Topline:
As predicted, Tropical Storm Hilary brought heavy rains to Southern California, particularly in the mountain and desert areas, which saw quite a bit of flooding and debris flows.
The forecast: Intermittent rain and thunderstorms are expected through Monday, but things should clear up my Tuesday.
Heaviest rainfall: Lewis Ranch in Los Angeles County saw 7.04 inches.
The storm formerly known as Hurricane Hilary has broken down and moved on to Nevada, leaving behind flooded roads, downed trees, stranded cars and soaked residents.
As predicted, Southern California's first tropical storm to make landfall in 84 years hit the mountains, foothills and deserts the hardest.
ATTN Drivers, please stay off the roads, if able. This video was taken by our #Caltrans8 Cajon Crew team wearing a head camera of SR-2 and Sheep Creek. Flash floods, high winds and the rain are making it a big challenge for all. Please be patient while we work. pic.twitter.com/BFga3z6JMG
— Caltrans District 8 (@Caltrans8) August 21, 2023
"It was uncharted territory as much for us forecasters as it was the public who found what we were saying pretty hard to believe," said Miguel Miller, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. "We found it hard to believe ourselves, but we couldn't discount it. Couldn't deny it."
The center of Hilary passed over Los Angeles around 8 p.m. Sunday, though the heaviest rain fell between 2 and 6 p.m., dropping more than 1 inch per hour in some spots.
There have been no reports of any significant injuries or damage as of 8 a.m. Monday, though assessments are ongoing.
"We urge you to please be cautious of hazardous road conditions," L.A. Fire Chief Kristin Crowley said at a Monday morning news conference.
Still, the storm was felt across the region:
Across L.A. County, it was the San Gabriel mountains and the Antelope Valley that saw some of the heaviest bands of precipitation.
💧TRAVEL ADVISORY💧@CaltransDist7 strongly advises motorists to postpone travel during #Hillary storm. EB Route 118 near #Llano CLOSED at Route 18 due to flooding. Traffic diverted to SR-18. Check https://t.co/cxZ0jW7S5n for updates. #AntelopeValley #Lancaster pic.twitter.com/T9pW0Dkx59
— Caltrans District 7 (@CaltransDist7) August 21, 2023
Rainfall totals as of early Monday:
Given how unusual it is for our region to see rain during this time of year, it's unsurprising that many daily rainfall records fell.
Flood watches are still in effect for Los Angeles and surrounding counties as the storm wraps up. They'll likely be lifted by Tuesday.
“We’ve made it this far. Let’s make it to the final home stretch here,” said Ariel Cohen, meteorologist in charge with the National Weather Service.
Screenshots from PSPD drone footage of the flooding and storm damage on Indian Canyon. pic.twitter.com/jFPuLAZ4o4
— City of Palm Springs (@CityofPS) August 21, 2023
Palm Springs received a record setting 3.18 inches of rain, their largest amount in 93 years. Roads were washed out and streets flooded.
Homes in nearby Cathedral City were inundated with mud and water.
Aerials show the aftermath of Tropical Storm Hilary in Cathedral City. This is off Date Palm Dr, you can see multiple vehicles stuck in mud
— KESQ News Channel 3 (@KESQ) August 21, 2023
STORM UPDATES: https://t.co/EVe9VxxaL5 pic.twitter.com/JSr5gvxKK3
The 911 system across the Coachella Valley went down overnight, and as of 7 a.m., there was no estimated time for restoration.
Riverside County provided the following alternative numbers for residents to call if help is needed:
Mias Canyon Bridge completely washed out in Banning with the San Gorgonio River still gushing. #Hilary #CAwx pic.twitter.com/IolFdgQggt
— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch) August 21, 2023
Oak Glen and Forest Falls in San Bernardino County also experienced significant debris flows.
Morning light revealing the scale of several mud slides in the San Bernardino mountain ranges including the one I documented in Forest Falls and a major slide that destroyed several cabs in Seven Oaks. Full video below #CAwx #Hilary https://t.co/oEMR448S6c pic.twitter.com/1zre7HxsSr
— Aaron Rigsby (@AaronRigsbyOSC) August 21, 2023
The city of L.A. is providing shelters to unhoused people at the following locations:
If you need to report a flooded road or a downed tree, you can call the following non-emergency numbers:
If you're in L.A. County and need sand bags, you can find them at local fire houses.
Dial 911 if it's an emergency.
As Hurricane Hilary approaches, it's important to have a safety plan in place. Advice from L.A. County Fire Department Chief Anthony Marrone:
A detailed list of emergency kit items can be found at ready.la county.gov; there will be real-time emergency updates on the county’s emergency website, found on the county’s landing page: LA county.gov/emergency.
The last time we were directly hit by a tropical storm was in 1939, when one made landfall in Long Beach, according to the National Weather Service in Oxnard.
While the track of this storm was unusual, the hurricane itself was not.
“So far this season has played out as expected,” said Jamie Rhome, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center.
Tropical cyclones regularly form off the coast of Southwest Mexico between May and November. While they usually track west out into the Pacific, they can head north toward Baja.
Sometimes they do indirectly affect Southern California. In September 2022, Hurricane Kay dropped more than 5 inches of rain on the area, causing flooding and damaging homes.
Topline:
A 100-year-old pipline ruptured in West Hollywood early Thursday, causing flooding and a massive sinkhole.
Why it matters: The force of the flooding sent cars slamming into each other, and triggered widespread road closures and the Metro bus system detours and delays.
Read on ... to learn more about what areas are affected (and to see some dramatic video).
A water main break near Palm Avenue and Harratt Street sent waters flooding through West Hollywood early Thursday, causing a massive sink hole.
Roads have been closed off and residents warned to stay out of the area, with dramatic footage posted online of water rushing down streets and cars slamming into each other:
Because of the highly pressurized water system, emergency crews said Thursday they must work slowly and carefully to avoid causing more damage. Several roads were closed and Metro system buses detoured — see details below.
A leak from an over 100-year-old trunk line caused the rupture, authorities said. The line has been shut down, as well as two large valves to the east and west. Anselmo Collins, chief operating officer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, assured residents that drinking water is not affected and remains safe to drink.
“We are also coordinating on the ground with law enforcement and will be working with traffic control as we make progress and assess and begin repairs,” wrote LADWP in a statement.
Residents were are encouraged to take pictures of any damage from the flooding in case a claim needs to be filed later.
Avoid the area if at all possible. But if you need to venture in, here’s what you need to know:
The following bus routes have been delayed or detoured.
LAist will continue to update this story as we learn more.
Topline:
An extreme heat warning is in place for much of Southern California through Thursday evening, but a cooldown is expected Friday.
The details: The extreme heat warning will remain in effect until 8 p.m. Thursday. Forecasters say potentially dangerous temperatures are possible for much of the region, with inland valleys expected to reach up to 105 degrees in places. Inland Orange County will likely get up into the 90s.
What’s next: A respite from the heat is on the way Friday. Weekend highs will be in the mid 80s in downtown L.A., up to 90 in the valleys and in the 70s along the coast. Morning clouds and fog will also be possible in coastal areas.
Read on ... for details on this week's heat and this weekend's cooldown.
Potentially dangerous heat is still in store for Southern California Thursday, but there is some respite on the horizon.
An extreme heat warning from the National Weather Service remains in place for much of the region through 8 p.m. Thursday.
Inland valleys across L.A., Riverside and San Bernardino counties are expected to see highs of up to 104 degrees in some places. Temperatures in inland Orange County will likely get up into the 90s. Coastal areas and beaches will hover in the 80s.
The high temperatures are expected to pose a high risk of heat-related illnesses, especially for people over 65, young children and other sensitive populations. People who work outdoors or do not have air conditioning are also particularly at risk.
Southern Californians are no strangers to hot weather in the summer, but heat waves are getting hotter, longer and more frequent as the climate changes.
So you should know the words forecasters use to describe these weather events — and the risks they pose.
NWS forecasters said Thursday that temperatures during this week’s heat wave peaked on Wednesday relatively close to what they expected: Woodland Hills hit 107 degrees, Burbank hit 97, and downtown Los Angeles hit 94.
High humidity also played into the heat this week, as expected, driven by tropical moisture flowing into the region from the south.
Forecasters said some coastal areas saw up to 70% humidity around midday Wednesday. Humidity in the valleys was generally between 30% and 40%.
“That's pretty muggy,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Wofford. “It’s definitely not Miami humidity, but it’s definitely more than we’re used to.”
Thankfully, more comfortable summer weather is on the way.
Temperatures will start to trend downward Thursday along the coast, while a more noticeable cooling trend will settle in across the region Friday.
The weather this weekend will still be warm, especially inland. But forecasters say temperatures will return to normal levels for this time of year by Saturday and could even dip lower than normal.
Weekend highs will be in the mid 80s in downtown L.A., up to 90 in the valleys and in the 70s along the coast.
Increased offshore winds are also expected to boost the marine layer and bring morning clouds and fog to many coastal areas Friday morning.
Topline:
What to do about homelessness remains one of the most hotly contested issues in L.A., but a 2006 federal court case fundamentally changed the conversation: Jones v. City of Los Angeles denounced the idea that someone could be a criminal just because they were unsheltered.
Why it matters: Even as the U.S. Supreme Court has walked back the protections that Jones created, L.A. leaders by and large haven’t returned to the practices of the Bratton era. As cities around the state reevaluate how encampments are policed, an examination of the original case can illuminate the fraught policymaking surrounding the crisis — and what’s at stake today.
The case: Edward Jones, married couple Patricia and George Vinson, Thomas Cash, Stanley Barger and Robert Lee Purrie had all been previously cited or jailed for sleeping on the streets of LA’s Skid Row. A lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and National Lawyers Guild argued that they simply had no alternatives, and so, LA’s anti-camping restriction should not be enforced between 9 p.m. and 6:30 a.m.
Read on... for more on the case.
This story first appeared on The LA Local.
It didn’t matter if they had no money or nowhere else to go at night: Unhoused people who slept on the streets of Los Angeles in the early 2000s could be ticketed or arrested for violating a city ordinance that barred sitting or lying on a sidewalk.
“You arrest them, prosecute them. Put them in jail,” LAPD Chief William Bratton told the L.A. Times in a 2005 interview. “And if they do it again, you arrest them, prosecute them, and put them in jail.”
“It’s that simple,” he added.
Yet L.A’.s temporary shelter beds were (and continue to be) vastly outnumbered by its unhoused population. Unhoused people who were arrested for sleeping on the street lacked money to pay fines and the resources to navigate the court system. They’d get out of jail and end up again sleeping on the street.
What to do about homelessness remains one of the most hotly contested issues in LA, but a 2006 federal court case fundamentally changed the conversation: Jones v. City of Los Angeles denounced the idea that someone could be a criminal just because they were unsheltered. Even as the U.S. Supreme Court has walked back the protections that Jones created, L.A. leaders by and large haven’t returned to the practices of the Bratton era. As cities around the state reevaluate how encampments are policed, an examination of the original case can illuminate the fraught policymaking surrounding the crisis — and what’s at stake today.
Edward Jones, married couple Patricia and George Vinson, Thomas Cash, Stanley Barger and Robert Lee Purrie had all been previously cited or jailed for sleeping on the streets of L.A.’s Skid Row. A lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and National Lawyers Guild argued that they simply had no alternatives, and so, L.A.’s anti-camping restriction should not be enforced between 9 p.m. and 6:30 a.m.
The case ultimately made it to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In their 2006 ruling, the Ninth Circuit found that the Eighth Amendment — which protects against excessive fines as well as the better-known “cruel and unusual punishments” — prohibited the city from punishing what was “an unavoidable consequence of being human and homeless without shelter.”
In writing the court’s majority opinion, Judge Kim Anita McLane Wardlaw noted the hardships experienced by each named appellant. Two couples slept outside to avoid being separated at a shelter; others suffered from disabilities that impeded them from promptly moving to an available shelter. Another man who was arrested learned that police had destroyed his tent and tossed his belongings in the street. They were gone by the time he returned.
Depriving people of their possessions after an arrest is “particularly injurious” to unhoused people who “have so few resources” to begin with, Wardlaw said.
Such police actions, Judge Wardlaw wrote, not only restricted their “personal liberty,” but also “caused them to suffer shame and stigma.”
“[The ruling] forcefully articulates in really important ways why unhoused folks should not be punished for sleeping outside when they have no place else to go,” said Shayla Myers, an expert in the criminalization of poverty and homelessness and the director of impact litigation and policy at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.
In a surprising development, however, the city of Los Angeles settled the case. As a result, Jones was nullified, and attorneys and the courts could no longer reference it in similar cases.
But in 2018, the Ninth Circuit essentially restored Jones’s precedent in Martin v. City of Boise, ruling that penalizing unhoused people sleeping outside when they had no access to shelter violated their Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
“[The ruling] effectively just reupped Jones, adopted it, cited to the reasoning [and affirmed its] principle,” Myers told The LA Local.
Meanwhile, the Jones settlement bolstered protections for unhoused people in L.A. and beyond, Myers told The LA Local.
“It was very purposeful, and it was clearly drafted by people who are deeply invested in unhoused folks,” she said.
The settlement required L.A. to increase the number of available housing units above a baseline before it could enforce its anti-camping ordinance. But because the city “consistently lost” units instead of gaining them, Myers said, the settlement remained in force for over a decade.
In 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to those advocating for the decriminalization of homelessness.
In the case of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson, the conservative supermajority overturned the earlier ruling in Boise. In a 6–3 vote, the higher court ruled that the Eighth Amendment’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment did not bar cities from enforcing public-camping ordinances against unhoused people even when no shelter beds were available.
The Supreme Court’s Grants Pass decision is based on a narrow textual interpretation of the Constitution that considers only the type and severity of punishment — in this case, fines and short jail sentences for repeat offenders — not the argument that it’s unreasonable to criminalize a basic human function when someone has no alternative. According to Justice Neil Gorsuch, who delivered the majority opinion, such punishments are neither cruel nor unusual, since city and state governments “have long employed similar punishments for similar offenses.”
Writing for the dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor excoriated the majority opinion, which she said “leaves the most vulnerable in our society with an impossible choice: Either stay awake or be arrested.”
L.A., however, has not passed a citywide anti-camping ban in the wake of Grants Pass. Although the city is conducting controversial encampment sweeps, Myers believes “there has been less willingness” by residents, organizers and city officials “to accept criminalization of homelessness.”
“Jones did not happen in a vacuum,” she noted.
For example, the Grants Pass decision prompted Gov. Gavin Newsom to order encampments that pose a public safety risk be cleared. The L.A. County Board of Supervisors responded by affirming that people who are arrested in them will not be held in county jails.
“Arresting people for sitting, sleeping, or lying on the sidewalk or in public spaces does not end their homelessness, and will only make their homelessness harder to resolve with a criminal record and fines they can’t afford to pay,” the supervisors’ 2024 motion said. “Our homelessness and housing crisis is regional, and will only be solved with a coordinated, unified response, and resources for housing and services.”
Today, Myers and other litigators are working to protect other constitutional rights of unhoused people in LA from a variety of ordinances.
“If you let jurisdictions violate people’s rights, they will continue to rely on ordinances that erase the visible signs of homelessness,” she said. “Because it’s easier to throw someone in jail than it is to build an apartment.”
Published as part of a national effort by local newsrooms to reflect on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. You can see coverage from other newsrooms by clicking here.
Topline:
LeBron James is scheduled to speak publicly Thursday afternoon, meaning it’s possible that James will be revealing where he plans to play this coming season or at least give some updates on where he is in the decision-making process.
Next steps for James: Speculation has been rampant for more than two months about his future, officially starting in May when the Los Angeles Lakers were eliminated from the NBA playoffs. At that time, James said he didn’t know what he would be doing. The only developments that he’s revealed since came on June 30, when he said he would play this coming season and that he was leaving the Lakers after an eight-season run highlighted by the 2020 NBA title.
Read on... for more on how we got here.
NEW YORK (AP) — LeBron James may be ready to shed some light on his future plans.
The NBA’s career scoring king — and free agent — is scheduled to speak publicly Thursday afternoon, meaning it’s possible that James will be revealing where he plans to play this coming season or at least give some updates on where he is in the decision-making process.
James will be recording an episode of his “Mind the Game” podcast alongside guest co-host Tyrese Haliburton of the Indiana Pacers in New York on the opening day of Fanatics Fest, a four-day event featuring dozens of athletes, celebrities and sports legends. Single-day general admission tickets are sold out, organizers said.
That appearance has been planned for months; it was announced publicly in May.
James is the NBA’s oldest active player at 41 and the only player in league history to have a career spanning 23 seasons; this coming season will be his 24th. Speculation has been rampant for more than two months about his future, officially starting in May when the Los Angeles Lakers were eliminated from the NBA playoffs.
At that time, James said he didn’t know what he would be doing.
And the only developments that he’s revealed since came on June 30, when he said he would play this coming season and that he was leaving the Lakers after an eight-season run highlighted by the 2020 NBA title.
For more than two weeks, the NBA has been waiting to hear what comes next.
James’ resume is beyond compare in NBA history. He’s a 22-time All-Star, a 21-time All-NBA selection, a four-time Most Valuable Player, a four-time NBA Finals MVP, a three-time All-Star Game MVP, and was a member of the NBA’s 75th anniversary team.
He’s also coming off a season where he averaged 20.9 points, 6.1 rebounds, and 7.2 assists per game. For his career, he’s averaged 26.8 points, 7.5 rebounds, and 7.4 assists in more than 1,600 games.
The podcast is the first of two known speaking engagements for James in New York on Thursday.
He’s also planning to appear at the Game Plan Summit, an invitation-only event presented by CNBC and Boardroom. James is slated to have a conversation with Boardroom co-founder Rich Kleiman — Kevin Durant’s longtime business partner — about “how he’s built an empire beyond basketball, what’s ahead for him in business, and why the next generation of athletes is poised to wield more influence than ever before.”
James started his career in Cleveland in 2003 and spent seven seasons with the Cavaliers before heading to Miami for four seasons — where he won his first two titles. He then returned to Cleveland for four more seasons, leaving in 2018 to start an eight-season run with the Lakers.
Cleveland and Miami are believed to be on James’ radar again as he weighs this decision, as are several other teams including Philadelphia, Minnesota and Golden State.
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Reynolds reported from Miami.
