Obscure Bay Area: The fairy-tale village hidden off a busy Berkeley street
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Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE
The story of how a storybook European village, complete with sloping stairways and pretty stone streets, landed in the middle of Berkeley starts with an inferno.
On Sept. 17, 1923, a wildfire started in the Berkeley hills. Gusty, dry winds pushed the flames down into the city. It roared by Cal s campus, through Northside and down all the way to Shattuck Avenue. By the time it was finally extinguished, almost 600 homes were gone. North Berkeley was little more than charred rubble.
From devastation came opportunity, particularly for one young man named Jack Thornburg. Then just 21, he began to plan out a new neighborhood filled with fairy-tale charm and secret corners.
Even after storm, San Francisco faces its third driest period since 1849
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FILE PHOTO: People walk along Pier 14 with the Bay Bridge in the background in San Francisco during a steady rainfall on Nov. 17, 2020.Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE
An atmospheric river that swept California last week soaked the valleys with much-needed rain and piled up impressive amounts of snow in the mountains, but the Sierra Nevada continues to lag behind the average, and the precipitation was not enough to make up for the San Francisco Bay Area s deficit from last year s dry season and this year s slow start.
The Sierra snowpack is one of California s most important water sources, with its spring and summer runoff feeding reservoirs, watering crops, and filling water glasses. The depth and breadth of it in winter are gauges of the state s future water supply.
What you need to know about the atmospheric river poised to slam Bay Area
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A woman wearing a mask walks with an umbrella in the Richmond District of San Francisco, California during a steady rainfall. The first significant rainstorm of the season hit the San Francisco Bay Area on Nov. 17, 2020.Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE
The biggest storm of the rainy season so far is forecast to wallop the San Francisco Bay Area Tuesday through Thursday, delivering a heavy dose of soaking rain and high winds that could wreak havoc throughout the region, flooding roadways, triggering debris flows in wildfire burn scars and knocking out power.
Ocean Beach Cafe, SF s newest beachside restaurant, is making non-drinking cool
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Joshua James discusses some of the non-alcoholic spirits at his Ocean Beach Cafe near Ocean Beach in San Francisco, California on Jan. 25, 2021.Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE
After 20 years of bartending, Joshua James decided it was time to take a year off drinking.
“I was deep in the craft cocktail world, beer brewing, wine and happy hours, and just trying to drink every beer in Asheville, North Carolina,” said James, who lived there most recently before moving to San Francisco. “And I was like, I’m taking a break.”
He checked into Friendship House, a substance abuse recovery program for Native Americans in San Francisco (James is Tolowa). Two weeks in, COVID-19 hit but he knew he was exactly where he needed to be. By the end of the program, he’d discovered a newfound clarity.
First atmospheric river of the season forecast to soak San Francisco Bay Area
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People shield themselves from a rainfall in Chinatown in Oakland, California on Jan. 4, 2021. A cold front passing through the San Francisco Bay Area included high winds and brief periods of intense rainfall.Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE
The biggest storm of the season so far is expected to soak the San Francisco Bay Area Tuesday into Thursday, with rainfall amounts in urban areas ranging from two to four inches.
Meteorologists are calling the system an atmospheric river, a wet storm pulling a long plume of water vapor in the atmosphere 250 to 375 miles wide on average and often referred to as a river in the sky. On the West Coast, atmospheric rivers most often originate in the South Pacific, and as they travel from the tropics across the ocean, they collect incredible amounts of moisture.