The agency posted around 1 p.m. that firefighters were setting up a rope system for a recovery mission on the beach south of Davenport in Santa Cruz County. They were able to bring the body up from the beach to the bluffs before clearing the scene.
The Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office said on Facebook that “due to the close proximity to the recent shark attack victim in Monterey County,” they will be working with the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office and the Pacific Grove Police Department on the recovery.
The action comes after a 55-year-old swimmer named Erica Fox disappeared on Sunday near Lovers Point in Pacific Grove, where sharks were reportedly seen in the area. KSBW reported that the body was a woman, but officials did not release any identifying information.
]]>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.
]]>Exoplanet VHS 1256b, located 40 light years away from Earth, was identified in 2015. The planet has a similar volume as Jupiter but is 10 to 20 times its mass, earning it the super-Jupiter or brown dwarf title — smaller than a star, and similar to gas giant planets. This particular exoplanet quickly captured astronomers’ attention with its extreme variations in brightness.
Most objects in space appear to blink, due either to physical changes within the planet or star, or external factors. For super-Jupiter exoplanets, Zhang said, this change in brightness is usually minimal, hovering at 1 to 2%. But on VHS 1256b, brightness variations neared 40%, the largest ever recorded for an object of its size.
The mystery made it a target for researchers using the James Webb Space Telescope to directly image exoplanets. One of those researchers was UCSC astronomer Andrew Skemer, who is a co-principal investigator of the James Webb Space Telescope Early Release Science program.
In 2023, Skemer and his former graduate student Brittany Miles co-authored a paper revealing the chemical makeup of the planet’s atmosphere, home to silicate clouds made of sand-like crystals that are vaporized and then condensed. Still, questions remained. Most notably, scientists wondered how these clouds were distributed across the planet, and whether they could account for the huge fluctuations in brightness.
Zhang, who had been studying planetary atmospheres for years, wanted to find out. He used a modified version of a general circulation model — a computer program commonly used to model Earth’s atmosphere and climate dynamics — to create a simulation of VHS 1256b’s atmosphere. He and his research team experimented with different versions of their model, trying to create one that would replicate the observed brightness changes.
The team was working on the assumption that the distant exoplanet had key similarities to Jupiter. At most wavelengths of light, Jupiter, like its distant brown dwarf cousins, had a 1 to 2% brightness variability. But, at a certain wavelength, that variability jumped to 20%. That represented the planet’s famous Great Red Spot, a storm roughly the size of the Earth. So, Zhang thought, maybe VHS 1256b has some kind of great red spot, too. They tried to create a model with some kind of big storm, but struck out.
“We tried, but we cannot,” Zhang said. “No way, we just cannot get it right. And so we got puzzled.”
Zhang and his team eventually had to consider the possibility that the exoplanet was, in some way, fundamentally different from Jupiter. Jupiter rotates much faster than Earth, its days lasting only nine hours. Zhang had been modeling VHS 1256b in a similar way, with fast rotation and short days. This fast rotation doesn’t allow storms or clouds to grow large. Instead, the force from the speedy rotation causes clouds to form into the neat bands and spots that can be seen on Jupiter. Zhang decided to see what would happen if he slowed down the model’s rotation.
“We said, ‘OK, why not?’ We’ll just try slow rotation,” Zhang said. “And when we try slow rotation, magic happens.”
In the slow rotating simulation, Zhang saw massive clouds of dust form across the planet’s surface. The clouds were unstable, forming and dissipating over time. Dust plumes were dredged from below into the atmosphere by the planet’s heat, which is much higher than Jupiter’s, and could form small cloud patches or global dust storms.
In the end, Zhang’s simulation showed that VHS 1256b is not as similar to Jupiter as scientists expected. The planet rotates once every 22 hours, compared to Jupiter’s nine. It is also much hotter — while Jupiter sits at around 128 Kelvin, or -224 degrees Fahrenheit, VHS 1256b is about 1,300 Kelvin or 1,880 degrees Fahrenheit. The planet’s turbulent clouds reminded Zhang not of Jupiter, but of Mars’ chaotic, unpredictable dust storms.
“I feel quite surprised,” Zhang said. “This has nothing to do with Mars, right? It’s super different, but its actual physical mechanism could be the same.”
These enormous and ever-evolving dust clouds explain the planet’s mysterious dips and spikes in brightness. Zhang believes the phenomenon could be present on other exoplanets, too.
“I think this is very strong evidence to show that silicate clouds cause brightness changes, at least for this object,” Zhang said. “But I believe it’s universal.”
This kind of research could revolutionize scientists’ understanding of planetary atmospheres. Before astronomers could directly observe exoplanets, they were limited to studying our own solar system’s eight planets. Now, with the James Webb Space Telescope and direct imaging exoplanet programs, scientists are able to dive into atmospheric dynamics that have never been observed.
For Zhang, the next step is to gather more information about other super-Jupiters to see if they follow similar patterns. Perhaps, he said, there will be a predictable correlation between brightness variation and rotation period that has to do with silicate dust clouds. VHS 1256b could end up as a point on a graph showing a clear relationship between the two factors.
“I would be very much happy to see that happen,” Zhang said, “but nature always surprises us.”
Zhang also thinks silicate dust clouds could play a significant role in a decades-long mystery known as the L/T Transition, a stage in brown dwarf or super-Jupiter planets when their temperatures are around 1,400 Kelvin or above, appear red. Somewhere between 1,400 and 1,200 Kelvin, there is an abrupt transition, and planets with temperatures below this threshold appear blue. This sharp change indicates a sudden change in the planets’ atmospheres at that temperature threshold, Zhang said, and nobody knows why.
VHS 1256b, sitting just above that temperature boundary at 1,300 Kelvin, is red. After discovering more about its atmosphere and its massive dust storms, Zhang thinks dust likely plays a significant role in this red to blue transition. Maybe, he hypothesized, these massive dust storms dissipate when temperatures drop to 1,200 Kelvin, causing the atmosphere to appear more clear.
“Unfortunately, no one has confirmed this hypothesis,” Zhang said. “But I think there’s a smoking gun.”
]]>When the board was fixed, he loaded the plastic into the blue recycling bin outside of his house, but the next morning the bin had not been emptied. The city recycling plant wouldn’t accept the material because it was a non-recyclable kind of plastic.
“I started talking to my buddies and we realized this was an industry-wide problem. There’s so much waste generated from building surfboards,” said Guerrero, who is now CEO at Swellcycle, a Santa Cruz company that creates 3D printed surfboards from renewable materials.
Guerrero has always been interested in building environmentally friendly products. In high school, he converted a 1972 Volkswagen Beetle into an electric vehicle. Later he gained a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a master’s in design and manufacturing. Guerrero 3D-printed his first prototype board less than a year after his surfboard broke, marking the beginning of what would become Swellcycle, which aims to turn the tides on surfing’s harmful impact on the planet.
Traditionally, surfboards begin their lives as a large rectangular block of rigid polyurethane foam — a type of plastic made from fossil fuels that can’t be easily recycled. The blocks are carved away to form the desired surfboard shape, generating a large amount of waste.
Oil-based plastics like polyurethane are terrible for the environment. In fact, the carbon emissions from manufacturing a typical six-foot surfboard are equivalent to one person flying 1,005 miles on a long-haul flight, according to a 2022 report from Wavechanger, an Australian organization dedicated to reducing the harmful environmental impacts of surfing.
Some newer foam materials that use fewer fossil fuels have gained popularity, but these alternatives break down easily into tiny pieces of plastic that can harm ocean wildlife.
“Imagine the contents of a beanbag,” said Tom Wilson, founder of Wavechanger. “If you break a surfboard in half and rub it just slightly, the beads fall off.”
Those beads can be swallowed by seabirds and other marine animals, leading to internal injuries, intestinal blockages, and even death.
“You see photos of birds that have their stomachs opened after they pass away, and they’re full of plastic,” Wilson said.
Instead of nonrenewable materials, Swellcycle boards are built from polylactic acid (PLA), a biodegradable plastic made from fermented corn starch and sugarcane. In addition to being eco-friendly, surfboards made from PLA are stronger and lighter than typical foam boards.
To combat the waste created by the typical carving process, Swellcycle uses specialized 3D printers to print their boards with the minimum amount of PLA. The company builds its own printers — giant rectangular boxes standing taller than their operators — to methodically print the boards layer by layer.
The cores of the boards are printed using a lattice pattern, strengthening the board while keeping it light enough to maneuver easily. Once the day-long printing process is finished, the only excess material created is the support that props up the board, which the company recycles into new products.
Traditional surfboards are simply thrown away once their time is done, but with Swellcycle boards, the PLA is ground into pellets which can be used to make new products.
Every part of a Swellcycle board can be recycled, apart from the resin used to coat the boards and make them durable. When heated, resin burns instead of melting, so the Swellcycle team is now working on methods to convert excess resin into fins, which jut out on surfboards to help with steering and control.
“We used to see trash as just a problem, but trash is so precious. We can make so many things if we are creative,” said Lili Van Hassel, sustainability and operations lead at Swellcycle.
Swellcycle’s zero-waste approach combats what’s known as the “surfer’s paradox,” in which surfers, who are often avid environmentalists, actively participate in practices that harm the natural world.
“Before Swellcycle, there was a disconnect between surfers that love the ocean and want to protect it from pollution and climate change, but the equipment that they were riding was directly contributing to the very thing they’re trying to prevent,” Guerrero said.
The true test for a surfboard is how it performs on the waves, however. At one of the company’s “demo days” in October, where local surfers tested out the boards for the first time in Santa Cruz, they held their own.
“It was very cool. I like that it was stiff, had a lot of drive, and went fast,” said Jason Glickman, a Santa Cruz resident who has been surfing for more than 30 years.
Ricardo Urbinas, another local surfer, urged the surfing community to take a more active part in protecting the oceans that they love.
“We really have to be good stewards of the ocean,” Urbinas said. “As much as we like to surf, I think we all understand some of the impact that building surfboards has.”
Swellcycle’s boards were recently named “Earth & Sea Invention of the Year” by the Seymour Marine Discovery Center at UC Santa Cruz. Guerrero hopes that other sports manufacturing companies beyond surfing see Swellcycle’s success as a blueprint of how to reduce the environmental impact of equipment production.
“Our wish is that people are excited about this as we are and we can do this all over the world,” Guerrero said.
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The service reported that a severe thunderstorm capable of producing a tornado was 7 miles south of Santa Cruz at a speed of 35 mph.
The areas impacted include Santa Cruz, Corralitos, Scotts Valley, Capitola, Live Oak, Soquel, Twin Lakes, Opal Cliffs, Felton, Aptos, Ben Lomond, Rio Del Mar, Eureka Canyon Road, Boulder Creek, Day Valley, Aptos Hills-Larkin Valley and Aptos Hills-Larkin.
Residents in those areas were encouraged to move to an interior room on the lowest floor of a well-built building away from windows. For people outside, in a mobile home or in a vehicle, the agency recommended relocating to the closest substantial shelter.
“Flying debris will be dangerous to those caught without shelter,” the agency said in its advisory. “Mobile homes will be damaged or destroyed. Damage to roofs, windows and vehicles will occur. Tree damage is likely.”
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As Teena Punjwani and Deepak Nasta take stock of the last year, they sigh.
“I feel like I’ve lived too many lifetimes in this one lifetime,” Punjwani said.
The San Jose couple’s life together was thrown into chaos in February with a heartbreaking diagnosis: their 5-year-old son, Jayaan, had brain cancer. His parents had sensed that something was off last winter, when Jayaan’s writing skills nosedived at preschool and he mysteriously lost balance on the left side of his body.
What followed were months and months of anxious days and long nights at clinics and hospitals as Jayaan, tough as nails, soldiered through his treatment plan: brain surgery and chemotherapy, plus a whirlwind of appointments for occupational therapy, physical therapy, blood tests and MRIs.
Through the ups and downs, though, the couple weren’t alone. Staff from Jacob’s Heart, a nonprofit based in Watsonville serving families in Silicon Valley and the Central Coast who have a child with cancer, stepped in to help them weather the ordeal.
After a hospital social worker pointed them to the nonprofit, the family said, Jacob’s Heart provided a slew of resources with all the care and attention of a family member. The nonprofit has paid for their energy bills at home, plus their groceries and gas. Nasta is the family’s sole breadwinner at the moment as Punjwani practically lives at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford with Jayaan.
When the hospital discharged Jayaan earlier this year, Jacob’s Heart staff visited and played with him, bringing some of his favorite toys, like Mickey Mouse and Bluey.
The nonprofit also dispatched van drivers to whisk them from their home to medical appointments, as early as 6 a.m. or as late as 10 p.m. – and in emergencies, such as a day this fall when Jayaan became unresponsive and landed in the pediatric intensive care unit for a month
“They’re such an amazing team,” Nasta said. “We honestly could not do it without them.”
The nonprofit’s services are exhaustive: transportation to medical appointments, therapy and emotional support, parent support groups and grocery deliveries for families with immunocompromised children. The organization helps pay for funeral and memorial expenses. Specialized staffers known as family support specialists are liaisons with the families and connect them with whatever they might need.
All free of charge, no questions asked.
Most of Jacob’s Heart clients live around Monterey Bay, plus clusters in the Salinas Valley and the southern tip of the Bay Area. Many are Latino and lower-income. On a giant map in the nonprofit’s Watsonville resource center, hundreds of pins mark the homes of families who have, at some point, accepted help in the 27 years since Jacob’s Heart launched.
Jayaan’s family is one of two dozen in Santa Clara County whom the nonprofit is now serving after expanding into the county this summer. Jacob’s Heart is seeking $40,000 to further its expansion into Silicon Valley and continue its core services in Santa Cruz County. With that funding, the nonprofit said, staff could support at least 50 families in Santa Cruz and Santa Clara counties.
The nonprofit is named for Jacob Judd. As a child in the 1990s, Judd was diagnosed with cancer and given a 5% survival rate. He beat the odds. Now, he’s in his 30s.
Other children were less fortunate. Hanging on the wall next to Judd’s portrait in the nonprofit’s Watsonville resource center are photos of two kids who did not survive: Maddy, who inspired the nonprofit’s arts programs, and Augustin, whom Jacob’s Heart helped send to Mexico to be with his family. On a foggy day in late October, staff had erected a Dia de los Muertos altar where dozens of families offered ofrendas to their loved ones.
Eli Garnica, manager of development and communications at Jacob’s Heart, said people often offer sympathy when she tells them what she does, and the work can be emotionally taxing. But it’s fulfilling, she said – even “joyous” to watch families build community and work together.
“We get to play a role in their journey and their life,” Garnica said.
The nonprofit’s home base in Watsonville is as far from a gloomy clinic or social services office as you can imagine.
The vibrant space is replete with children’s toys, house plants, therapists offices, a community kitchen, a food pantry and a free clothing store. Staff host volunteer events and “art from the heart workshops,” where kids learn to express themselves artistically. And in the summer, Stanford hospital nurses volunteer at the nonprofit’s three-day summer camp.
Even after months of treatment that would strain the toughest adult, Jayaan is still “a really happy kid,” Nasta said. On Halloween, he and Punjwani sat in a courtyard at the Stanford children’s hospital. They had recently heard good news: after weeks in the pediatric intensive care unit, Jayaan was heading back to the oncology wing. Hopefully, after finishing another course of chemo and then rehabilitation, Jayaan could get back to the things he loves most.
That day was a good one, Punjwani said, “because Jayaan is having a good day.”
ABOUT WISH BOOK
Wish Book is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization operated by The Mercury News. Since 1983, Wish Book has been producing series of stories during the holiday season that highlight the wishes of those in need and invite readers to help fulfill them.
WISH
Donations to Jacob’s Heart Children Cancer Support Services will help the nonprofit provide clients with transportation to treatment and medical appointments, nutritious food, and crisis support, in addition to helping with expenses related to the safety and care of the child with cancer. Goal: $40,000.
HOW TO GIVE
Donate at wishbook.mercurynews.com/donate or mail in this form.
ONLINE EXTRA
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Brian Shab is expected to step into the role early next year, the city of Watsonville announced Tuesday.
“Chief Shab brings extensive experience in law enforcement and is a proven leader who has dedicated his career to public service,” City Manager Tamara Vides said in a statement.
Shab, a native of East San Jose, served eight years in the military and joined the San Jose Police Department in 1998. Over the years, he “has managed teams, led major divisions and earned numerous commendations,” including the Medal of Valor, Hazardous Duty Award and Outstanding Police Duty Award, according to the city.
Shab holds a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice management from Union University and a Master of Science in law enforcement and public safety leadership from the University of San Diego.
In a statement, Shab said he was “honored, humbled and excited” to be chosen as Watsonville’s next chief of police.
“As a Santa Cruz County resident, Watsonville holds a special place in my heart,” he said. “It is a beautifully diverse, hard-working and family-oriented community. I will lead with accountability, compassion and respect, and continue strengthening the community trust and relationships that are already a hallmark of the Watsonville police.”
San Jose police Chief Paul Joseph told this news organization Shab will “definitely be missed.”
“But we’re excited for him and for the (Watsonville) department gaining such a strong chief,” Joseph said. “His leadership made us better, and I know he’ll do the same there.”
]]>The African American holiday draws on traditions from harvest festivals in West, East and Southeast Africa and dedicates each day of the weeklong celebration to a different concept: unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith.
Here are a few events around the Bay Area scheduled to celebrate it, from family-friendly storytime sessions to panel discussions on Black identity.
Kwanzaa Storytime: 4-5 p.m. Dec. 16, Newark Library, 37055 Newark Blvd., Newark. Oakland author and illustrator Robert Liu-Trujillo will read his book “Fresh Juice,” about a child and father searching for healthy juice ingredients, then share his sketchbook and talk about his journey as a writer and artist. Free. aclibrary.bibliocommons.com
Kwanzaa Celebration: Noon-1 p.m. Dec. 27, Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, 705 Front St., Santa Cruz. Music, remarks from local dignitaries and a candle-lighting are scheduled at this community event. Free. santacruzmah.org/events/kwanzaa-2025
Conversation on Black Liberation: 1:30 p.m. Dec. 27, Kinfolx, 1951 Telegraph Ave., Suite 4, Oakland. Hear from an intergenerational panel discussion with Rev. Robert Newells-Newton, Rev. Valerie Miles-Tribble and possibly Chaney Turner and Oakland Councilmember Carroll Fife while reflecting on the intersection of faith, politics and Black identity. kinfolxoakland.com/event-schedule
Kujichagulia Celebration: 3:30-7 p.m. Dec. 27, Oakstop, 2323 Broadway, Oakland. Celebrate the second day of Kwanzaa with a celebration of Kujichagulia (self-determination), featuring African drumming and a dance performance, griot storytelling, a Kwanzaa candle-lighting ceremony and a community dinner. There will also be face-painting, balloons and temporary skin art. African attire encouraged. eventbrite.com
Hayward Kwanzaa Celebration: Noon-5 p.m. Dec. 28, Hayward City Hall, 777 B St., Hayward. Food, entertainment, storytelling and achievement awards are scheduled at the third annual Kwanzaa celebration by Fayeth Gardens. eventbrite.com
Community Kwanzaa Celebration: Noon-2:30 p.m. Dec. 30, 395 Paseo Grande, San Lorenzo. Enjoy live music, food, book giveaways, painting and costume jewelry-making at this family-friendly community event at the San Lorenzo Library. aclibrary.bibliocommons.com
Celebration of Purpose: 6-8 p.m. Dec. 30, African American Art and Culture Complex, 762 Fulton St., San Francisco. Celebrate the fifth day of Kwanzaa featuring light bites, live performances and reflections on purpose, or Nia. eventbrite.com
Winter Wonderland Kwanzaa & Noon Year’s Eve Celebration: 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Dec. 31, Thrive City, San Francisco. The lineup includes Soji Sai Afrobeats, the Diamano Coura West African Dance Company, a countdown drop for noon, arts and craft stations, treats and more. Park at 99 Warriors Way. chasecenter.com/events/
]]>Stanford and Cal wore familiar colors against familiar foes, Oregon and USC crossed paths with old rivals and the echoes of the old Pac-12 felt close enough to touch at the Invisalign Bay Area Women’s Classic.
The showcase reunited four programs that helped define women’s college basketball on the West Coast before conference realignment scattered them across the country. Oregon and USC now battle with the Midwest’s best in the Big Ten while Stanford and Cal are the two lone Pacific coast teams in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Stanford’s win over Oregon and USC’s victory over Cal mattered in the rankings, but Sunday’s slate of games carried a deeper resonance – a reminder of rivalries built over decades and a style of basketball many in the building grew up with.
Fans leaned into the familiarity, coaches exchanged smiles across the floor and for one afternoon, the Pac-12 felt less like a memory and more like a living thing once again.
“It was fun coaching against Lindsey (Gottlieb) and playing against USC. To see Oregon and Stanford go at it was fun,” Cal coach Charmin Smith said. “We miss the Pac-12. It was a great group of student athletes, great coaches. So I hope that we can continue to do things like this.”
While the showcase was held in Stanford and Cal’s backyard, plenty of Oregon and USC fans made their way into Chase Center.
Cal and USC have played each other 47 times since 2000. Despite falling to the Trojans 61-57 on Sunday, the Bears still hold a 26-21 all-time record against USC.
Oregon came close to snapping an eight-game losing streak to the Cardinal, but Stanford’s stingy defense came up clutch in a 64-53 win.
But for Oregon and USC, the showcase was less about looking back than briefly reconnecting with familiar faces and rivalries before getting a heavy dose of conference play in January.
“I do miss the Pac-12,” Oregon coach Kelly Graves said, noting that he still sees USC’s Gottlieb in the Big Ten. “I don’t want to take this time to relive that. It is what it is at this point.”
Gottlieb added, “I think the Pac-12 reunion is nostalgic. … It was a couple of good memories here, but it was really just good teams coming together to play.”
Sunday’s win put Stanford at 11-2. The Cardinal picked up a victory against another former Pac-12 foe on Friday when it defeated No. 22 Washington 67-62.
Graves praised Stanford, and even went as far as to say that Stanford coach Kate Paye has gotten Stanford back to its winning ways after the Cardinal went a disappointing 16-15 last year.
After Cal made the NCAA Tournament last season for the first time under Smith, the Bears have struggled to find a rhythm through the first two months of the season. Cal has lost five games so far to Vanderbilt, Auburn, Missouri, Stanford and now USC.
“I think where this team could be at the end of January, end of February is a lot higher when we can speak of their ceiling,” Smith said. “We’ve got to do the work to get there.”
As the old Pac-12 continues to exist in memories and box scores, Sunday’s games offered something tangible. A reminder that the Pac-12’s women’s basketball tradition still carries weight, even if the conference patches on the jerseys might have changed.
“I think it’s important for West Coast basketball,” Paye said of the showcase. “These are great teams, great coaches, great players. Our fans love the rivalry. I loved the crowd tonight. I think it was more packed than maybe I saw last year. So you know, this is great competition. It will help us heading into ACC play.”
On the exterior wall of a house in Castroville, a newly installed sensor glows green with an important message: It’s safe to go outside. For Maribel Martínez, a farmworker and mother living here, the information is crucial. Two of her children have asthma, and knowing when the air is hazardous to breathe is important for protecting their health.
“I always tell them to check the monitor before going out,” she said. “They know that if the monitor is red, we don’t go outside. We close the doors and shut the windows.”
Martínez’s sensor is one of several recently installed to monitor air pollution in Pajaro Valley by scientists at UC Santa Cruz. The work is part of a larger research project using drone flights and new monitoring technologies to better understand when and where farmworkers are most severely exposed to air pollution.
Farmworkers like Martinez are grappling with extreme heat, pesticide exposure, and air pollution. To avoid the hottest hours of the day, they start early, getting out to the fields at dawn when it is cooler. But avoiding overheating in the face of rising temperatures is also exposing farmworkers to higher levels of air pollution.
“The folks contributing the least to climate change are the ones bearing the most of the brunt,” said UC Santa Cruz professor Javier González-Rocha.
Communities in Pajaro Valley face pollutants including microscopic particles called PM2.5 and ground level ozone. PM2.5, which comes from sources like wildfire smoke and vehicle exhausts, can penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream, triggering asthma and worsening heart disease.
Ground level ozone forms as a result of interactions between vehicle and industrial emissions and volatile organic compounds, chemicals in the air that come from a variety of sources, including pesticides. It can damage airways when inhaled.
Using drones to measure levels of pollution at different altitudes, Javier González-Rocha found a concerning pattern. During the dawn and dusk, prime work times for farmworkers avoiding heat, cooler temperatures allow clouds of pollutants to drift downwards. The result: Pollution levels at ground level are higher.
“Starting work earlier is an imperfect solution. It’s removing the worker from one risk, but it’s exposing them to another,” said González-Rocha, who’s leading a project at UCSC to close air monitoring gaps directly south of Santa Cruz.
Back in Castroville, he points over to a high school in the distance where students are playing soccer. A sinking haze of pollution can just be made out in the glare from the stadium lights.
For González-Rocha, the work has personal significance. The son of immigrant farmworkers, he grew up playing in the fields of Pajaro Valley while his parents labored. This upbringing inspired him to use his Ph.D. in aerospace engineering to research and improve air pollution monitoring for farmworker communities.
Sensors installed by the UCSC team, like the one at Martinez’s house, help residents know when pollution levels are high. But before González-Rocha and his colleagues started installing them, there was a large monitoring gap in the Pajaro Valley, compared to neighboring wealthier cities like Santa Cruz and Monterey.
To address that gap, González-Rocha partnered with Adrian Ayala, a local community advocate and former board president of the North Monterey Unified School District, to reach families in the valley and offer sensor installation. They set up a meeting with community members to explain how the sensors worked and why measuring pollution mattered.
Their efforts were met with hesitancy from some families — installing sensors required Ayala to enter homes for installation, and some families had privacy concerns around providing data to the sensors.
But slowly and surely, community members came around. Ayala reassured families that no personal information would be collected and that the air monitors would help detect pollution in the area. Since April, he has installed seven sensors around the region with plans for more.
Ayala stressed the importance of not just providing sensors, but educating families about how to use them.
“The goal is to also train them so that this project doesn’t end here. They learn, and from here on out, they can start installing sensors,” he said.
But difficulties still exist. The monitors installed so far are PurpleAir sensors, a proprietary brand that requires Wi-Fi and a power source to work.
“A lot of people here don’t have Wi-Fi,” Martínez said. “I was close to discontinuing my internet. It’s very expensive.” Without connection to Wi-Fi, PurpleAir monitors can’t transmit data.
So González-Rocha and a team of undergraduate students at UCSC are developing new, low-cost sensors that don’t need Wi-Fi to work.
The new sensors use long-range radio to send their recorded data to a central receiver node. Once that node, the only part of the system that needs Wi-Fi, receives the data, it can transmit the data back to the team.
The sensors also come equipped with solar panels, meaning they don’t need to be plugged in and can be placed anywhere, such as in the middle of a field. González-Rocha and Ayala hope to start installing the versatile, low-cost monitors in the coming year.
“The question was how do we come up with a solution that places the user at the center, because if we create a fancy tool but it’s not compatible with the user, then we’ve failed,” González-Rocha said.
To help communities better understand air pollution and access data, Javier’s team has partnered with Regeneración, a nonprofit promoting community climate action in Pajaro Valley. The nonprofit has run focus groups and listening sessions to better understand what challenges residents have in understanding air pollution data.
This outreach is crucial, said Eloy Ortiz, special projects manager at Regeneración. “A lot of these folks are in survival mode,” he said. “They’re thinking about how to get the rent paid, how to get food on the table. They’re not necessarily thinking about air quality.”
For Martínez, the work is already having an impact, giving her and her sons peace of mind. “For us, it’s important because there’s a lot we don’t know,” she said. “But now we’re talking about air quality, and we’re looking after our health a bit more.”
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