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Speaker 1: It is the news Blitz with Randy Wang on Talk radio seven ninety KABC. This is your daily rundown of everything you need to know that's going on in southern California as well as the Bay Area, Sacramento, San Diego, and the Central Valley. I do a lot of show prep every single morning, checking out what's going on throughout the entire state of California, and I put it up on my little blog every single day for you to check out. That's Randywangradio dot substack dot com, Randywangradio dot substack dot com. And of course you can send me an email you've got any questions, you've got any comments. I try to read and respond to everything. A few of them will get read on the air. Randywang Radio at gmail dot com. Well, just two days after it was pretty much officially declared that the mayor's race was going to be in November, Karen Bass versus Nitia Rahman. Karen Bask gets a humdinger of a headline in the news. They're a lot of pea people in the Pacific Palisades and Malibu that are very upset about their homes that have burned down, and so they are lawyering up, and they are suing the City of Los Angeles and the LEDWP, and the State of California for all the negligence that we saw throughout the City of Los Angeles, the LAEDWP, and the State of California. State of California concerning the state farks employees that may have actually impeded lafd's response. The LEDWP because there was no water in the fire hydrant, and the City of LA because the mayor was gallivanting in Ghana and no, it didn't even tell anybody where she was. One of the people that is suing all of these entities is Karen Bass's brother. Kenny Bass is suing Karen Bass, and I get to imagine those family dinners have gotten very awkward. Since Karen Bass and her inept government were complicit in letting the Palisades burn, that's got to be real awkward. Now, speaking of the Palisades, the trial has finally begun for Jonathan Renderkinesh Boy is that a name, the guy who is accused of starting the Lockman fire that eventually turned into the Palisades fire. He is being tried on three different charges, two of them related to the Palisades fire and one being related to the Lochman fire, And the prosecutors claim they have a lot of evidence that ties this guy to the Lochman fire, whether it's being on the scene, although his defense says that he just called because he saw the fire that was started by illegal fireworks, and there were illegal fireworks up there. There was plenty of reports of firework related fire calls on New Year's Eve. But the issue that we're going to have with this case is will a jury truly tie all of the responsibility of the destruction that we saw in the Palisades fire that destroyed seven thousand homes, took over a dozen lives. Can you truly tie all of that to this guy starting a small fire that was responded to that wasn't put out properly, whether it was due to pressure from the state parks people, whether it was due to incompetence from city leadership, what have you? You know, is he truly responsible for the failures at La city government where there was no water in the fire hydrants. That's the question to be asked. And what's interesting is if a jury convince render Kinesh on the Lochman fire, but not the Palisades fire charges. The entire thing might get thrown out because just the arson charge on the Lochman fire isn't necessarily a federal crime. Now final on the fires, the new book is making the waves. Jonathan Vigliotti of CBS News, he was on the scene for the initial dates of the Palisades. He was asking all kinds of uncomfortable questions of the mayor and the fire chief and the board of supervisors at all those press conferences. He has covered a book about how much of a disaster the Palisades Fire was. And one of the things that's in this book that Karen Bass loves to deny but she refused to sit down for an interview for this book, is that when Karen Bass went to Ghana, she did not tell anybody in her staff where she was going or how to reach her. Apparently she didn't tell the intra mayor, which would have been the city council president, Marquis Harris Dawson. Nobody seemed to know where she was, which led to all kinds of confusion when disaster struck because nobody exactly knew who was in charge. And it was a wonderful exchange by our friend Alex Michaelson over at CNN, because Alex brings up these allegations to Karen Bass, and Karen Bass is like, well, that's just not true, and Elex says, well, this is what's being alleged in the book, and she's like, well, I really wish this Jonathan Biglieida guy would have sat down with me, to which Elex says, he offered to interview you about this book several times and you said no, not a great look, Karen. Now, there is a lot of people on the internet, very very very upset at the results of the Los Angeles mayors race. I understand that you're upset. I understand that it is a very disappointing outcome. I'm not all in on all of the Okay, this was a complete fraudulent thing because we've seen this game played so many times. We know how ballot harvesting works, and we know it's not illegal. The fact that there is no organization, no way to do this on the other side, that's just an excuse. You could be doing your own ballot harvesting. Just if the registered Republicans who did not vote, which was over two hundred thousand of them, But I'm not here to talk about that. What I'm here to talk about is something that we do know that is going on, and that is homeless people in skid row being offered money or cigarettes to put their name not on a ballot, but on a petition. This is something that we've seen up and down the state of California. The first real big story with this was JJ Smith, our buddy, up in the Tenderloin in San Francisco, where he filmed with his medaglasses, Hey, I have those right here. He filmed homeless people standing in line waiting to get five dollars to not even fill out their name on a petition, to fill out a list of registered voters' names and sign their signature. And we've seen a lot of this lately. I'm surprised that in skid row they're doing it for just cigarettes. But ultimately, and I don't know how you feel about this, I think the entire concept of paid signature gathering needs to go. I am all for our system of direct democracy. I am all for the initiative process, the referendums, the ballots. I am all for voters having direct participation in certain things. I mean it's thanks to our direct democracy we have things like the recall, we have things like Prop thirteen. I am all for that, but I believe we are now a point where there are so many things that we are voting on that don't make any sense as to why the California voter has to weigh in on this. And I think part of the problem here is any special interest can get a certain amount of funding and pay people, whether they're doing it through legitimate means or illegitimate means, five, fifteen, twenty thirty dollars a signature to get something on the ballot. I think that's unethical, and we have seen it lead to all kinds of things. Notably, the first video that was caught in the tenderloin of this was actually a firm that was hired by the billionaire people and the tech people trying to put a competing ballot measure against the proposed wealth tax, and they're paying like twenty dollars a signature. So if you're getting paid twenty dollars a signature and you give five to the homeless person, you're still making fifteen dollars a signature. I think the entire process of all all the processes that we want to talk about that are ripe for fraud, This one we can definitely prove because we have seen it. The widespread fraud that's being talked about in the LA mayor's race, I'm not seeing that. Even the oh, well look how many homeless people are all register their address as this homeless shelter. Well, that's what the ballot harvesters have you do. They need to register a place where you will get your mail. It's unethical, but it's perfectly allowed. It's perfectly legal, and there's no reason the other side can't do it. And I personally believe the more people that are crowing out there about how the election was stolen from Spencer Pratt are simply depressing future turnout. And this is maybe why we have seen a good portion. I don't care what the turnout is on the NPP side, I don't care what the turnout is on the Democrat side. If you are a Republican and you want a Republican candidate, you should be on hundred percent focused on that Republican turnout. And the Republican turnout ended up being lower than the Democrat turnout. And yes, maybe that's because of ballot harvesting, then why aren't you doing your own ballot harvesting. It's completely allowed. The organization isn't there, And if you just start crowing about how rigged it all is, well, then you get to a point where people don't believe their vote matters and they do not vote. That's my opinion on it. Maybe you think there's something more sinister here. I happen to believe that the people that are in charge are not competent enough to carry out these kinds of conspiracies. I've seen the way that they operate. But when it comes to organizing and going to apartment buildings and getting low propensity voters that all have a ballot to cast a ballot, it's not something that I think is a good thing. But it's perfectly allowed, and there's no reason that you couldn't organize and do the exact same thing. One of the other things that changed in the week of election counting is it looked like measure er was not going to pass, and now it looks like the sales tax hike in La County to fund healthcare programs that were being cut by the federal government is going to pass. So get ready for a little bit higher sales tax in the County of LA which means certain cities like Palmdale in Lancaster, who already have all kinds of sales tax increases at the city level, are now going to be bumped up to the point where Palmdale in Lancaster will have the highest sales tax of any city in the entire country. The FBI has now rated the Garden Grove Aerospace Company GKN after the chemical crisis where fifty thousand people had to be evacuated because apparently a chemical tank was going to explode at any minute and for six days people were out of their homes. And yes, the federal government should be investigating. This was their criminal negligence here. And honestly, I don't know how you repair this damage. I don't know why, and maybe I don't know how old the plant is. But this is a huge population center. We should not have these kinds of dangerous chemicals anywhere near a population center. So it might be time for GKN to move to the vast, vast, vast vast nothingness that is out there. You know, when the Manhattan Project was started in World War Two, did they decide to build the bomb in a big population center. No, no, no, no no. It might be called the Manhattan Project, but yeah, they didn't build that thing in Manhattan. They built it out in Los Alamos, New Mexico. And you had to check in on Palace Avenue in Santa Fe and get whisked away to this secret facility out in the middle of nowhere. Maybe your employees will have to do a little more commuting, but there is a lot of vast empty space out there. There's no reason to have a dangerous chemical plant like this in the middle of a population center where fifty thousand people are driven out of their homes. Now, I am very conflicted on this next story because I am a big fan of cooking, and I'm a big fan of sharing my love of cooking. I love cooking for friends, I love cooking for the family. It is something that I get a lot of enjoyment out of. I like sharing my gift, and really my gift is, you know, being As my mother in law says, if you can read, you can cook, And I can read, alright, I do sometimes like to assume that I remember the recipe, and sometimes that doesn't go so well. So I am all for people wanting to share their gift. I'm also all for the entrepreneurial spirit. There are people that may have found a niche found something that they can bring to the very crowded, very risky market in selling food, in opening a restaurant, in eatery, what have you. And La County has decided to make that as easy as possible with the brand new home Kitchen Permit. So it's a home kitchen permit. It's called Mecho me Ehko, and you can get a permit with the county. They will send a health inspector from Barbara Ferrara's department. Dude, make sure your kitchen is clean, and you are allowed to turn your home into a micro restaurant where you can commercially charge for people coming to your house and eating dinner. And on one end, I kind of like that, especially if you're like a private chef and maybe you have a nice entertaining space, you can you know, turn your home like a very interesting destination. At the same time, it does make me feel for all the struggling restaurants that are out there because we make it harder and harder and harder for brick and mortar restaurants to deal with the regulations, they have to deal with the payroll taxes, they have to deal all these other things, and we keep adding to the competition that they have to face, whether it is all of the legal street vending, all of the illegal street vending, or now these ghost kitchens, and it just slices that pie so much thinner. And look, it is a big pie. Everyone has to eat two or three times a day, and only the most creative and the strongest will survive. I mean, nobody's coming to your house and paying you money for subpar food. And maybe this turns into if you become successful, you grow into a restaurant. But it seems that we have raised a lot, or have gotten rid of a lot of barriers to entry on the low or end scale. But when it comes to actually building a brick and mortar restaurant, it's only gotten more difficult, and we only make things more difficult to do. So, on one hand, I kind of like the idea, especially if you've got some niche and you want to have like total strangers in your house. I don't want that. But if that is something that you're into, maybe this program works for you. Maybe you grow it into a business. But it is. It is interesting. It's almost like the podcastification, if I can use a word that I just made up, of the food industry, where you know, a restaurant, you have to hire servers, you have to hire bartenders, cooks, janitors, managers, you have to have all of this overhead. Where somebody can now open up a micro kitchen inside their house and almost like an amakase. They're only seating what six eight people a night, but there's no overhead. Pretty much you're paying for the cost of the food and the chef's time and expertise. Now that only employs one, maybe two people, but you know you could make You could make a little They must you must have to charge quite a bit to make that worth your while. But it's just an It's an interesting idea, so we'll see how it plays out. I'm not totally for it or against it, but as much as I love cooking, I don't want to open my house to strangers to come to Cafe Wang. Also, Cafe Wang does not sound attractive at all. There's a lot more in Today's California Report. I encourage you to check it out at Randy Wang Radio dot substance. It's the News Blitz with Randy Wang on Talk Radio seven ninety KABC. It's the News Blitz with Randy Wang on KABC. Boy, do I have something exciting for you? Seven ninety KABC welcomes Allison Kraus and The Union Station featuring Jerry Douglass with special guests THEO Lawrence at the Pacific Amphitheater on August twenty ninth. Tickets are on sale now at pacamp dot com. Right now, caller number nine at one eighty eight seven ninety five two two two gets a pair of tickets to the show. All concert tickets are good for a one time admission to the OC Fair on Wednesday or Thursday. Tickets furnished by the Pacific Amphitheater. Good luck dialing. All right, we've got some big movies coming out this weekend. Let's see what we've got going on. I've heard a lot of talk about this, but I will admit I don't know anything about it. Disclosure Day is the first Steven Spielberg movie about extraterrestrials and a very very very very long time, and that could be very exciting. It's currently got an eighty two on the Rotten Tomatoes. If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you proved it to you, would that frighten you? This sounds like the opening of the X Files This summer. The truth belongs to seven billion people. We are coming close to Disclosure Day. Not to be confused with Disclosure, which is a Michael Crichton novel that was adapted to a movie about sexual harassment. This is starring Emily Blunt and Colin Firth. I hate Uncle Jamie the Furious. A father fights fiercely against ruthless kidnappers to save his adducted daughter. And know this is not a continuation of the Fast and Furious franchise as far as I can, and finally stop that train to train Stewardess bdffs. Are we allowed to use that term? Switch from a dull railway to the luxurious Glamazonian Express during a massive storm. They must work with snooty first Class Cruise and President Gagwell to prevent disaster in La. This stars Route Paul Paul Sheer and Sarah Michelle Geller and no one has an eighty nine on the Rotten Tomatoes.
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Speaker 2: All right?
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Speaker 1: Interesting as far as right now Stop. That train is better rated by the reviewers on the Tomatoes than Disclosure Day, but not like any of that matter. Scary movie rated at twenty three percent and that movie made fifty million dollars last week. Hey, we get a half hour to go here, so stay with us. It's the News Blitz with Randy Wang on Talk Radio seven ninety KABC. It is the News blo with Randy Wang on Talk radio seven ninety KABC. We are your daily rundown of everything you need to know going on in southern California as well as the Bay Area, Sacramento, San Diego, and the Central Valley. You can check out all of my show prep I did today at Randywangradio dot substack dot com and send me an email whether you have a question, you have a comment. I do read some of them on the air at Randywang Radio at gmail dot com. There's a little bit of a fight going on in one of my favorite places in the entire state of California, and that is Santa Barbara Wine Country. I have been visiting Santa Barbara Wine Country with my wife since we first got together. Over gosh, it's been thirteen years ago. And what's going on. Here is a lot of industries, especially in California, the wine industry is having a tough time, and one of the ideas to help promote the wine industry is to create these things called business improvement districts, where the county creates a board funded by a assessment fee, a one percent tax on all bottles that are sold in the region, and they use that money to market the region. But what happens if you're in the region and you don't agree with how that board is spending the money. What if you don't agree with being on that board whatsoever. Well, this is the legal fight that is now taking place in Santa Barbara County as Flying Goat Sellers is pushing back against the Business Improvement District created by the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors because they don't agree with how the money is being spent or that they should be forced to be doing this. To talk to us about this, we have I'm very excited about this. The proprietor and chief philosopher of Flying Goat Sellers right there in the Lompoke wine ghetto in Santa Barbara County, Kate Griffith, Welcome to the News blitz.
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Speaker 3: Hi, Randy, thank you for your interest in our story.
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Speaker 1: Well, Kate, let me first say I'm a big fan of Flying Goat. I've been a Goat Bubbles drinker for a very long time. But did I get a decent recap of the story? Tell us what's going on here?
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Speaker 3: I think you did.
00:23:31
Speaker 2: Well.
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Speaker 3: Let's see, so last year, it was just last year that Santa Barbie County created this wine did and actually they're imposing this assessment on all sales that we have from within the state of California. So that's not just the bottles of wine, but it's also any food or artwork or twag that we sell or events that we sell through our tasting room. And you know, it's really the Prince Simpull of the matter that has us so upset because we built flying sellers the old fashioned way, you know, one moodel, one customer, one relationship at a time, and in a market defined by differentiation, independence is a business model that allows us to stand apart. Now our uniqueness is under threat from a county mandate that forces us to participate in a story written by someone else. So and it's you know, the first it's based on the First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment violations of these basic rights that we feel that we have as citizens of the United States.
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Speaker 1: Well, and one of the things that you're arguing for is that if you agree with this assessment, this b id the Business Improvement District, it should be an opt in. You shouldn't be forced into this thing. And then if you don't want to participate eight, then you shouldn't have to participate. But there, right now, the county is imposing this tax on you, whether you agree with what the Business Improvement District is doing or not.
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Speaker 3: Yes, that is exactly the problem. And we keep you know, we're working. Fortunately, the Goldwater Institute is helping us because Panting Goat Sellers is a small mom and pop as most wineries are in Santa Barbara County, and the county and the Vennor's Association didn't care, but we had to say or frankly, they didn't give a whit about us. The Goldwater Institute is a force to be reckoned with. And now they've they're championing our cause in this lawsuit. And you know, fortunately we've got somebody bigger to behind us in this David Versus Goliath kind of lawsuit where we feel as though we've just not been listened to and our first Amendment, an fifth amendment rights are extremely important to.
00:26:07
Speaker 1: Us, as you know, as being part of this. Because they've imposed this on you, do you get any say as to how any of this money is spent or do you even get to find out how this money is spent? Because one percent of all of your sales across all the wineries in the county, that's a lot of money.
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Speaker 3: You know, we really don't have a say. And the irony of the whole thing is is forty five to fifty wineries in the county are not paying the assessment because they're silently protesting. And another fact that the board of the Vintnor's Board has revealed in their minute is that the city of Lompoc, which is the third largest jurisdiction in the county, the city of Lompok is generating more wine revenue than the city of Santa Barbara or the city of Santa Maria. Now, of course it's the Santa Barbara County generates the largest amount of wine revenue, but the city of Lompok is the second most important, and we have no voice there. The city of Lompoc is is basically looked down upon by the Vennors and by many of the people in the county. You know, we don't have enough. Uh we're not tony enough, I guess you might say. And that's where you know, the whole Lampok Wine Ghetto was was coined with with great fondness and was always a popular destination for many people in the know about fine wines, but they've never represented the city of Lompoc, the Lampok Wine gotta any any of you know, our area, our specific jurisdiction with those marketing resources well.
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Speaker 1: And and as somebody that's a big fan of the region, I think that's such a lost opportunity because you know, as long as I have been going up there, the Lompoc area, the Lompoke Wine Ghetto is as important to the region as Santa Rosa Road and Fox and Canyon and Los Alevos. It is one of those major destinations that you hit it every single time. And maybe Santa Barbara County and the b I D think that there's something different about them, But to your avid Pinot noir fan what have you, it doesn't matter how fancy the tasting room looks or that they spent ten million dollars on it is. How good is the wine, and how friendly are the people and all the places we've ever been to in the ghetto, people are very friendly and the pinot is excellent.
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Speaker 3: Thank you. Not to mention the sparkling line.
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Speaker 1: Right oh yeah, love the go yeah.
00:28:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you. There. We really were really proud of the wines and Lompoke and not just not just flying goat. You know, we feel like we're in great company. But for whatever reasons, the big the big players in the county just have never really appreciated our contribution. And that's the that's their prerogative. But then don't force us to be a part of their marketing message because it doesn't benefit us well.
00:29:13
Speaker 1: And it's such a varied and large region, you know, I can think of plenty of bids that work very well, like the Union Square Alliance in San Francisco making sure that the streets are clean and people feel safe, and that that works out really well. But it is such a vast, large area with different interest and different concerns and a little bit of competition there. So if they're not treating every single part of the organization fairly. I can totally understand why you shouldn't. You shouldn't be forced to opt into this because you're now paying money to be promoting a region that is not where you're selling your wine.
00:29:50
Speaker 3: You know exactly. And the better path is the simpler one. If the Vennor's Association provides value, wineries will join it voluntarily. If it's marketing efforts are effective, participation will follow. That is the logic of both markets and civil society. Legitimacy is earned through performance, not secure through force.
00:30:14
Speaker 2: So that's, you know, that's.
00:30:17
Speaker 3: What they need to understand. But I don't know. I don't know what it's going to take. We'll see how this lawsuit plays out. There's still the Vennor's Association and the county are still ignoring us in the Goldwater Institute.
00:30:34
Speaker 1: Well, if anything's going to force them to respond, it will be a lawsuit, and it'll be very interesting to see how this plays out. We'll be following it, of course, as Flying Goat Sellers is suing the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors for forcing them into a business improvement district that they do not believe in. We'll be following the story and of course, I'm just going to give it a plug because I'm a big fan. If you're ever out in Santa Barbara County, if you're out in Poke, you gotta check out Flying Goat Sellers. The Block, The Noir Bugoat Bubble's great. Also, the Pino noirs have always been so solid. And Kate, you do such a great job over there.
00:31:12
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Randy. We really appreciate your interest.
00:31:16
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Kate Griffith from Flying Goat Sellers. Everybody, It's the News Blitz with Randy Wang on Talk Radio seven ninety KABC. It's the News Blitz with Randy Wang on KABC. Our next guest is a familiar voice. He's a certified broadcast meteorologist who's been covering southern California weather from the slopes to the shore over thirty two years. You can go to his website, Rickdickartweather dot com and get him on X at Rickdickert WX. Rick Dickert, Welcome to the News Blitz.
00:31:50
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me, Randy. We're here to talk about something we hear quite often in Southern California. El Nino. It's back.
00:31:59
Speaker 1: So what does El Nino coming back? Because The only memory that I have of a very significant El Nino was I was in junior high school. It rained a hell of a lot, and that's when I learned how to square dance.
00:32:13
Speaker 2: Wow, okay, Well, my memory goes back to high school here in southern California at Redondo Union. In high school, my freshman year, the El Nino of nineteen eighty two and nineteen eighty three, torrential rains damaging High serp. We even had a tornado ripped through the convention Center in downtown Los Angeles. Now, well that happened again this coming winter. There's a chance. An al Nino advisory was just issued hours ago by the Climate Prediction Center, meaning that l Medio conditions are being observed across a wide swath of the Equatorial Pacific Ocean. The sea surface temperature there, that's what we watch. We watched the anomalies, positive anomalies meaning warmer than average water, or negative anomalies meaning cooler than average waters. When it's warmer than average, it's an El Nino pattern. When it's cooler than average, it's the opposite a La Nia. Well, water temperatures, the sea surface temperatures out there are now at zero point seven degrees celsius above the long term average. You need to reach the threatol zero point five degrees centigrade or a halfy degree celsius to reach that L Nino threshold. So we've done that and exceeded that. And the bottom line is is that our long range forecast models indicate that this current L NEO that just formed will rapidly intensify, possibly into a very strong L Nino, meaning sea surface temperatures down there at or above two degrees celsius.
00:33:44
Speaker 1: Well, and you know, anecdotally, I think that there's very strong evidence about what you're saying when it comes to that the ocean temperatures in the Pacific are rising, especially around southern California. I was just talking with my uncle who is a fisherman, and he says all of the big tuna fishing has moved up from Mexico to southern California because the water got so warm here that the tuna of all moved to la.
00:34:09
Speaker 2: You're absolutely right, Randy. The marine environment that is influenced by that. In fact, going back to the sixteen hundreds, it was the fishermen off of Peru which first documented El Nino that area typically has very cold water, nutrient rich water because of a phenomenon called upwelling. Upwelling occurs when deep sea water rises to the surface. It brings up phytoplankton, which causes an algae bloom and that feeds or provides food for anchovies. So fishermen out there would have a field down the anchovies. It was back in the sixteen hundreds when fishermen first documented that the water was much warmer than average. Warming water choked dot that upwelling and did away with all the anchovies. And it arrived right around Christmas time, hence the name christ Child Little Boy. That's how it was dubbed El Nino centuries ago.
00:35:05
Speaker 1: Wow, that is fascinating. I love that story. So what are people listening right now need to be concerned about. I mean, obviously we're just getting into summer right now, and this is something that really more affects us in the winter. But what should people be prepared for as we go through the rest of this year into early next year.
00:35:24
Speaker 2: Starting with this summer, we're already starting to feel and you mentioned it Randy warmer than a sea service temperatures even off the coast of southern California, which does have an impact on marine life. It also impacts our marine layer, the on short flow or natural ac The warmer the ocean temperatures get, typically that ends that marine influence or it's not as strong. You don't see the prevailing low clouds and fog as you would when water temperatures are cooler. As that El Nino evolves, and again, forecast models, government models from Noah are indicating that that warming rapidly intensify, and it's very likely there's a sixty three percent chance at least that a very strong l Nino or what we call the media super l Nino will evolve late in the autumn or early in the winter months. Now that as that occurs, that warm ocean is going to feed the atmosphere with additional energy heat and amplify the storm track, the jet stream over the eastern Pacific and cause that jet stream to sag further south off of the coast of southern California, bringing in those Pacific storms during the wintertime during our Mediterranean winter when we get the intense rainfall here in southern California during those months, those storms will be stronger, potentially strong enough to cause flooding, rain, damaging surf, and high wind that's the long range outlook. Will that occur for sure? We're not certain on that. There have been four very strong or super l Ninos since the late eighteen hundreds. Three of the four i've created well above average rainfall in addition to the high winds and the damaging surf, like the one in nineteen eighty two and eighty three, as I first watched as a freshman in high school. More recently in nineteen ninety seven and nineteen ninety eight, that is when thirty one inch of brain fell in downtown Los Angeles during that winter. Average by comparison over a thirty year period is just fourteen and a quarter inches, so we doubled that plus. However, here's the caveat not all El Ninos are alike, and not all produce the rain and the above average precipitation and wins. In fact, in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen, another and the most recent super al Nino, we have less than ten inches of rain here in La It was El Busto. When it came to our outlook in our forecast bottom line, start being prepared for an active winner. If you have that leaky roof, get it fixed, get ready because it could be quite active in terms of storms here in southern California.
00:38:00
Speaker 1: I'm starting to wonder if if now was the worst time possible to get STARLINGK satellite internet, although it's supposed to work well in bad weather.
00:38:11
Speaker 2: That's right. Well, we'll see. This will be a good test if it does come to fruition. There is one hundred percent chance that El Neo conditions, even albeit weak to moderate, will prevail across the eastern Equatorial Pacific starting in August all day through January. And those conditions again, some of the models are indicating a sixty three percent chance of the strongest a very strong categorized to El Nino impacting the Pacific, enhance our jet stream and the strong systems that come off the Pacific into Southern California.
00:38:41
Speaker 1: Well, and of course, another consideration, especially around that time of year, is you know, something like this could impact all kinds of holiday travel, and just be aware that wherever you go vacation to, you might be not able to fly back to Southern California for a couple of days if the rain starts getting all crazy.
00:38:59
Speaker 2: That's absolutely right. We could see active weather because al Nino, it's a global phenomenon. Remember the Pacific coachin When we gaze up on the from the shoreline of sain Manhattan Beach or Malibu, we're looking at the largest ocean on the planet, and oceans cover seventy percent of our planet. So whatever happens in the water has a profound impact on what happens in the air above the atmosphere, and we see these teleconnections, these movements and intensifications of high pressure and low pressure, which causes these anomalies, positive and negative anomalies, and not just here in southern California. While we for the most part do see heavy rain, higher than average precipitation tolls, snowfall in the Sierra Nevada, those strong winds, and perhaps even the weather that produces the thunderstorms and the tornado that we saw back in the winter of nineteen eighty two and eighty three that impacted down to La down Under in Australia. During strong alno episodes, they typically observed much dryer an average conditions, drought conditions, and wildfire type of weather that we experience here in southern California, where we have our prolonged.
00:40:08
Speaker 1: Droughts, Rickdickert. You can get them at rickdickertweather dot com and Rickdickart WX on x Rick Dickert, thank you so much for the warning and thanks so much for joining us.
00:40:20
Speaker 2: Thanks so much, Randy, Thank.
00:40:22
Speaker 1: Y'all so much for being a part of the show. It is such a blast putting this on for you every single day. And tell your friends we're here every single day from five to six. And if you're not available from five to six, download the podcast. It's The News Blitz with Randy Wang on KABC
Speaker 1: It is the news Blitz with Randy Wang on Talk radio seven ninety KABC. This is your daily rundown of everything you need to know that's going on in southern California as well as the Bay Area, Sacramento, San Diego, and the Central Valley. I do a lot of show prep every single morning, checking out what's going on throughout the entire state of California, and I put it up on my little blog every single day for you to check out. That's Randywangradio dot substack dot com, Randywangradio dot substack dot com. And of course you can send me an email you've got any questions, you've got any comments. I try to read and respond to everything. A few of them will get read on the air. Randywang Radio at gmail dot com. Well, just two days after it was pretty much officially declared that the mayor's race was going to be in November, Karen Bass versus Nitia Rahman. Karen Bask gets a humdinger of a headline in the news. They're a lot of pea people in the Pacific Palisades and Malibu that are very upset about their homes that have burned down, and so they are lawyering up, and they are suing the City of Los Angeles and the LEDWP, and the State of California for all the negligence that we saw throughout the City of Los Angeles, the LAEDWP, and the State of California. State of California concerning the state farks employees that may have actually impeded lafd's response. The LEDWP because there was no water in the fire hydrant, and the City of LA because the mayor was gallivanting in Ghana and no, it didn't even tell anybody where she was. One of the people that is suing all of these entities is Karen Bass's brother. Kenny Bass is suing Karen Bass, and I get to imagine those family dinners have gotten very awkward. Since Karen Bass and her inept government were complicit in letting the Palisades burn, that's got to be real awkward. Now, speaking of the Palisades, the trial has finally begun for Jonathan Renderkinesh Boy is that a name, the guy who is accused of starting the Lockman fire that eventually turned into the Palisades fire. He is being tried on three different charges, two of them related to the Palisades fire and one being related to the Lochman fire, And the prosecutors claim they have a lot of evidence that ties this guy to the Lochman fire, whether it's being on the scene, although his defense says that he just called because he saw the fire that was started by illegal fireworks, and there were illegal fireworks up there. There was plenty of reports of firework related fire calls on New Year's Eve. But the issue that we're going to have with this case is will a jury truly tie all of the responsibility of the destruction that we saw in the Palisades fire that destroyed seven thousand homes, took over a dozen lives. Can you truly tie all of that to this guy starting a small fire that was responded to that wasn't put out properly, whether it was due to pressure from the state parks people, whether it was due to incompetence from city leadership, what have you? You know, is he truly responsible for the failures at La city government where there was no water in the fire hydrants. That's the question to be asked. And what's interesting is if a jury convince render Kinesh on the Lochman fire, but not the Palisades fire charges. The entire thing might get thrown out because just the arson charge on the Lochman fire isn't necessarily a federal crime. Now final on the fires, the new book is making the waves. Jonathan Vigliotti of CBS News, he was on the scene for the initial dates of the Palisades. He was asking all kinds of uncomfortable questions of the mayor and the fire chief and the board of supervisors at all those press conferences. He has covered a book about how much of a disaster the Palisades Fire was. And one of the things that's in this book that Karen Bass loves to deny but she refused to sit down for an interview for this book, is that when Karen Bass went to Ghana, she did not tell anybody in her staff where she was going or how to reach her. Apparently she didn't tell the intra mayor, which would have been the city council president, Marquis Harris Dawson. Nobody seemed to know where she was, which led to all kinds of confusion when disaster struck because nobody exactly knew who was in charge. And it was a wonderful exchange by our friend Alex Michaelson over at CNN, because Alex brings up these allegations to Karen Bass, and Karen Bass is like, well, that's just not true, and Elex says, well, this is what's being alleged in the book, and she's like, well, I really wish this Jonathan Biglieida guy would have sat down with me, to which Elex says, he offered to interview you about this book several times and you said no, not a great look, Karen. Now, there is a lot of people on the internet, very very very upset at the results of the Los Angeles mayors race. I understand that you're upset. I understand that it is a very disappointing outcome. I'm not all in on all of the Okay, this was a complete fraudulent thing because we've seen this game played so many times. We know how ballot harvesting works, and we know it's not illegal. The fact that there is no organization, no way to do this on the other side, that's just an excuse. You could be doing your own ballot harvesting. Just if the registered Republicans who did not vote, which was over two hundred thousand of them, But I'm not here to talk about that. What I'm here to talk about is something that we do know that is going on, and that is homeless people in skid row being offered money or cigarettes to put their name not on a ballot, but on a petition. This is something that we've seen up and down the state of California. The first real big story with this was JJ Smith, our buddy, up in the Tenderloin in San Francisco, where he filmed with his medaglasses, Hey, I have those right here. He filmed homeless people standing in line waiting to get five dollars to not even fill out their name on a petition, to fill out a list of registered voters' names and sign their signature. And we've seen a lot of this lately. I'm surprised that in skid row they're doing it for just cigarettes. But ultimately, and I don't know how you feel about this, I think the entire concept of paid signature gathering needs to go. I am all for our system of direct democracy. I am all for the initiative process, the referendums, the ballots. I am all for voters having direct participation in certain things. I mean it's thanks to our direct democracy we have things like the recall, we have things like Prop thirteen. I am all for that, but I believe we are now a point where there are so many things that we are voting on that don't make any sense as to why the California voter has to weigh in on this. And I think part of the problem here is any special interest can get a certain amount of funding and pay people, whether they're doing it through legitimate means or illegitimate means, five, fifteen, twenty thirty dollars a signature to get something on the ballot. I think that's unethical, and we have seen it lead to all kinds of things. Notably, the first video that was caught in the tenderloin of this was actually a firm that was hired by the billionaire people and the tech people trying to put a competing ballot measure against the proposed wealth tax, and they're paying like twenty dollars a signature. So if you're getting paid twenty dollars a signature and you give five to the homeless person, you're still making fifteen dollars a signature. I think the entire process of all all the processes that we want to talk about that are ripe for fraud, This one we can definitely prove because we have seen it. The widespread fraud that's being talked about in the LA mayor's race, I'm not seeing that. Even the oh, well look how many homeless people are all register their address as this homeless shelter. Well, that's what the ballot harvesters have you do. They need to register a place where you will get your mail. It's unethical, but it's perfectly allowed. It's perfectly legal, and there's no reason the other side can't do it. And I personally believe the more people that are crowing out there about how the election was stolen from Spencer Pratt are simply depressing future turnout. And this is maybe why we have seen a good portion. I don't care what the turnout is on the NPP side, I don't care what the turnout is on the Democrat side. If you are a Republican and you want a Republican candidate, you should be on hundred percent focused on that Republican turnout. And the Republican turnout ended up being lower than the Democrat turnout. And yes, maybe that's because of ballot harvesting, then why aren't you doing your own ballot harvesting. It's completely allowed. The organization isn't there, And if you just start crowing about how rigged it all is, well, then you get to a point where people don't believe their vote matters and they do not vote. That's my opinion on it. Maybe you think there's something more sinister here. I happen to believe that the people that are in charge are not competent enough to carry out these kinds of conspiracies. I've seen the way that they operate. But when it comes to organizing and going to apartment buildings and getting low propensity voters that all have a ballot to cast a ballot, it's not something that I think is a good thing. But it's perfectly allowed, and there's no reason that you couldn't organize and do the exact same thing. One of the other things that changed in the week of election counting is it looked like measure er was not going to pass, and now it looks like the sales tax hike in La County to fund healthcare programs that were being cut by the federal government is going to pass. So get ready for a little bit higher sales tax in the County of LA which means certain cities like Palmdale in Lancaster, who already have all kinds of sales tax increases at the city level, are now going to be bumped up to the point where Palmdale in Lancaster will have the highest sales tax of any city in the entire country. The FBI has now rated the Garden Grove Aerospace Company GKN after the chemical crisis where fifty thousand people had to be evacuated because apparently a chemical tank was going to explode at any minute and for six days people were out of their homes. And yes, the federal government should be investigating. This was their criminal negligence here. And honestly, I don't know how you repair this damage. I don't know why, and maybe I don't know how old the plant is. But this is a huge population center. We should not have these kinds of dangerous chemicals anywhere near a population center. So it might be time for GKN to move to the vast, vast, vast vast nothingness that is out there. You know, when the Manhattan Project was started in World War Two, did they decide to build the bomb in a big population center. No, no, no, no no. It might be called the Manhattan Project, but yeah, they didn't build that thing in Manhattan. They built it out in Los Alamos, New Mexico. And you had to check in on Palace Avenue in Santa Fe and get whisked away to this secret facility out in the middle of nowhere. Maybe your employees will have to do a little more commuting, but there is a lot of vast empty space out there. There's no reason to have a dangerous chemical plant like this in the middle of a population center where fifty thousand people are driven out of their homes. Now, I am very conflicted on this next story because I am a big fan of cooking, and I'm a big fan of sharing my love of cooking. I love cooking for friends, I love cooking for the family. It is something that I get a lot of enjoyment out of. I like sharing my gift, and really my gift is, you know, being As my mother in law says, if you can read, you can cook, And I can read, alright, I do sometimes like to assume that I remember the recipe, and sometimes that doesn't go so well. So I am all for people wanting to share their gift. I'm also all for the entrepreneurial spirit. There are people that may have found a niche found something that they can bring to the very crowded, very risky market in selling food, in opening a restaurant, in eatery, what have you. And La County has decided to make that as easy as possible with the brand new home Kitchen Permit. So it's a home kitchen permit. It's called Mecho me Ehko, and you can get a permit with the county. They will send a health inspector from Barbara Ferrara's department. Dude, make sure your kitchen is clean, and you are allowed to turn your home into a micro restaurant where you can commercially charge for people coming to your house and eating dinner. And on one end, I kind of like that, especially if you're like a private chef and maybe you have a nice entertaining space, you can you know, turn your home like a very interesting destination. At the same time, it does make me feel for all the struggling restaurants that are out there because we make it harder and harder and harder for brick and mortar restaurants to deal with the regulations, they have to deal with the payroll taxes, they have to deal all these other things, and we keep adding to the competition that they have to face, whether it is all of the legal street vending, all of the illegal street vending, or now these ghost kitchens, and it just slices that pie so much thinner. And look, it is a big pie. Everyone has to eat two or three times a day, and only the most creative and the strongest will survive. I mean, nobody's coming to your house and paying you money for subpar food. And maybe this turns into if you become successful, you grow into a restaurant. But it seems that we have raised a lot, or have gotten rid of a lot of barriers to entry on the low or end scale. But when it comes to actually building a brick and mortar restaurant, it's only gotten more difficult, and we only make things more difficult to do. So, on one hand, I kind of like the idea, especially if you've got some niche and you want to have like total strangers in your house. I don't want that. But if that is something that you're into, maybe this program works for you. Maybe you grow it into a business. But it is. It is interesting. It's almost like the podcastification, if I can use a word that I just made up, of the food industry, where you know, a restaurant, you have to hire servers, you have to hire bartenders, cooks, janitors, managers, you have to have all of this overhead. Where somebody can now open up a micro kitchen inside their house and almost like an amakase. They're only seating what six eight people a night, but there's no overhead. Pretty much you're paying for the cost of the food and the chef's time and expertise. Now that only employs one, maybe two people, but you know you could make You could make a little They must you must have to charge quite a bit to make that worth your while. But it's just an It's an interesting idea, so we'll see how it plays out. I'm not totally for it or against it, but as much as I love cooking, I don't want to open my house to strangers to come to Cafe Wang. Also, Cafe Wang does not sound attractive at all. There's a lot more in Today's California Report. I encourage you to check it out at Randy Wang Radio dot substance. It's the News Blitz with Randy Wang on Talk Radio seven ninety KABC. It's the News Blitz with Randy Wang on KABC. Boy, do I have something exciting for you? Seven ninety KABC welcomes Allison Kraus and The Union Station featuring Jerry Douglass with special guests THEO Lawrence at the Pacific Amphitheater on August twenty ninth. Tickets are on sale now at pacamp dot com. Right now, caller number nine at one eighty eight seven ninety five two two two gets a pair of tickets to the show. All concert tickets are good for a one time admission to the OC Fair on Wednesday or Thursday. Tickets furnished by the Pacific Amphitheater. Good luck dialing. All right, we've got some big movies coming out this weekend. Let's see what we've got going on. I've heard a lot of talk about this, but I will admit I don't know anything about it. Disclosure Day is the first Steven Spielberg movie about extraterrestrials and a very very very very long time, and that could be very exciting. It's currently got an eighty two on the Rotten Tomatoes. If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you proved it to you, would that frighten you? This sounds like the opening of the X Files This summer. The truth belongs to seven billion people. We are coming close to Disclosure Day. Not to be confused with Disclosure, which is a Michael Crichton novel that was adapted to a movie about sexual harassment. This is starring Emily Blunt and Colin Firth. I hate Uncle Jamie the Furious. A father fights fiercely against ruthless kidnappers to save his adducted daughter. And know this is not a continuation of the Fast and Furious franchise as far as I can, and finally stop that train to train Stewardess bdffs. Are we allowed to use that term? Switch from a dull railway to the luxurious Glamazonian Express during a massive storm. They must work with snooty first Class Cruise and President Gagwell to prevent disaster in La. This stars Route Paul Paul Sheer and Sarah Michelle Geller and no one has an eighty nine on the Rotten Tomatoes.
00:20:32
Speaker 2: All right?
00:20:33
Speaker 1: Interesting as far as right now Stop. That train is better rated by the reviewers on the Tomatoes than Disclosure Day, but not like any of that matter. Scary movie rated at twenty three percent and that movie made fifty million dollars last week. Hey, we get a half hour to go here, so stay with us. It's the News Blitz with Randy Wang on Talk Radio seven ninety KABC. It is the News blo with Randy Wang on Talk radio seven ninety KABC. We are your daily rundown of everything you need to know going on in southern California as well as the Bay Area, Sacramento, San Diego, and the Central Valley. You can check out all of my show prep I did today at Randywangradio dot substack dot com and send me an email whether you have a question, you have a comment. I do read some of them on the air at Randywang Radio at gmail dot com. There's a little bit of a fight going on in one of my favorite places in the entire state of California, and that is Santa Barbara Wine Country. I have been visiting Santa Barbara Wine Country with my wife since we first got together. Over gosh, it's been thirteen years ago. And what's going on. Here is a lot of industries, especially in California, the wine industry is having a tough time, and one of the ideas to help promote the wine industry is to create these things called business improvement districts, where the county creates a board funded by a assessment fee, a one percent tax on all bottles that are sold in the region, and they use that money to market the region. But what happens if you're in the region and you don't agree with how that board is spending the money. What if you don't agree with being on that board whatsoever. Well, this is the legal fight that is now taking place in Santa Barbara County as Flying Goat Sellers is pushing back against the Business Improvement District created by the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors because they don't agree with how the money is being spent or that they should be forced to be doing this. To talk to us about this, we have I'm very excited about this. The proprietor and chief philosopher of Flying Goat Sellers right there in the Lompoke wine ghetto in Santa Barbara County, Kate Griffith, Welcome to the News blitz.
00:23:13
Speaker 3: Hi, Randy, thank you for your interest in our story.
00:23:16
Speaker 1: Well, Kate, let me first say I'm a big fan of Flying Goat. I've been a Goat Bubbles drinker for a very long time. But did I get a decent recap of the story? Tell us what's going on here?
00:23:29
Speaker 3: I think you did.
00:23:31
Speaker 2: Well.
00:23:32
Speaker 3: Let's see, so last year, it was just last year that Santa Barbie County created this wine did and actually they're imposing this assessment on all sales that we have from within the state of California. So that's not just the bottles of wine, but it's also any food or artwork or twag that we sell or events that we sell through our tasting room. And you know, it's really the Prince Simpull of the matter that has us so upset because we built flying sellers the old fashioned way, you know, one moodel, one customer, one relationship at a time, and in a market defined by differentiation, independence is a business model that allows us to stand apart. Now our uniqueness is under threat from a county mandate that forces us to participate in a story written by someone else. So and it's you know, the first it's based on the First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment violations of these basic rights that we feel that we have as citizens of the United States.
00:24:44
Speaker 1: Well, and one of the things that you're arguing for is that if you agree with this assessment, this b id the Business Improvement District, it should be an opt in. You shouldn't be forced into this thing. And then if you don't want to participate eight, then you shouldn't have to participate. But there, right now, the county is imposing this tax on you, whether you agree with what the Business Improvement District is doing or not.
00:25:12
Speaker 3: Yes, that is exactly the problem. And we keep you know, we're working. Fortunately, the Goldwater Institute is helping us because Panting Goat Sellers is a small mom and pop as most wineries are in Santa Barbara County, and the county and the Vennor's Association didn't care, but we had to say or frankly, they didn't give a whit about us. The Goldwater Institute is a force to be reckoned with. And now they've they're championing our cause in this lawsuit. And you know, fortunately we've got somebody bigger to behind us in this David Versus Goliath kind of lawsuit where we feel as though we've just not been listened to and our first Amendment, an fifth amendment rights are extremely important to.
00:26:07
Speaker 1: Us, as you know, as being part of this. Because they've imposed this on you, do you get any say as to how any of this money is spent or do you even get to find out how this money is spent? Because one percent of all of your sales across all the wineries in the county, that's a lot of money.
00:26:26
Speaker 3: You know, we really don't have a say. And the irony of the whole thing is is forty five to fifty wineries in the county are not paying the assessment because they're silently protesting. And another fact that the board of the Vintnor's Board has revealed in their minute is that the city of Lompoc, which is the third largest jurisdiction in the county, the city of Lompok is generating more wine revenue than the city of Santa Barbara or the city of Santa Maria. Now, of course it's the Santa Barbara County generates the largest amount of wine revenue, but the city of Lompok is the second most important, and we have no voice there. The city of Lompoc is is basically looked down upon by the Vennors and by many of the people in the county. You know, we don't have enough. Uh we're not tony enough, I guess you might say. And that's where you know, the whole Lampok Wine Ghetto was was coined with with great fondness and was always a popular destination for many people in the know about fine wines, but they've never represented the city of Lompoc, the Lampok Wine gotta any any of you know, our area, our specific jurisdiction with those marketing resources well.
00:27:54
Speaker 1: And and as somebody that's a big fan of the region, I think that's such a lost opportunity because you know, as long as I have been going up there, the Lompoc area, the Lompoke Wine Ghetto is as important to the region as Santa Rosa Road and Fox and Canyon and Los Alevos. It is one of those major destinations that you hit it every single time. And maybe Santa Barbara County and the b I D think that there's something different about them, But to your avid Pinot noir fan what have you, it doesn't matter how fancy the tasting room looks or that they spent ten million dollars on it is. How good is the wine, and how friendly are the people and all the places we've ever been to in the ghetto, people are very friendly and the pinot is excellent.
00:28:38
Speaker 3: Thank you. Not to mention the sparkling line.
00:28:40
Speaker 1: Right oh yeah, love the go yeah.
00:28:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you. There. We really were really proud of the wines and Lompoke and not just not just flying goat. You know, we feel like we're in great company. But for whatever reasons, the big the big players in the county just have never really appreciated our contribution. And that's the that's their prerogative. But then don't force us to be a part of their marketing message because it doesn't benefit us well.
00:29:13
Speaker 1: And it's such a varied and large region, you know, I can think of plenty of bids that work very well, like the Union Square Alliance in San Francisco making sure that the streets are clean and people feel safe, and that that works out really well. But it is such a vast, large area with different interest and different concerns and a little bit of competition there. So if they're not treating every single part of the organization fairly. I can totally understand why you shouldn't. You shouldn't be forced to opt into this because you're now paying money to be promoting a region that is not where you're selling your wine.
00:29:50
Speaker 3: You know exactly. And the better path is the simpler one. If the Vennor's Association provides value, wineries will join it voluntarily. If it's marketing efforts are effective, participation will follow. That is the logic of both markets and civil society. Legitimacy is earned through performance, not secure through force.
00:30:14
Speaker 2: So that's, you know, that's.
00:30:17
Speaker 3: What they need to understand. But I don't know. I don't know what it's going to take. We'll see how this lawsuit plays out. There's still the Vennor's Association and the county are still ignoring us in the Goldwater Institute.
00:30:34
Speaker 1: Well, if anything's going to force them to respond, it will be a lawsuit, and it'll be very interesting to see how this plays out. We'll be following it, of course, as Flying Goat Sellers is suing the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors for forcing them into a business improvement district that they do not believe in. We'll be following the story and of course, I'm just going to give it a plug because I'm a big fan. If you're ever out in Santa Barbara County, if you're out in Poke, you gotta check out Flying Goat Sellers. The Block, The Noir Bugoat Bubble's great. Also, the Pino noirs have always been so solid. And Kate, you do such a great job over there.
00:31:12
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Randy. We really appreciate your interest.
00:31:16
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Kate Griffith from Flying Goat Sellers. Everybody, It's the News Blitz with Randy Wang on Talk Radio seven ninety KABC. It's the News Blitz with Randy Wang on KABC. Our next guest is a familiar voice. He's a certified broadcast meteorologist who's been covering southern California weather from the slopes to the shore over thirty two years. You can go to his website, Rickdickartweather dot com and get him on X at Rickdickert WX. Rick Dickert, Welcome to the News Blitz.
00:31:50
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me, Randy. We're here to talk about something we hear quite often in Southern California. El Nino. It's back.
00:31:59
Speaker 1: So what does El Nino coming back? Because The only memory that I have of a very significant El Nino was I was in junior high school. It rained a hell of a lot, and that's when I learned how to square dance.
00:32:13
Speaker 2: Wow, okay, Well, my memory goes back to high school here in southern California at Redondo Union. In high school, my freshman year, the El Nino of nineteen eighty two and nineteen eighty three, torrential rains damaging High serp. We even had a tornado ripped through the convention Center in downtown Los Angeles. Now, well that happened again this coming winter. There's a chance. An al Nino advisory was just issued hours ago by the Climate Prediction Center, meaning that l Medio conditions are being observed across a wide swath of the Equatorial Pacific Ocean. The sea surface temperature there, that's what we watch. We watched the anomalies, positive anomalies meaning warmer than average water, or negative anomalies meaning cooler than average waters. When it's warmer than average, it's an El Nino pattern. When it's cooler than average, it's the opposite a La Nia. Well, water temperatures, the sea surface temperatures out there are now at zero point seven degrees celsius above the long term average. You need to reach the threatol zero point five degrees centigrade or a halfy degree celsius to reach that L Nino threshold. So we've done that and exceeded that. And the bottom line is is that our long range forecast models indicate that this current L NEO that just formed will rapidly intensify, possibly into a very strong L Nino, meaning sea surface temperatures down there at or above two degrees celsius.
00:33:44
Speaker 1: Well, and you know, anecdotally, I think that there's very strong evidence about what you're saying when it comes to that the ocean temperatures in the Pacific are rising, especially around southern California. I was just talking with my uncle who is a fisherman, and he says all of the big tuna fishing has moved up from Mexico to southern California because the water got so warm here that the tuna of all moved to la.
00:34:09
Speaker 2: You're absolutely right, Randy. The marine environment that is influenced by that. In fact, going back to the sixteen hundreds, it was the fishermen off of Peru which first documented El Nino that area typically has very cold water, nutrient rich water because of a phenomenon called upwelling. Upwelling occurs when deep sea water rises to the surface. It brings up phytoplankton, which causes an algae bloom and that feeds or provides food for anchovies. So fishermen out there would have a field down the anchovies. It was back in the sixteen hundreds when fishermen first documented that the water was much warmer than average. Warming water choked dot that upwelling and did away with all the anchovies. And it arrived right around Christmas time, hence the name christ Child Little Boy. That's how it was dubbed El Nino centuries ago.
00:35:05
Speaker 1: Wow, that is fascinating. I love that story. So what are people listening right now need to be concerned about. I mean, obviously we're just getting into summer right now, and this is something that really more affects us in the winter. But what should people be prepared for as we go through the rest of this year into early next year.
00:35:24
Speaker 2: Starting with this summer, we're already starting to feel and you mentioned it Randy warmer than a sea service temperatures even off the coast of southern California, which does have an impact on marine life. It also impacts our marine layer, the on short flow or natural ac The warmer the ocean temperatures get, typically that ends that marine influence or it's not as strong. You don't see the prevailing low clouds and fog as you would when water temperatures are cooler. As that El Nino evolves, and again, forecast models, government models from Noah are indicating that that warming rapidly intensify, and it's very likely there's a sixty three percent chance at least that a very strong l Nino or what we call the media super l Nino will evolve late in the autumn or early in the winter months. Now that as that occurs, that warm ocean is going to feed the atmosphere with additional energy heat and amplify the storm track, the jet stream over the eastern Pacific and cause that jet stream to sag further south off of the coast of southern California, bringing in those Pacific storms during the wintertime during our Mediterranean winter when we get the intense rainfall here in southern California during those months, those storms will be stronger, potentially strong enough to cause flooding, rain, damaging surf, and high wind that's the long range outlook. Will that occur for sure? We're not certain on that. There have been four very strong or super l Ninos since the late eighteen hundreds. Three of the four i've created well above average rainfall in addition to the high winds and the damaging surf, like the one in nineteen eighty two and eighty three, as I first watched as a freshman in high school. More recently in nineteen ninety seven and nineteen ninety eight, that is when thirty one inch of brain fell in downtown Los Angeles during that winter. Average by comparison over a thirty year period is just fourteen and a quarter inches, so we doubled that plus. However, here's the caveat not all El Ninos are alike, and not all produce the rain and the above average precipitation and wins. In fact, in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen, another and the most recent super al Nino, we have less than ten inches of rain here in La It was El Busto. When it came to our outlook in our forecast bottom line, start being prepared for an active winner. If you have that leaky roof, get it fixed, get ready because it could be quite active in terms of storms here in southern California.
00:38:00
Speaker 1: I'm starting to wonder if if now was the worst time possible to get STARLINGK satellite internet, although it's supposed to work well in bad weather.
00:38:11
Speaker 2: That's right. Well, we'll see. This will be a good test if it does come to fruition. There is one hundred percent chance that El Neo conditions, even albeit weak to moderate, will prevail across the eastern Equatorial Pacific starting in August all day through January. And those conditions again, some of the models are indicating a sixty three percent chance of the strongest a very strong categorized to El Nino impacting the Pacific, enhance our jet stream and the strong systems that come off the Pacific into Southern California.
00:38:41
Speaker 1: Well, and of course, another consideration, especially around that time of year, is you know, something like this could impact all kinds of holiday travel, and just be aware that wherever you go vacation to, you might be not able to fly back to Southern California for a couple of days if the rain starts getting all crazy.
00:38:59
Speaker 2: That's absolutely right. We could see active weather because al Nino, it's a global phenomenon. Remember the Pacific coachin When we gaze up on the from the shoreline of sain Manhattan Beach or Malibu, we're looking at the largest ocean on the planet, and oceans cover seventy percent of our planet. So whatever happens in the water has a profound impact on what happens in the air above the atmosphere, and we see these teleconnections, these movements and intensifications of high pressure and low pressure, which causes these anomalies, positive and negative anomalies, and not just here in southern California. While we for the most part do see heavy rain, higher than average precipitation tolls, snowfall in the Sierra Nevada, those strong winds, and perhaps even the weather that produces the thunderstorms and the tornado that we saw back in the winter of nineteen eighty two and eighty three that impacted down to La down Under in Australia. During strong alno episodes, they typically observed much dryer an average conditions, drought conditions, and wildfire type of weather that we experience here in southern California, where we have our prolonged.
00:40:08
Speaker 1: Droughts, Rickdickert. You can get them at rickdickertweather dot com and Rickdickart WX on x Rick Dickert, thank you so much for the warning and thanks so much for joining us.
00:40:20
Speaker 2: Thanks so much, Randy, Thank.
00:40:22
Speaker 1: Y'all so much for being a part of the show. It is such a blast putting this on for you every single day. And tell your friends we're here every single day from five to six. And if you're not available from five to six, download the podcast. It's The News Blitz with Randy Wang on KABC
