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Topline:
High tides broke records and flooded neighborhoods along the Southern California coast today for the second day in a row. Scientists say even higher ones are likely headed our way in the next few months.
The tides: The tide gauge in San Pedro read 8.18 feet Tuesday morning, recording its highest measurement since records began over a century ago. The previous record of 7.93 feet was set in 2005. Records were also set at tide gauges in La Jolla and Santa Barbara. The exceptionally high tides were expected to peak Tuesday and slowly subside over the coming days.
The flooding: The high tides flooded streets and homes on the Balboa Peninsula in Newport Beach and on the Long Beach Peninsula. It also prompted officials to close a section of Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach.
Why it matters: The current tide conditions are a preview of what’s to come this winter, scientists say. The yearly peak of the tidal cycle is still at least a month away. El Niño will also continue to drive up sea levels, and the high tides on top of them.
Read on … for a detailed look at coastal conditions.
Record-breaking high tides rolled into Southern California waters for the second day in a row today.
The tide gauge in San Pedro read 8.18 feet this morning, its highest measurement since records began over a century ago, after already setting a new record on Monday. The previous record of 7.93 feet was set in 2005.
Records were also broken at tide gauges in La Jolla and Santa Barbara.
The high water levels spilled over sea walls and swept across beaches, inundating communities along L.A. and Orange county coasts that have been hit repeatedly with storm surges and destructive surf over the last few months.
“ We've already seen impacts that we have not had in quite some time,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Lisa Phillips.
The exceptionally high tides were expected to peak today and slowly subside as the week progresses. Coastal flood warnings are in effect up and down the coast until Thursday afternoon.
But scientists say the conditions are just a preview of what’s to come in the next few months with the highest astronomical tides of the year — and peak El Niño season — still on the horizon.
On the Balboa Peninsula in Newport Beach on Monday, water poured over the seawalls of some homes that back up to Newport Harbor, leaving up to a foot of flooding in some intersections.
At the corner of 39th Street and River Avenue, Diane Teitscheid waded ankle-deep, motioning for cars to slow down so as not to slosh the water into her and neighbors’ garages.
“All the water on our entire street is coming from that house,” she said, pointing to a home where water rushed through the side gates.
The city urged residents to prepare for the high tides, knocking on doors and offering free sandbags at multiple locations. Some did not heed the warning.
“What we're finding is there's just some private residents that are choosing to do nothing,” said Joe Stapleton, the Newport Beach city councilmember whose district includes Balboa Peninsula. “And by doing nothing, they're intentionally flooding streets and neighbors' properties.”
Stapleton said the city is now planning to take “more of an enforcement approach,” which could include fines for people who refuse to bolster their seawalls with sandbags in flood-prone areas.
Flooding also prompted officials to shut down part of Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach.
Farther north, seawater inundated streets and homes on the Long Beach Peninsula, where a number of structures along the boardwalk have been rendered uninhabitable by recent storm surges from Hurricane Marie and Tropical Storm Rachel.
Tides are naturally high during this time of year because of the position of the moon and sun.
But at the moment, other factors are driving up sea levels and pushing astronomical tides even higher than they would normally be.
First, the ocean off the coast of Southern California is warmer than ever recorded — we’re nearly a year and a half into a prolonged marine heat wave. Since warmer water takes up more space than colder water, sea levels are higher. Water temperatures across the Central Coast and Southern California are 5 to 9 degrees above average.
Scientists say the warming is being driven by a combination of human-caused climate change and El Niño, in which the normally cooler eastern Pacific Ocean heats up.
Second, El Niño has pushed a Kelvin wave into Southern California waters. What’s a Kelvin wave? It’s essentially a huge mass of warm water moving across the ocean. When a Kelvin wave collides with a landmass, it can raise sea levels up to a foot.
University of California climate scientist Daniel Swain also said the current tidal conditions are just the beginning of even more severe high tides over the next several months. That means more flooding for coastal communities.
“We have not seen the worst coastal flooding this year that we're likely to see later,” Swain said. “This is probably, unfortunately for those who are dealing with it, just a preview of what is to come. The coastal flooding will be more widespread geographically and probably significantly deeper later this season.”
Swain said king tides — the term for tides at their yearly peak — have yet to arrive. Tides generally don’t reach their highest until late November, December and January.
On top of that, Southern California will likely see continued sea level rise from El Niño-driven Kelvin waves over the next few months. And this year’s potentially historic El Niño season is also likely to come with significant rain, potentially adding storm surge and surf.
Topline:
A proposal to build a new police station next to "Bunnyhenge" in the city’s Civic Center Park has become a top election issue in the City Council elections.
The backstory: The city is actively studying the idea of building a new police headquarters on a large portion of Civic Center Park, which would likely cut into the sculpture garden that houses the beloved concrete rabbits known as “Bunnyhenge.”
City Council elections: Three seats on the seven-member council are contested (in a fourth seat, the incumbent Robyn Grant has no challengers). Two of the challengers, Walter Stahr and Andy Gerken, entered the race specifically to fight against building a new police station in the park, which would include the city jail.
Read more … about the issues roiling the beach city's political scene.
Drive around Newport Beach this election season, and you’re likely to see lawn signs with an image of four giant concrete bunnies behind bars below the phrase “SAVE OUR PARK.” It’s a reference to the current City Council’s controversial idea of building a new police headquarters and jail on the parkland that surrounds the Newport Beach Civic Center, home to the famous, or infamous, “Bunnyhenge” sculpture.
The proposal, one of several the city is considering for a new police headquarters, wouldn’t actually lead to the sculpture’s demise, but the idea of paving over a significant portion of the open space and paths around the sculpture has emerged as a top issue in the city’s November City Council race. Other major issues include protecting the city’s vulnerable shoreline from El Niño and preventing the kind of chaos that engulfed the Balboa Peninsula on July 4, when looting, illegal fireworks and street brawls broke out, leading to hundreds of arrests.
Three seats on the seven-member council are contested (in a fourth seat, Robyn Grant, the incumbent has no challengers). Two challengers, Walter Stahr and Andy Gerken, entered the race in their respective districts specifically to fight against building a new police station in the park, which would include the city jail.
“I am 100% opposed to a jail in the park. That is my number one issue,” Stahr said at a candidate forum in September.
At the same forum, Gerken said, “I imagined a police department there and the park gone, and I thought, ‘How could I not run?’ So I ran to save the park.”
The issue illustrates a classic Southern California debate, and one that gains increasing urgency as developable land grows ever more scarce — how valuable is open space?
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Newport’s current police headquarters, off Jamboree Road, is more than 50 years old. The force has outgrown the building, and it is plagued by maintenance problems. “It’s routine that we have sewage backup; we had the electrical fire last month, the power outage with the failure of the backup generator in November,” Dave Miner, the police chief, said at a city meeting in March. “We definitely do need a new building.”
Neither the City Council members nor the candidates running to unseat them dispute the need. The question is where.
A series of ad hoc committees has looked into several options:
Concept designs show the police station taking up to one-quarter of the existing parkland on a slope that would put it right under the watchful gaze of the giant concrete rabbits of Bunnyhenge.
Earlier this year, when the majority of City Council members seemed to favor the park option, opponents sprang into action. Dozens of people showed up to a City Council meeting in March to speak against the idea, including Stahr. He is challenging incumbent Erik Weigand in District 3 along with another challenger, Tim Stoaks.
“Parks are sacred spaces,” Stahr said from the lectern at that meeting. “One does not destroy a park to make way for an office building, because, face it, that’s what the police station really is: it’s an office building and a parking structure and a huge gas station.”
Supporters say putting the new police station on city property makes financial sense and would consolidate the city’s main services at the Civic Center.
No decision has been made to build the new headquarters on the parkland. But the city has allocated at least half a million dollars to evaluate the option.
The controversy over potentially putting a new police station in the park has echoes in Newport Beach history. In the early aughts, the city was desperate to replace its outgrown City Hall. One controversial option was to build it on part of the land, the same slender parcel at issue now, that residents had been promised as their own coastal version of a Central Park.
Residents put the idea on the ballot in 2008, and after a whopping $800,000 in spending for and against the measure (the equivalent of about $1.2 million today), voters approved the new Civic Center.
The park was developed along with the Civic Center, including the sculpture garden where Bunnyhenge sits. It also includes wetlands, walking paths through native coastal vegetation and a dog park.
The quirky installation of giant rabbits at the park has spawned love and ire over the years. Families take their holiday pictures with the concrete beasts, and they’ve become a destination for out-of-town visitors thanks, at least in part, to their inclusion in the popular Atlas Obscura travel guide.
But some, including former City Councilmember Scott Peotter, thought the bunnies were a waste of money. In a 2014 campaign video, Peotter criticized city officials for spending money on the installation. At the end of the video, Peotter walks away while one giant bunny’s heads spontaneously explodes. (It wasn’t real, and the bunnies still stand.)
Park lovers say a new police station would not only intrude on the sculptured bunnies’ territory, but the project would also eliminate walking paths, jeopardize the adjacent wetlands and reduce habitat for the real bunnies and other animals that live in the park.
At a forum held in late September at the OASIS Senior Center, City Council candidates were asked which site is most appropriate for a future police station and why. The two challengers running on the issue, Stahr and Gerken, were unequivocal about where it should not be located.
“Definitely not the Civic Center Park,” Gerken said, adding that he would consider the police department’s preferences regarding the other options.
Stahr said, “I don't know the precise place it should be. The one thing I am absolutely morally convinced of is that it does not belong in the park.”
The other two challengers, Stoaks and Tina Babajanians, also said they opposed the idea.
In contrast, incumbents Weigand, Lauren Kleiman and Joe Stapleton didn’t rule out the possibility. “What I will agree with a lot of people in the community is this process has been flawed from the beginning,” Stapleton said, noting that he would have favored a “more public-facing committee” rather than the initial ad hoc committee, which had no public members.
Kleiman, who is facing a challenge from Gerken to represent District 6, said she supports building a new station “anywhere that is central and that allows the police to have continued operation … that would not impact safety in the city.” She said ideally the new HQ would get built where the current one sits, but doing so would be logistically challenging and disrupt police operations.
Weigand, who is facing a challenge from Stahr and Stoaks to represent District 3, said he was “OK with studying the Civic Center site … to figure out if it actually works.” If it turns out it's not feasible, he said, the city should look at nearby properties that would put the new HQ in “the heart of our city.”
After the candidate forum, resident Pamela Marks said her top issue is making sure the police station doesn’t get built in the park. But more than the idea itself, she said, she doesn’t think the current City Council has listened to residents’ concerns about the proposal. “I get that feeling when I go to the meetings. They kinda roll their eyes and, you know, they just blow it off,” she said.
Asked why preserving Civic Center Park is important to her, Marks said, “The park's important to me because open space is important to me.” She said she volunteers for the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center in neighboring Huntington Beach. “I've released wildlife in that park because that's where it was found.”
Attend a City Council meeting
When: Meetings are held twice monthly on Tuesdays starting at 4 p.m. The next meetings are scheduled for October 27 and November 10.
Where: 100 Civic Center Dr., Newport Beach
Remote options: You can watch the meeting (during or afterward) on the city’s website, or live on Spectrum (Channel 3) or Cox Communications (Channel 852).
Attend a meeting of the Newport Beach Police Headquarters Advisory Committee
When: No meeting is currently scheduled but you can review past agendas and find email addresses for the committee members on the committee webpage.
Find out more about the proposals
If you have a tip, you can reach me on Signal. My username is @jillrep.79.
Topline:
GKN Aerospace opened its $100 million claims program Tuesday for those affected by the Garden Grove hazmat scare that forced more than 50,000 nearby residents to evacuate in May. Residents are also invited to a community meeting tonight.
How did we get here? The claims money comes from a $125 million settlement between the Orange County District Attorney and GKN Aerospace. Another $8.5 million will be used to reimburse government agencies that responded to the emergency, including the county, the OC Fire Authority and others. The remaining $15 million will be used to pay civil penalties.
Read on … for more on the claims program and how to file.
GKN Aerospace opened its $100 million claims program Tuesday for those affected by the Garden Grove hazmat scare that forced more than 50,000 nearby residents to evacuate in May.
The company is also hosting a community meeting Tuesday night to go over the program.
The claims money comes from a $125 million settlement between the Orange County District Attorney and GKN Aerospace. Another $8.5 million will be used to reimburse government agencies that responded to the emergency, including the county, the Orange County Fire Authority and others. The remaining $15 million will be used to pay civil penalties.
People and households who lived within the mandatory evacuation zone are eligible for the claims program. Businesses can file a Business Interruption Claim for losses of income.
Residents who lived in the warning zone, not the mandatory evacuation zone, do not qualify.
Eligible evacuees can be reimbursed for lodging, meals and lost wages or profits through the claims process.
Here’s how the process is outlined:
Only one claim per household is allowed. Duplicate claims will be rejected.
GKN Aerospace will not be administering the claims. An independent claims administrator, Ernst & Young, will administer them, and a retired federal judge will supervise.
Earlier this year, GKN Aerospace committed $3 million to OC United Way’s OC Community Resilience Fund for people impacted by the evacuation orders. If you received support from this fund, you can still apply to the new claims program.
Dozens of lawsuits have been filed against GKN Aerospace following the scare.
People who are involved in a lawsuit can still apply for a claim, according to the company. But those who choose to accept a compensation offer will be required to sign a settlement agreement and must dismiss any current litigation. They must also forfeit the right to participate in future litigation or settlements related to the Garden Grove hazmat scare.
You can find more information on this FAQ page or get support by calling the GKN Aerospace support line at 657-526-7470.
GKN Aerospace officials are expected to answer questions about the claims portal. The event will take place Tuesday, Oct. 27, at 6 p.m. at the Delta Hotels Anaheim Garden Grove, 12021 Harbor Blvd.
Topline:
Public pushback over municipal police drones is boiling over across California, turning routine local policy hearings into high-stakes battles over the boundaries of neighborhood surveillance. The increasingly heated public debates are driven by landmark privacy litigation and a 2021 law that mandates explicit local board approvals for the use of “military equipment,” including drones. Those disclosures make clear that police are increasingly looking to drones as potential “first responders” in cities like San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Ana and Stockton — forcing local leaders to face skeptical residents in public hearings required before drone programs can expand.
Why it matters: Law enforcement agencies are pushing to broaden their drone use beyond emergency-only response to aid in everyday patrols, while citizens are concerned about drones conducting warrantless searches, if municipalities are hoarding too much data collected by drones, and whether drone makers have too much power and information.
The backstory: Across the state, nearly 60 law enforcement agencies use drone programs, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. Most foundational policies, including those in Chula Vista, Fremont, and the policy proposed in San Francisco, prohibit random surveillance, but programs diverge when it comes to deployment triggers and public oversight. Departments like Chula Vista deploy automated "Drone as First Responder" units broadly ahead of ground officers for routine 911 calls, whereas newer or more heavily scrutinized frameworks, such as San Francisco's proposed policy, attempt to draw tighter lines by limiting flights to active criminal investigations, vehicle pursuits, or specific, incident-based emergencies.
Public pushback over municipal police drones is boiling over across California, turning routine local policy hearings into high-stakes battles over the boundaries of neighborhood surveillance.
The increasingly heated public debates are driven by landmark privacy litigation and a 2021 law that mandates explicit local board approvals for the use of “military equipment,” including drones. Those disclosures make clear that police are increasingly looking to drones as potential “first responders” in cities like San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Ana and Stockton — forcing local leaders to face skeptical residents in public hearings required before drone programs can expand.
At those appearances, law enforcement agencies are pushing to broaden their drone use beyond emergency-only response to aid in everyday patrols, while citizens are concerned about drones conducting warrantless searches, if municipalities are hoarding too much data collected by drones, and whether drone makers have too much power and information.
Those tensions were on stark display earlier this month in San Francisco, when a policy debate at a police commission meeting drew a packed room of opposing residents.
The San Francisco Police Department asked commissioners to approve a policy allowing drones for a wide array of uses, including “public safety response,” active investigations, training, and “community outreach.” While prohibiting random “general surveillance” or tracking activities protected by the First Amendment, the draft stipulated that public footage would be retained for 30 days unless tied to an open investigation.
“With drones, you can fly at much lower altitudes, you can get thermal imaging, you can get tracking.”
Supporters argued the technology is vital for modern crime-fighting. “Public safety and personal privacy shouldn't be competing interests,” said Anna Carney, president of Stop Crime SF, urging commissioners to give officers every responsible advantage to save lives.
But privacy advocates and skeptical residents saw a slippery slope toward unchecked surveillance, drawing explicit parallels to the contentious rollout of automated license plate readers across the state. In recent years, cities like San Francisco and Stockton built extensive fixed camera networks supplied by vendors like Flock Safety. Now, communities fear that attaching drones to those same networks creates an inescapable, multi-dimensional dragnet — one that tracks citizens not just by car on the street, but from the air above their homes.
“We are all here today because these drones are impacting all of our communities, " said Manny, a member of the privacy advocacy group DeFlock SF, who urged the commissioners to cancel the department’s contract with drone manufacturer Skydio. "If SFPD truly cared about operating these drones with any respect to privacy, the very least that can happen is one of you make an amendment to require a warrant,” he added, referring to language used in the department’s proposed policy.
Although commissioners voted to advance the policy to labor negotiations without adding a warrant mandate, the friction displayed in San Francisco reflects a statewide reckoning.
The 2021 rules governing military equipment in law enforcement still leave a policy vacuum confronting municipalities across California: Local agencies that deploy drones are stepping into a legal gray area where technology is far outpacing state regulation.
A lawsuit against Sonoma County underscores the uncertainty. Privacy concerns festered for years in the county after officials launched a drone program in 2019 for code enforcement. But investigators with the American Civil Liberties Union later uncovered hundreds of warrantless searches over private yards, homes, and windows — all conducted without a published policy in sight. In 2025, the ACLU of Northern California sued Sonoma, and last month, the county settled. Sonoma pledged to reel in its drone use, obtain warrants or consent before conducting residential property code inspections, restrict data retention, and directly notify residents if their property was subjected to aerial surveillance.
The case brought to the forefront the complex legal matrix officials must navigate in deploying unmanned aircraft.
"There's three main buckets," explained Katie Inman, a drone policy expert and attorney at Holland & Knight who previously worked at the Federal Aviation Administration. "You've got the broad … constitutional law principles, then you've got state statutes, and then you've got the third bucket, which is FAA operating rules."
Inman noted that California belongs to a category of states that lack a comprehensive state statute explicitly governing law enforcement drone use, leaving municipalities on their own to read and comply with constitutional Fourth Amendment case law, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure.
She said the Supreme Court has ruled that aircraft surveilling areas that are visible to the naked eye from lawful altitudes do not violate Constitutional protections.
"But those were manned aircraft; they are not drones,” she said. ”With drones, you can fly at much lower altitudes, you can get thermal imaging, you can get tracking, you can get just a lot of hovering — a lot of surveillance potential there that you would not normally have."
Across the state, nearly 60 law enforcement agencies use drone programs, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. Most foundational policies, including those in Chula Vista, Fremont, and the policy proposed in San Francisco, prohibit random surveillance, but programs diverge when it comes to deployment triggers and public oversight. Departments like Chula Vista deploy automated "Drone as First Responder" units broadly ahead of ground officers for routine 911 calls, whereas newer or more heavily scrutinized frameworks, such as San Francisco's proposed policy, attempt to draw tighter lines by limiting flights to active criminal investigations, vehicle pursuits, or specific, incident-based emergencies.
Beyond constitutional and policy questions, the rapid growth of drone programs is closely tied to an aggressive push by defense and surveillance technology vendors.
Both the San Francisco and Los Angeles police departments rely on hardware manufactured by San Mateo-based Skydio, while industry peers like Axon, which makes body cameras, and license-plate-reader manufacturer Flock Safety have also aggressively expanded into the market. Skydio originally launched to give extreme sports athletes a way to track and film themselves doing parkour or snowboarding. But after the U.S. government labeled Chinese drone maker DJI a national security risk in 2020, Skydio pivoted to fill the void for military, police, and enterprise customers.
At a recent customer conference, Skydio CEO Adam Bry laid out an ambitious roadmap: small drones for tactical flights inside buildings, mid-range aircraft for vehicle pursuits, and high-speed models capable of traveling 100 mph up to a 30-mile radius. Bry also outlined a future driven by AI, envisioning software that analyzes 911 calls in real time to automatically recommend dispatching an autonomous drone to a scene.
Executing that vision requires major investments — from taxpayers and billionaire backers alike. Santa Ana recently greenlit $682,900 for its Drone as First Responder initiative in partnership with Skydio, while the Stockton City Council approved a $3.15 million contract expansion with Flock Safety to integrate six drones into its existing network of 120 license plate reader cameras. In San Francisco last year, the police department received a $9.4 million donation from the crypto billionaire and Ripple cofounder, Chris Larsen, to expand its drone program and surveillance systems, Mission Local reported.
“The premise of the Bill of Rights is respect for liberty of the individual, and that used to mean something in this city,” a San Francisco resident named Ilona said at the Oct. 14 Commission meeting, lambasting officials for accepting Larsen’s drone donation. “But it doesn't anymore because now we have sold out to tech billionaires. ... SFPD has been sloppy and reckless with our privacy. How can we trust them with these tools?”
Venture-backed drone vendors have spent heavily to influence local officials to support their expansion — Flock Safety, for instance, has reportedly spent millions of dollars on local and federal lobbying, claiming its technology helped “solve” a million crimes last year alone. Yet researchers are increasingly skeptical of what vendors and law enforcement say the technology can help accomplish.
Police argue that drones help them respond to incidents more quickly, help them deescalate potentially dangerous situations, and improve crime clearance rates. A February 2026 study by the UC Berkeley Criminal Law and Justice Center found that while first-responder drones can improve response times, there is no evidence they reduce officer-involved shootings, lower overall use of force, or improve case resolution rates.
The rapid rollout has also intensified community anxiety over interconnected surveillance networks, and intensified the brewing nationwide backlash against AI-powered police tech.
Jesus Gabriel Yanez, a recently-retired police commissioner, spoke at the San Francisco commission meeting. He briefly read a passage from George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” before expressing his opposition to the drone use policy outlined by his former peers.
“SFPD should tie deployments to specific incidents that cannot be addressed without compromising officer safety — period,” Yanez said. “Those are the only times when we should allow for the deployment of a drone. No general routine patrol. No general surveillance.”
Opponents like Yanez point to past instances where California law enforcement agencies illegally shared license plate tracking data with federal immigration authorities, as well as technical missteps like a recent leak that exposed live police drone video feeds online due to vendor misconfigurations. That anxiety over vendor overreach and AI surveillance isn't confined to California—similar resistance is bubbling up across the country. In Minneapolis, the city council voted to reject a police drone contract with Skydio following community protests over privacy and dual-use military technology. In New Orleans, advocacy group Eye on Surveillance successfully mobilized against a proposed policy that would have allowed weapons on police drones.
Whether through public city council debates sparked by AB 481 or court-enforced settlements like Sonoma County's, California communities are trying to make it clear that adopting cutting-edge public safety technology will not come at the cost of privacy. The automated eye in the sky may arrive in seconds, but citizens are demanding to know exactly who is watching — and who holds the remote.
CalMatters Technology Reporter Khari Johnson contributed to this report.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
