The Brief

Like wildfires chewing through dried-out forests, hurricane after hurricane fed on extra-hot ocean water this summer and fall before slamming into communities along the Gulf Coast, causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damages and killing more than 300 people. The warmer the sea, the more potent the hurricane fuel, and the more energy a storm can consume and turn into wind.

Human-made climate change made all of this season’s 11 hurricanes — from Beryl to Rafael — much worse, according to an analysis released from the nonprofit science group Climate Central. Scientists can already say that 2024 is the hottest year on record. By helping drive record-breaking surface ocean temperatures, planetary warming boosted the hurricanes’ maximum sustained wind speeds by between 9 and 28 miles per hour.

That bumped seven of this year’s storms into a higher category on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, including the two Category 5 storms, Beryl and Milton. “Our analysis shows that we would have had zero Category 5 storms without human-caused climate change,” said Daniel Gilford, climate scientist at Climate Central, on a press call. “There’s really this impact on the intensity of the storms that we’re experiencing in the real world on a day-to-day basis.”

Global warming affects wind speed

In a companion study, Climate Central found that between 2019 and 2023, climate change accelerated hurricane wind speeds by an average of 18 mph. More than 80% of the hurricanes in that period were made significantly more intense by global warming, the study found.

That’s making hurricanes more dangerous than ever. An 18 mph boost in wind speeds might not sound like much, but that can mean the difference between a Category 4 and a Category 5, which packs sustained winds of 157 mph or higher. Hurricanes have gotten so much stronger, scientists are considering modifying the scale. “The hurricane scale is capped at Category 5, but we might need to think about: Should that continue to be the case?” said Friederike Otto, a climatologist who cofounded the research group World Weather Attribution, on the press call. “Or do we have to talk about Category 6 hurricanes at some point? Just so that people are aware that something is going to hit them that is different from everything else they’ve experienced before.”

Hurricanes need a few ingredients to spin up. One is fuel: As warm ocean waters evaporate, energy transfers from the surface into the atmosphere. Another is humidity, because dry air will help break up a storm system. And a hurricane also can’t form if there’s too much wind shear, which is a change in wind speed and direction with height. So even if a hurricane has high ocean temperatures to feed on, that’s not necessarily a guarantee that it will turn into a monster if wind shear is excessive and humidity is minimal.

This graphic shows how climate change fuels stronger storms. Climate change- driven ocean warming affects the peak wind speed and storm category

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Climate Central

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But during this year’s hurricane season — which runs through the end of November — those water temperatures have been so extreme that the stage was set for catastrophe. As the storms were traveling through the open Atlantic, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico, they exploited surface temperatures made up to 800 times more likely by human-caused planetary warming, according to the Climate Central analysis. Four of the most destructive hurricanes — Beryl, Debby, Helene, and Milton — had their wind speeds increased by an average of 17 mph, thanks to climate change. In early November, Hurricane Rafael managed to jump from Category 1 to Category 3.

Rapid Intensification

Climate Central’s companion study, published in the journal Environmental Research: Climate, looked at the five previous years and found that climate change boosted three hurricanes — Lorenzo in 2019, Ian in 2022, and Lee in 2023 — to Category 5 status. That isn’t to say climate change created any of these hurricanes, just that the additional warming from greenhouse gas emissions exacerbated the storms by raising ocean temperatures. Scientists are also finding that as the planet warms, hurricanes are able to dump more rain. In October, World Weather Attribution, for instance, found that Helene’s rainfall in late September was 10% heavier, making flooding worse as the storm marched inland.

All that supercharging might have helped hurricanes undergo rapid intensification, defined as an increase in wind speed of at least 35 mph within 24 hours. Last month, Hurricane Milton’s winds skyrocketed by 90 mph in a day, one of the fastest rates of intensification that scientists have ever seen in the Atlantic basin. In September, Hurricane Helene rapidly intensified, too.

This kind of intensification makes hurricanes particularly dangerous, since people living on a stretch of coastline might be preparing for a much weaker storm than what actually makes it ashore. “It throws off your preparations,” said Karthik Balaguru, a climate scientist who studies hurricanes at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, who wasn’t involved in the new research. “It means you have less time to evacuate.”

Researchers are also finding that wind shear could be decreasing in coastal areas due to changes in atmospheric patterns, removing the mechanism that keeps hurricanes in check. And relative humidity is rising. Accordingly, scientists have found a huge increase in the number of rapid intensification events close to shore in recent years.

The hotter the planet gets overall, and the hotter the Atlantic Ocean gets specifically, the more monstrous hurricanes will grow. “We know that the speed limit at which a hurricane can spin is going up,” Gilford said, “and hurricane intensities in the real world are responding.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed record levels of public funding for K-12 schools, but in several Southern California school districts declining enrollment and rising costs may still lead to cuts next school year.

The budget proposal allocates $125.5 billion, the highest-ever level, according to Newsom. That’s $20,427 per student.

“There's an increase in per pupil funding, but I wouldn't be fooled into thinking that those numbers indicate that schools really have more money to work with than in previous years,” said California School Boards Association spokesperson Troy Flint. The organization represents almost 1,000 districts and county offices of education statewide.

That’s because declining enrollment combined with rising teacher salaries, un-funded state mandates and other increased costs are squeezing local school districts.

LAist spoke to Flint and several other school finance experts to understand the financial challenges California districts face as they create their spending plans for next school year.

How does the state fund school districts?

The majority of the state’s general fund comes from personal income, sales tax and corporation tax revenue.

“That's great when the economy is good and state revenues are growing, and it's trickier when the economy is bad and state revenues are small,” said USC education professor Lawrence Picus.

California law guarantees TK-12 schools and community colleges a minimum level of funding each year, usually about 40% of the state’s general fund. (Property tax is a local revenue source, and considered to be less volatile but with limited growth.)

The state provides a base amount of money multiplied by each student and there is additional funding for every low-income, English-language learner, unhoused or foster youth student in the district. This system is called the Local Control Funding Formula.

How does enrollment affect school funding?

Since California sets funding rates per student, it needs a way to count those students. This is average daily attendance — how many students show up for class each day.

Currently, fewer students are enrolling at schools throughout the state, particularly in areas with high costs of living like Los Angeles. Students who are enrolled are also missing more school compared to before the pandemic.

“The intuitive response is, ‘well, if you have declining enrollment, you have fewer students, you should need less money,’” Flint said. “But in practice it doesn't really work that way.”

That’s because a district may lose a few students from each class across several schools each year, which may not justify laying off staff or closing a campus.

California education law blunts the immediate impact of declining enrollment by calculating funding based on the highest of three attendance counts: current year, prior year, or the average of the three most recent years, but over time fewer students means a smaller multiplier for state funding.

Increasing costs

Michael Fine is CEO of Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT), the California agency that supports public schools' financial and business practices. He estimated schools are experiencing an estimated 5-6% cost increase every year.

The sources of that increase can include an increase in sexual assault claims (and the ensuing legal costs), utilities and insurance costs.

California provides money toward these increased costs through the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA). This year’s proposed COLA is a 2.41% increase, less than half the estimated increase districts are experiencing, Fine said.

“At the state, they can say we are fully funding our commitment to TK through 12 education,” Fine said. “But at the local level, it feels like things are constrained. It feels like a pinch or actually a reduction.”

Another factor is the push to increase educators’ salaries in light of California’s high cost of living.

This year unions representing teachers at 32 school districts, including Los Angeles Unified, are negotiating contracts under a unified platform called “We Can’t Wait.” The campaign has already led to one strike and negotiations have stalled in more than a dozen districts, including LAUSD.

Federal, state budget uncertainty

This year’s state revenue projection is higher than expected, in part because of high salaries tied to artificial intelligence, but there’s no guarantee the funding will last.

Alix Gallagher studies school finance at Policy Analysis for California (PACE) and said that because revenue is unpredictable, lawmakers often opt to fund short-term initiatives rather than make long-term commitments.

“Whatever positive effects we're seeing [from short-term funding] are not the types of positive effects we might see if our funding was more stable,” Gallagher said.

For example, this year there is $1 billion for community schools, $757 million to support learning recovery related to the COVID-19 pandemic and $22.9 million for schools damaged by the January 2025 wildfires in L.A. County.

The budget also includes a one-time $2.8 billion grant that can be used for a variety of purposes from filling in the funding gap left by declining enrollment to supporting teacher training.

“Many districts will use that to mitigate some of their struggles,” Fine said. “All it does is buy time.”

The federal government also provides some money for education, but it’s also unclear how that funding will change in the second year of the Trump Administration’s second term.

In 2025, there were cuts to migrant education, mental health, and some internet access programs, although the courts ordered the administration to restore funding to several programs including teacher-training and afterschool programs.

What’s next for California school funding?

Newsom will present a revised spending plan in May and California lawmakers have until June 15 to pass the state’s budget.

In the meantime, local school districts will begin crafting their own budgets based on the governor’s proposal.

Fine said district administrators and elected school boards will have to manage the financial consequences of declines in enrollment over time.

“They make the hard decisions, their boards make the difficult, hard decisions to make, cuts to services and programs,” Fine said.

How can I monitor my school district’s financial health?

School budget proposals should be presented at public meetings, often the school board, where elected leaders can ask questions and the public can weigh in.

Districts may also create a working group, often called a budget advisory committee, of staff, families, community members and students to come up with a plan to address the district's financial challenges.

One indicator of your school district’s financial health are interim reports due in December and March to the County Offices of Education. These reports show how and whether the district can meet its financial obligations for the current and two following years and are labeled:

• Positive, the district can meet its obligations
• Qualified, the district may not be able to meet its obligations
• Negative, the district cannot meet its obligations without changes

Two of Orange County’s 32 districts filed qualified reports in December— Cypress and Saddleback Valley Unified. LAist has also requested this information from the Los Angeles County Office of Education and will update this article when we hear back.

$8.63 million in emergency grants sent to 562 families.

That’s how much financial assistance the Entertainment Community Fund has provided to performing arts and entertainment industry workers since fires broke out in Southern California in January last year. And the organization still is distributing grants, with the knowledge that needs are likely to increase soon.

 ”We know that the trajectory of the recovery process with homeowners and their insurances is that they will often pay some portion or all of a rent expense while people are displaced from their homes,” says Keith McNutt, the ECF’s Western Regional director. “That usually only lasts nine months to a year, and we're of course coming up on that year.”

Why entertainment workers?

Providing support to the entertainment community is nothing new for the nonprofit Entertainment Community Fund (formerly known as The Actors Fund), a national organization that’s been around since 1882 and is a sort of safety net for arts and entertainment workers in any kind of need or crisis. They also have built some of their own affordable housing.

A significant portion of their work, McNutt says, is making people aware that help is available and also that it’s OK to access it.

“It’s hard for any professional person in their craft to ask for help from anyone,” McNutt says. “But literally, we were created 140 years ago for exactly that reason. Because people work hard in this industry, but the industry doesn't provide regular income, regular benefits, [...] predictability, a standard career ladder.”

On top of the normal unpredictability factors of a career in the performing arts, there’s also the fact that the past five years have been “such a brutal onslaught of crises,” as McNutt describes it, from the COVID-19 pandemic to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in 2023 to the January 2025 fires, “that people have not had time to recover.”

What help is available?

The Entertainment Community Fund’s staff of social workers, career counselors and health insurance counselors provides a wide range of services (many of them free), like classes on things like building “parallel” or “sideline” careers to supplement income and support groups (including some specifically designed for people impacted by the 2025 fires).

Some services, like emergency financial assistance, require a more formal application to show that a recipient does in fact work professionally in performing arts or entertainment.

From ‘parallel’ careers to career changes

For a long time, McNutt says, he heard from arts professionals who saw their non-arts-related day jobs (ECF calls them “parallel” or “sideline” jobs) as sort of betrayal of their art, but “ our message has always been, ‘No, no, no [...] that's what helps you stay in your creative craft.’”

Over the past couple of years, though, with hardships compounding and  ”profound shifts in the amount of employment, particularly in television and film,” McNutt has seen something different.

“We have seen significant increases in the number of people who are coming to our career center to consider transitioning to other careers," he says. "And that is definitely a change.”

And even for those cases and questions like, “How do you apply for a job that's not in the industry when you've never worked outside the industry?” McNutt says that's "something we can help people with.”

When it comes to renters, Scorpios are “particular,” Libras are “gold,” and Aquariuses “can't make up their mind.” That’s according to Dave Goldstein, the Los Angeles landlord behind the company Art Deco Apartments.

For years, Goldstein has asked prospective tenants to tell him their astrological sign as part of the application process. He said he doesn’t care about credit scores, and he loves tenants with pets. He knows his approach to tenant screening is unusual. But when it comes to picking the right renters for his century-old, tastefully appointed buildings, he said it works.

“It gives me an idea of their personality,” Goldstein told LAist outside The Mauretania, a well preserved example of 1930s Streamline Moderne architecture in Hancock Park.

“I mean, it's impersonal to just get an application,” he said. “You're going to get buildings that aren't that good. You're going to get impersonal people that don't care about anything.”

The question might be helpful to Goldstein, but some housing rights experts say it could be pushing the boundaries of what’s legal.

Why Leos make good tenants

While he hasn’t blacklisted any particular star sign, Goldstein said in his experience, people with certain signs are easier to deal with as tenants.

“If they say that they're a Leo, I go, ‘Great,’” he said. “‘I can't wait to rent to you. You're your own boss. I don't have to do nothing. You'll change every light bulb. You'll never call us.’”

Goldstein also likes to ask tenants where they grew up and the color of their car. He said people are sometimes surprised by the questions, but they tend to like his approach.

“They just can't believe it, because they're used to just texting a management company,” he said. “They're not used to personal service.”

The Mauretania, a 1930s apartment building with distinctive curved windows looking out on the street, is one of the properties Dave Goldstein owns through Art Deco Apartments.

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David Wagner/LAist

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Housing rights lawyers weigh in

But is asking a tenant about their astrological sign legal? Housing rights attorneys told LAist they’re not aware of any laws or court rulings that explicitly ban landlords from screening tenants based on their birth month. But they said the question is still legally precarious.

“There's not a specific law against it,” said Rodney Leggett, director of litigation at the L.A.-based Housing Rights Center. “But because of the seemingly arbitrary nature of asking somebody about their astrological sign, it could potentially violate the [California Unruh Civil Rights Act].”

The law bans businesses from discriminating against people based on personal characteristics including sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status or sexual orientation.

It does not specifically mention astrology. But lawyers said depending on how businesses treat people with different signs, an argument could be made that they’re being discriminated against for no legitimate business reason based on a personal characteristic they can’t control.

“Astrological signs are not a traditional ‘protected characteristic’ in most anti-discrimination laws,” said Alisa Randell, a managing attorney with the legal aid organization Public Counsel. “But we do have this expansive law in California that is not limited to the categories that are laid out… So I think this is dicey for him.”

Goldstein said he has tenants of all astrological signs, and he plans to keep asking applicants about their birth charts.

“I don't know if it's legal to ask about it or not,” he said. “But it's fun to. And I know they're not going to lie about it.”

A three-judge panel ruled Wednesday that the new congressional maps created by California voters in the fall are legal and should remain in place, handing a win to state Democrats who hope the new districts will swing five congressional seats for their party next year.

The ruling denies a request by California Republicans and the Trump administration for the federal court in Los Angeles to issue a preliminary injunction blocking the maps created by Proposition 50.

In the 117-page ruling, the federal judges rejected GOP arguments that the new maps amounted to racial gerrymandering, which has been prohibited by the U.S. Supreme Court. The panel ruled 2-1, with the two Democratic appointees ruling for California and Judge Kenneth K. Lee, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, dissenting.

In the opinion, Judge Josephine Staton wrote that the panel’s conclusion “probably seems obvious to anyone who followed the news” about Proposition 50 last year. She noted that during the campaign, no one ever described the new maps as racially motivated — including the Republican plaintiffs.

“No one on either side of that debate characterized the map as a racial gerrymander,” the opinion states, noting that the California Republican Party called it a “political power grab to help Democrats retake Congress and impeach Trump,” and Attorney General Pamela J. Bondi deemed it a “redistricting power grab” for political gain.”

The judges also rejected Republican arguments that the voters’ intent did not matter. The majority wrote that voters clearly were endorsing the argument that both sides were making: that this was a partisan power grab, aimed at giving Democrats a leg up in the midterm elections and counteracting what GOP-led states were doing with their own districts.

Democrats celebrated the ruling.

“Republicans’ weak attempt to silence voters failed. California voters overwhelmingly supported Prop 50 — to respond to Trump’s rigging in Texas — and that is exactly what this court concluded,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement.

Newsom pushed lawmakers to put Proposition 50 on a special statewide ballot after Trump set off a mid-decade redistricting scramble by demanding Texas redraw its maps to benefit Republicans.

In his dissenting opinion, Lee wrote that race “likely played a predominant role in drawing at least one district because the smoking gun is in the hands of Paul Mitchell,” referring to a Democratic consultant who helped draw the new lines.

Lee argued that Mitchell publicly “boasted” about boosting Latino voting power in the 13th Congressional District in theCentral Valley, and that voter intent should not be the only basis for the court’s decision.

“To be sure, California’s main goal was to add more Democratic congressional seats. But that larger political gerrymandering plan does not allow California to smuggle in racially gerrymandered seats,” said Lee, who wrote that Democrats likely wanted to create a Latino majority district “as part of a racial spoils system to award a key constituency that may be drifting away from the Democratic party.”

The ruling could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Congressional candidates have until March 6 to file papers to run for office in the June primary.