What the first manual snowpack measurement of the year means for CA, how a handwritten personalize letter can get you your dream house, why so many stingray stings?
New Year, new snowpack measurement: CA's water supply so far
California's drought may be over, but L.A. has been in a dry spell for the past 10 months.
The Department of Water Resources is headed up to Phillips Station, about 90 miles east of Sacramento, where scientists measure the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains. It's the first of five measurements they'll conduct this year and it's one of the ways they can tell how wet —or dry—the whole state is.
Chris Orrock with the California Department of Water Resources set the scene at Phillips Station.
"There's snow on the ground here. It's not as much as we had last year, but there is snow," said Orrock. "It snowed up here about a week and a half ago and these are the remnants of it."
Though Wednesday is the state's first manual measurement of the Sierra Snowpack, we already have an idea of where we stand right now.
Electronic sensors are showing statewide snowpack is only 27 percent of the norm for this time of year. So at the dawn of 2018, are we already in an abnormally dry year?
UCLA's Gonzalo Cortés spoke to A Martinez via Skype to put the snowpack measurement in context.
"When we go to the mountains and measure the snowpack, we're getting a hint of how much water we'll have available during the spring season and during the summer season which is the season when we usually use most of this water."
Though it's an important indicator of the state of California's water, it's but a piece of the puzzle:
- Snowpack—"You can think of the Sierra Nevada as one of the reservoirs we have. So if there's a lot of snow in the Sierra Nevada then that means that natural reservoir is full, if there's little snow it means its empty and we have to rely on other reservoirs."
- Soil moisture—"We had a very dry and warm December so that means many areas that are usually humid in terms of soil moisture are now really dry, so that means that there's less water available for vegetation and when the rain finally comes, that rain will directly go into the groundwater because the soil is so dry."
- Snowfall—"During the rest of the winter what is important as well is to have the initial snowpack layer, the one that we don't have now, that serves as a buffer for upcoming storms. Not only important how much snow there is, also important when that snow falls over the mountain because that protects the snow for the rest of the season."
Overall, Cortés says it's really too early to tell whether this will end up being a wet or dry year. It isn’t until the end of the wet season that it can be said with more certainty.
Iranian-Americans in LA split on White House response to protests in Iran
There are anti-government protests across Iran this week, and demonstrators have clashed with the security forces. According to Iranian state media, 21 people have died and and hundreds have been arrested as of January 3.
Economic anxieties like rising food costs, and high youth unemployment are fueling the protests. Take Two talked with Reza Goharzah, political analyst and host at KIRN Radio Iran in Los Angeles.
Goharzah says this protest is vastly different from protests in the past, especially the political protest in 2009 known as the Green movement.
"This protest doesn't have a leader, it's a leaderless movement," Goharzah says. More importantly, the goal of the protests are different. "Before, people chant 'where's our vote?' Now people ask 'where's our bread?"
The Iranian-American community largely support the protesters but are split on how the White House should address the uprising.
"On one hand, you get the group of people saying the best thing Donald Trump can do is to do nothing. On the other hand, some people want the U.S. to intervene," Goharzah says.
This weekend, there will be a Iranian American rally in front of the Los Angeles Federal Building.
LA house hunting: 3 top tips to sell yourself to sellers
Southern California’s real estate landscape is giving sellers something to smile about.
According to the data firm Core Logic, the November median home sale price in SoCal is $505,000. That’s an 8.6 percent increase from last year. And with surging prices and fewer houses on the market, buying a house has gotten more competitive.
Stuart Gabriel is a finance professor and director of the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate. He told A Martinez that despite the increase in home prices, we shouldn't see a housing bubble anytime soon.
"We've taken many steps in the wake of the financial crisis [of 2008]....Borrowers are well qualified, and all of this has put a damper on excessive speculative activity in the market," Gabriel said.
Speaking of staying competitive, one way potential buyers are setting themselves apart from the rest of the pack is with an introduction letter.
In other words, people vying for their dream home sometimes include a personal letter with their bid. This might include photos, family stories and plans to create new memories in a new house.
Carol Hustonis with Huston Group L.A. for Wish Sotheby’s International Realty.
Here are her three top tips to write a letter that's a cut above the competition:
1. Let them know you're in it for the long haul.
CAROL HUSTON: The seller has to believe that you will close escrow. There are so many escrows that people open because they took the highest bidder, but the bidder doesn't close, so the process starts all over again. Sellers sometimes kick themselves saying, 'I should have taken that buyer that wrote that beautiful letter. What was I thinking?'
2. Adjust your expectations as a buyer.
HUSTON: It's a tough market. Pictures of your cat and baby won't convince the seller to take $50,000 less than another bid. And if your offer is competitive, and there are five other bids, think about what makes you better. A sense of humor? Humility? Showing that you're a stable person?
3. Get your real estate agent to ask the right questions.
HUSTON: Your Realtor should ask the seller, 'What will make this offer priceless?' Does that mean the sellers can have more time before moving out? Can you pay their last utility bill or the transfer tax? Find out what their needs are and create a way to make their lives easier when they hand over the keys.
*Interview has been edited for clarity.
K2 Sports: Is Los Angeles finally a Rams town?
For the first time since 1994, playoff football will be held in Los Angeles. This coming Saturday, the Los Angeles Rams will square off against the NFC defending champions Atlanta Falcons, with the Rams were made 6½-point favorite.
It's only been a year since NFL owners voted to allow the Rams to return to Los Angeles, and their first season started with not a lot of enthusiasm and plenty of empty seats.
So have things changed now that they're in the playoffs? We'll talk about it with Andy and Brian Kamenetzky.
Warm water and warmer weather means more stingray injuries
Over the New Year's holiday, maybe you spent some time a beach walk or even splashed in the waves during a Polar Plunge. Hopefully, you weren't one of the nearly 400 people treated for stingray stings in the last week in Huntington Beach.
That might seem unusual for this time of year. Chris Lowe, professor of marine biology at California State University, Long Beach, agrees.
"That's a normal late summer type of occurrence in Southern California, but for the winter, that's odd," Lowe said.
The summer-like December weather likely was a cause. Good weather warmed the water on the shore, bringing the stingrays out of deeper water, and it also brought many more pairs of feet to the beach. The combination over the holiday was painful. Lowe said a stringray barb to the ankle makes even the toughest surfers to weep on the beach. [Lowe estimates he's been stung 18 or 19 times over his career.]
Lowe and his students have studied stingrays in Orange County for about twenty years. He says typically, the rays hang out in a channel in deeper water, where the water is usually warmer than the shallows in the winter. A change in the weather pattern, like an El Nino year or long-term climate change, can interrupt that. This is another harbinger of global climate change, Lowe said.
The other local hangout for stingrays? Seal Beach, or Ray Bay, as the locals call it. Lowe and his students estimate that a third of all stingray-related injuries in the United States occur at Ray Bay every summer. Local lifeguards keep a record of the thousands of injuries reported there over the years.
The best way to live with the rays year-round? Do the Stingray Shuffle, even in the winter: shuffle your feet along the sand as you enter and exit the shallow water. This gives the stingrays, which bury in the sand, a heads-up that you're coming through. They'll flutter away instead of flicking their barbed tails toward your unsuspecting ankles in fear.