the State Open Division championship game – Salesian in 2024 and Riordan last season. 

But this year, St. Ignatius has inserted itself into the conversation. 

The Wildcats are off to a 5-0 start that includes dominant wins over Amador Valley, San Ramon Valley and Acalanes. The San Francisco school also boasts a victory over Clayton Valley, the fourth-ranked team in the latest  Bay Area News Group rankings. 

The Wildcats brought back most of its team from last season, a group that includes four of their five starters. Big men Alex Moore and Ty Landers anchor St. Ignatius along with a plethora of skillful guards like Raymond Whitley, Shawn Boquiren and Anthony D’Acquisto. 

St. Ignatius is looking to win its first league title since 1999. Coach Jason Greenfield knows the ceiling for his team is high. 

“Our expectations are super high,” Greenfield said. “A lot of preseason polls had us pretty high, some in the Top 5, which means nothing by the way. But I do think it’s where we should be based on our talent level and our experience, but we gotta play the games.” 

YGNACIO VALLEY: WOLVES FINDING WAYS TO GROW

Through its first eight games of the season, Ygnacio Valley is still trying to find its footing.

The Wolves are 3-5 and have losses to some of the area’s best programs, including Salesian, Serra, Granada and Bishop O’Dowd. But the Wolves have also beaten Liberty and McClymonds, showing that YV still has potential to be a very competitive team this season. 

“We lost seven players. We only have three returners from last season, a couple of JV guys and a few transfers,” YV coach Michael Wooldridge said. 

Among the many departures, YV graduated two-time all-Bay Area News Group point guard Antonio Kellogg Jr. Returning players Jalen Cody, Machai Alston and Jaelyn Cox have anchored the team’s scoring in Kellogg’s absence.

Wooldridge said he’s happy to see his young team grow. 

“It’s a new team,” he said. “We got guys in new roles. Cody and Alston didn’t have to play that role last year because we had a guy that we can depend on that can put the ball in the basket. Now, we don’t have that, so we have to learn how to play as a team. But I like where we are.” 

HEAD-ROYCE: COACH LEARNS FROM SCHEDULING LESSONS

Head-Royce is a small private school in Oakland, boasting a student population of roughly 900. 

So it came as a shock to many last season when the Jayhawks, despite boasting an impressive record, were placed in the North Coast Section Division II playoffs with schools much bigger populations and with more storied basketball traditions. The outcome was predictable when Head-Royce suffered a crushing blowout defeat to Moreau Catholic – the bracket’s top seed – in the first round of the section playoffs. 

In hopes of being dropped down to a lower division, Head-Royce coach Ryan Diew created a very tough non-league schedule. 

Diew said the last two seasons have given him clarity on the system. 

“What I learned about scheduling is that it’s not the caliber of opponents, but more about these infliction points and momentum games,” Diew said. “Last year, we would go on a three-game winning streak, but then play three really good teams and lose those. So this year, being able to strategically put winnable games in the middle of those three elite teams is important. But you know, we kind of know we’re going to be a Division II team, so right now it’s just about trying to get enough wins.” 

OAKLAND TECH: BULLDOGS SEARCHING FOR IDENTITY

It hasn’t been the start Oakland Tech has envisioned.

The Oakland powerhouse has opened the season 4-5 with close losses to Amador Valley and Branson, as well as blowout defeats to Salesian and Bakersfield Christian. 

Coach Karega Hart said his team is still searching for its identity, but playing in tough games will only help Tech. 

“This time of year is good to win games and to challenge ourselves, which we’re doing, but with losing a lot of players from last season, we got to learn who we are and our identity,” Hart said. “We got all the pieces to be really good. We just got to have everybody buy in and understand that the mission is to win our last game of the year.” 

PINOLE VALLEY: SPARTANS OFF TO HOT START

After nine games, Pinole Valley is still undefeated. 

The Spartans have been a pleasant surprise, powered by an offense that averages just over 75 points per game. 

PV has two quality wins over St. Francis and Santa Cruz, and showed out at the Double Goal Coaches Classic by beating McClymonds and Vallejo by a combined margin of 50 points. 

Their nine-game winning streak is the Spartans’ best start to a season since 2004. 

In online voting that ended at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Wong finished with 82.9% of the votes. San Mateo soccer player Kayla Lichaa took second at 8.7%.

Congratulations to all the candidates for this week’s recognition.

Wong scored 16 points in Gunderson’s 45-32 win over Leadership.

To nominate an athlete for next week’s poll, email highschools@bayareanewsgroup.com by Monday at 11 a.m. Please include stats and team results.

Votes by email do not count. Only votes submitted through the online poll on the Mercury News and East Bay Times websites will count.

Winners are announced each Friday on the Mercury News and East Bay Times websites and in the print edition of the Mercury News and EB Times sports sections.

In online voting that ended at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Clugage had 49.4% to finish ahead of Head-Royce basketball player Tua Montoya, who was second at 43.7%.

Congratulations to all the candidates for this week’s recognition.

Clugage scored 24 points and grabbed 13 rebounds in Mitty’s 62-55 win over the King’s Academy.

To nominate an athlete for next week’s poll, email highschools@bayareanewsgroup.com by Monday at 11 a.m. Please include stats and team results.

Votes by email do not count. Only votes submitted through the online poll on the Mercury News and East Bay Times websites will count.

Winners are announced each Friday on the Mercury News and East Bay Times websites and in the print edition of the Mercury News and East Bay Times sports sections.

On Christmas morning, PG&E reported that over 65,173 customers were without power, including more than 17,000 in the peninsula, 16,000 in the South Bay and 6,700 in the East Bay.

However, the utility company had made significant progress in restoring power to some customers by the afternoon.

As of 1 p.m., 3,998 customers in Santa Clara County remained impacted, with around 40% of the outages located in Morgan Hill. In Alameda County, only 656 customers remained impacted, while 7,853 customers were still without power in San Mateo County.

The weather-related outages come on the heels of a large-scale outage on Wednesday caused by a fire at a Saratoga substation, which was resolved. San Francisco also experienced a multi-day blackout recently after a fire at a substation in its South of Market District left hundreds of thousands of customers without power.

Early Christmas morning, a line of severe thunderstorms moved into Northern California with wind gusts in excess of 70 mph, setting off flash flooding in the San Francisco metro. More storms were likely into Thursday afternoon and evening.

A tornado warning was issued for Santa Cruz County until 1 p.m. by the National Weather Service as a severe thunderstorm moved through the area.

Bay Area roadways have also been severely impacted as a result of flooding, leading to several crashes.

On Thursday morning, a gas tanker overturned on Highway 101 in San Jose, closing the southbound lanes until late afternoon and early evening.

A “moderate” Level 3 of 4 risk of excessive rainfall is in effect for much of Southern California, including Los Angeles, as several more inches of rain are expected in the mountains north of the city and another 2 to 4 inches of rain in the city. Urban areas could see flooding into the evening.

Wednesday’s potent storm brought 5 to more than 10 inches of rain to Southern California’s mountains and 2 to 5 inches in lower elevations. While rainfall Thursday and Friday will be less than that, any new rain could result in flooding because the ground is already saturated.

In the hard-hit community of Wrightwood in San Bernardino County, shelter-in-place and evacuation orders are still in effect, with authorities telling residents not to venture onto area roadways following flooding and debris flows.

Mudslides, rock slides and debris flows are again a threat on Christmas Day, particularly in areas where burn scars are present from recent wildfires. The scorched ground of these scars repels water instead of absorbing it, quickly turning rain into a surge of floodwater that pulls mud and debris with it.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Shasta counties Wednesday to mobilize resources. The city of Los Angeles also declared a local emergency Wednesday evening to ensure departments “have the required resources in the days ahead,” Mayor Karen Bass said.

Here’s the latest:

• Severe thunderstorms slam San Francisco: Flash flood warnings were issued Thursday morning in the San Francisco Bay area as unusually potent thunderstorms packing damaging winds and torrential rainfall moved through the region. San Francisco International Airport recorded a wind gust of 72 mph, and numerous gusts to 80 and 90 mph occurred in higher elevations, according to the NWS. Emergency officials received several reports of property damage due to winds, downed trees and flooding, but “no reports of significant storm related injuries,” San Francisco Department of Emergency Management spokesperson Jackie Thornhill told CNN. More thunderstorms are forecast to affect this region later Christmas Day and any storms that turn severe could produce damaging wind gusts or a brief tornado.
• Two dead in weather-related incidents: A Sacramento County Sheriff’s Deputy crashed and died on a wet roadway south of Sacramento just before 6 a.m. Wednesday, the state highway patrol told CNN. “The vehicle was traveling at an unsafe speed and the driver lost control” and hit a metal power pole, Officer Michael Harper said in a statement. Heavy rainfall had occurred at 5 a.m. and light rain was in the area at the time. In San Diego, a 61-year-old man died Wednesday when a large portion of a tree fell on him. High winds were blowing in the area at the time, according to San Diego Fire-Rescue Department Capt. Jason Shanley.
• Chain controls in effect for I-80: The snowy side of this storm is in high gear in the Sierra Nevada, where several feet are expected to pile up. Chain controls are in effect for Interstate 80, which means chains or traction devices are required on all vehicles except those with four-wheel or all-wheel drive that also have snow-tread tires.
• Flooding rain risk continues: About 8 million people in portions of Southern California are in the moderate-risk zone on Christmas Day, according to the Weather Prediction Center. This includes Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. More than a dozen flash flood warnings were issued Wednesday in Southern California, and flood warnings remained in effect for parts of the region on Christmas Day.
• Rescues in mountain resort community: Emergency crews pulled people from flooded cars and homes in Wrightwood, a community in the San Gabriel Mountains about 80 miles northeast of Los Angeles, amid dangerous flooding and debris flows. Some residents had to be rescued from rooftops by helicopter, according to fire officials, who told CNN they don’t yet have a tally of rescues, citing the “very dynamic” situation. Roughly 120 emergency personnel were working through the night to continue assisting residents, San Bernardino County Fire said.
• Widespread power outages: More than 165,000 homes and businesses were in the dark early Christmas morning, according to poweroutage.us.

Impossible travel conditions in the mountains

Feet of snow falling in the Sierra Nevada are making travel there difficult or impossible at times, and these conditions will continue through Friday. That includes Interstate 80 through Donner Pass.

During the past 48 hours, through early Christmas morning, Heavenly ski resort had picked up 28 inches of snow, while Northstar reported 38 inches of new snow and Kirkwood 33 inches. More snow continues to fall in the Lake Tahoe region. The UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab received 23.6 inches in 24 hours, with another 2 to 3 feet expected.

It’s causing weather whiplash for the region, which has had much less snow than usual to start the season. The Sierra Avalanche Center and Eastern Sierra Avalanche Center have issued a Backcountry Avalanche Warning for the greater Tahoe region and eastern Sierra in Mono County through early Friday morning, warning widespread areas of unstable snow are likely due to the heavy snowfall and strong winds.

Risk stretches into Friday
All told, rainfall totals in Southern California through the end of the week could be as much as 4 to 7 inches in coastal and valley locations, while foothills and mountains see 6 to 14 inches.

To put those totals into perspective, a city like Los Angeles could see anywhere from two months’ worth of rain to nearly half a year’s worth in just a week.

Los Angeles has already seen a typical December’s amount of rain following Wednesday’s storm.

Some relief from this nonstop stormy pattern looks to finally arrive for the upcoming weekend.

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According to its fiscal year 2025 report, which ended in June, Caltrain averaged 760,386 riders per month. By the end of June, ridership for that month alone had rebounded to 65.2% of pre-pandemic levels, up from 36.1% at the start of the fiscal year.  Earlier this month, the American Public Transportation Association ranked it the fastest-growing U.S. transit agency among systems with 3 million to 15 million annual trips.

Caltrain connects San Francisco to the South Bay, with links to BART, San Francisco International Airport, and other Bay Area transit systems.

Despite a ridership rebound, Caltrain warns it could be forced to cut service without voter approval of a regional transit sales tax expected on the November 2026 ballot. The agency projects an average annual funding shortfall of $75 million from 2027 through 2035, even as officials believe ridership will continue to grow with more Silicon Valley workers expected to return to offices next year.

“Electrified service and other enhancements have shown that residents across the Bay Area value these improvements,” Caltrain Executive Director Michelle Bouchard said in a statement. “At the same time, we continue to evaluate how to cut costs and make the most of the resources we have while we work toward long-term, sustainable funding.”

In October, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 63, which authorized the placement of a regional transit sales tax measure on the November 2026 ballot. The measure would fund Caltrain, BART, Muni, AC Transit and other systems across Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.

The proposal would levy a half-cent sales tax in most counties and a full-cent tax in San Francisco. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area’s regional transportation planning agency, estimates the measure could generate about $1 billion annually over a period of 14 years.

Caltrain officials say budget shortfalls threaten gains made since the launch of the system’s $2.4 billion electrification project launched in September 2024.

“Caltrain, like many other systems in the Bay Area, will need a new funding source in the near future in order to continue current operations,” spokesperson Dan Lieberman told this news organization.

If the measure fails and no alternative funding is secured, Caltrain has warned of sweeping service reductions. At a board meeting last month, the agency outlined potential impacts that include closing more than a third of stations, eliminating weekend service, reducing service to hourly frequencies, cutting staffing and ending service by 9 p.m., compared with the current midnight schedule.

Months before the vote, Caltrain highlighted other ways the public can help sustain its service.

“While it would be difficult to match the incredible growth we’ve seen since the launch of electric service, we’re still seeing strong year-over-year gains,” Lieberman said, noting ridership in October and November was about 42% higher than during the same months last year.

He encouraged riders who want to support the system “to buy a ticket and get on board one of them so you can travel the Peninsula the way it was meant to be traveled.”