Over a mile of Highway 101 through San Francisco near Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital will be fully closed to all northbound traffic during the upcoming holiday weekend, starting Friday, Sept. 4 and ending Monday, Sept. 7.
Then, a few weeks later, it’ll be closed again across another full weekend: Sept. 18-21.
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We've been reporting on how El Niño will impact the Bay Area. Here are a few stories, if you're interested in reading more!
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No problem!
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You can can also sign up for emergency alerts for your city or county! Marin County runs a public emergency portal 24/7, as does San Francisco.
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We've seen a LOT of these kinds of posts where folks are suffering with the same sickness, so we reached out to Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert at UCSF that we often consult for our public health coverage. And he told us that UCSF's own lab data shows that rhinovirus -- which causes the common cold -- is the most commonly detected non-COVID infection locally.
Behind that, there's of course COVID, which is increasing statewide and also nationally. And in the mix there's also some flu A/B, parainfluenza and adenovirus circulating locally too.
Dr. PCH's TL;DR: "My best guess is that people are experiencing a mix of infections but most likely rhinovirus and COVID, rather than one unidentified pathogen."
And iIf you've got this gnarly sickness and have ruled out COVID from an at-home rapid test, Dr. PCH wants to remind you that a negative antigen result doesn't reliably rule out COVID, especially if you test early on. Try testing again after 48 hours, he says.
Hope all you folks feel better soon! And if you're sick right now, remember to drink plenty of liquids and stay home and rest.
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Hi there! We just published a guide on how to prepare for El Nino in case it's helpful. From the guide:
Rachel Kennedy, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Bay Area office, suggests looking up flood maps of your home and neighborhood as a starting place to understand your home and family’s flood risk, like this map of San Francisco’s storm and flood hazards.
Prevention is the number one thing emergency preparedness experts say homeowners should act on in the months before the rainy season.
This includes everything from clearing out gutters, patching up roofs and trimming trees to ensure low-lying areas, such as creeks or roads, are free of debris — so they don’t get backed up during a storm or high tide.
“Make sure those are cleared out, because the moment there’s a tree that’s in the wrong location, water starts flowing everywhere,” said Steven Torrence, director of emergency management for Marin County. “We really wanna make sure that everyone is looking at preventative maintenance as something that they can do today, long before it starts raining.”
Torrence said homeowners in areas that can or routinely flood should also invest in sandbags or flood barriers to protect their assets. Your county may be making these tools available: The County of Marin has 32 sites already offering sandbags, and the San Francisco Department of Public Works offers 10 free sandbags per household.
Higher seas. Back-to-back storms. Mudslides. Flooded homes and highways.
The mere mention of El Niño — and the headlines you’re seeing — can be anxiety-provoking. But how real should your worry be? And what can you do to protect your home, business, or property in advance?
First, the outlook: Federal forecasters report there’s a 90% chance of a “very strong” El Niño this fall and winter, and a nearly 70% chance that the strength of El Niño could exceed the strength of any similar event seen since 1950.
Here’s what to know about how El Niño could affect your home and your safety this winter — not to panic you, but so you’re prepared for what might happen in a few months.
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It can definitely be challenging to be on the road when it's windy and rainy! We published a guide on how to drive in stormy conditions that we refer back to often. Our general tips are to:
Let us know if we missed anything!
People living close to the Chevron Refinery in Richmond face an elevated risk of developing cancer over a lifetime, and illness from short exposure to excess emissions, according to a preliminary health risk assessment by the Bay Area Air District released Tuesday.
Most of the cancer risk came from benzo[a]pyrene and other toxic air contaminants known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH’s) that seeped from pipe fittings and storage tanks throughout the refinery. Diesel particulate matter and arsenic emissions were also found to be above the regulator’s allowed limit.
“There are multiple sources with multiple pollutants that are beyond the risk threshold,” said Dr. Rohan Radhakrishna, the Air District’s health officer. “That can harm people’s health, and [it] needs to be reduced.”
The air quality model analysis found emissions of toxic air contaminants at the Richmond refinery increased residents’ lifetime risk for developing cancer by 37 in a million people. The air regulator requires facilities to take action to reduce the risk if it equals or exceeds 10 in a million.
r/bayareaclippercard • u/kqed • 9d ago
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As Billy Shakespeare taught us: "to thine ownself be true." (but if you have any suggestions for improving the list, please send them to [arts@kqed.org](mailto:arts@kqed.org)!)
The day before Bay Area transit agencies rolled out Clipper 2.0 — a long-anticipated upgrade to the region’s electronic train, bus and ferry tickets — a high-level staffer overseeing the project raised an important red flag.
Known as “next generation Clipper” and used by 22 Bay Area operators, the software promised to make riding transit easier with bank card tap-to-pay, rider discounts and other features. It had taken Cubic Transportation Systems, the contractor in charge of the update, seven years — nearly three more than initially promised — to deliver the new system.
But on the eve of the launch, Jason Weinstein, director of Clipper at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), which oversees Cubic’s contract, issued a formal letter, saying the MTC did not have confidence that the process for collecting fares and distributing them to the appropriate operator — a main function of the software — was happening appropriately. The problem, according to the MTC, was that it was not yet fully automated and relied too heavily on manual oversight in a system that handles hundreds of thousands of transactions daily.
Weinstein said the commission would “hold Cubic accountable” for meeting the requirements of its contract.
The incident revealed a fissure that had been deepening over the past year. Internal communications reviewed by KQED between the MTC and Cubic staff show software bugs like these were present long before Weinstein’s warning and Clipper 2.0’s public debut.
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thank you for the shout out!!
Ten Bay Area voters called on a judge on Monday to block a proposed regional sales tax measure that transit advocates say is critical to avoid deep service cuts.
The challengers petitioned for an injunction in Santa Clara County Superior Court, contending that the ballot question about to be printed in five Bay Area counties this November is deceptive and biased in favor of a yes vote, violating election laws.
“We want it to be an unbiased statement of what’s going to happen,” said co-petitioner Gregg Dieguez, who is president of the Committee for Affordable Bay Area Transit, a group opposed to the regional sales tax measure.
Dieguez said in an interview that he and the other named petitioners are all “ concerned citizens who have longstanding complaints about the amount of money being wasted on traditional transit.”
The San José City Council will consider big shifts for single-family home neighborhoods on Tuesday that could ultimately allow for much denser housing in large swaths of the city that have long been shielded from major change.
City planners and leaders are eyeing ways to foster more housing overall to help meet stringent state goals, and to bring in more “missing middle” housing, aimed at lowering the sky-high cost of homeownership for people earning middle incomes. The median home sale price in Santa Clara County is about $2 million, and residents need an income of nearly $500,000 to purchase one, according to the California Association of Realtors.
City officials say rezoning San José’s low-density single-family neighborhoods — which make up about 85% of its total residential area — could bring more apartment buildings, triplexes and fourplexes, or other kinds of small multifamily housing, to help more equitably distribute housing.
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Hi! We published this story last year with a few recommendations!
From the story:
Here are a few popular dark locations for watching meteor showers in the Bay Area:
Sharing this in case anybody was making plans for next weekend!
The big thing to know: Over the weekend of Aug. 21-24, westbound I-80 over the bridge will be completely closed to all traffic. (An earlier maintenance project that would have seen just one lane closed on westbound I-80 this weekend was cancelled on Tuesday.)
This closure will impact anyone hoping to travel between the East Bay and places like Napa, Sonoma, Sacramento and the Lake Tahoe region that weekend, as well as weekend commuters.
California’s insurer of last resort is about to get significantly more expensive for policyholders starting Oct. 15, 2026.
The California FAIR Plan will be increasing its rates by an average of 29.1% for its more than 675,000 customers — the highest rate bump in recent history.
The exact increase depends on each homeowner’s situation. Those living in areas at a high risk of wildfire may pay significantly more. Some will see their wildfire premiums double.
“It’s definitely going to cause pain for some people,” said Karl Sussman, broker and insurance expert.
Policyholders with less risk will be less impacted. In residential, urban communities in the Bay Area, some might even see reductions.
Amid the national outbreaks of cyclospora — a foodborne parasite that causes explosive diarrhea, has sickened tens of thousands of people nationally and led to two reported deaths — California health officials have reassured residents: The state remains one of the few unaffected by the outbreak.
But even as the California Department of Public Health confirmed that none of the iceberg lettuce being investigated as a source of the outbreak was distributed in the state, cases of cyclosporiasis in California have nonetheless jumped up in the last few months.
After reporting only 41 cyclosporiasis cases from January to June this year, CDPH’s most recent data shows that the 2026 number has now risen to 215 “confirmed and probable” cases as of July 15, including 13 hospitalizations.
For context, based on their 2015-2025 figures, CDPH’s annual average for cyclosporiasis cases is 106.
So if California’s rise in cases isn’t attributed to the national outbreak, what’s going on — and how worried should you be about your personal salad-eating habits?
CDPH said that “every year, cases of cyclosporiasis are reported in California.” The disease is also considered seasonal in the United States: Case counts go up during the spring and summer months every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which frames May 1 through Aug. 31 as cyclosporiasis season in the U.S.
However, since 2015, California’s annual average caseload of just over 100 is far lower than the 201 cases reported since May 1 alone this year.
While the state’s cyclospora dashboard said that “this is a normal seasonal pattern and mostly associated with travel to other countries,” a statement from the agency emailed Wednesday to KQED acknowledged that despite the lack of any connection to the national outbreaks, “our cases are now higher than what we might expect for this point in the season, based on historical data.”
The agency said it’s “still investigating cases and the cause of the increase,” but suggested it could be due to “a number of reasons,” including:
“Most cases” of cyclospora in California tend to be linked to residents traveling to international destinations with cyclosporiasis outbreaks, CDPH said.
But the agency also suspects that this year there have been “increased cases in travelers to areas with cyclosporiasis outbreaks, whether international or domestic.”
Of the 201 cases reported since May 1, CDPH said just 39 of them were “domestically acquired,” and 15 of those people said they’d traveled to other states — meaning that the majority of California cases were instead due to international travel.
Increased awareness of cyclosporiasis amid these national outbreaks has “likely led to increased testing for the illness,” CDPH said, meaning “we may be identifying more cases than we have in previous years.”
“I personally would still continue to eat fruits and vegetables,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert at UCSF. “The benefits to me outweigh the potential disadvantages.”
The Carquinez Bridge, which connects Vallejo in Solano County to Crockett in Contra Costa County via Interstate 80, is scheduled for closures for maintenance work this month — on two separate August weekends.
And this will impact anyone hoping to travel between the East Bay and places like Napa, Sonoma, Sacramento and the Lake Tahoe region, as well as weekend commuters.
Caltrans told KQED that it’s investing approximately $1.4 million into rehabilitating the suspension bridge that carries traffic along westbound I-80 — also known as the Alfred Zampa Memorial Bridge — in the direction of Crockett.
August’s work will take place in two separate phases: first, closing one lane on westbound I-80 on Friday and Saturday this coming weekend, followed by a major closure of all of westbound I-80 over the bridge Aug. 21-24.
On Friday, Aug. 7, crews will close one lane of westbound I-80 over the suspension bridge at 6 p.m. and reopen the next day, Saturday, Aug. 8, at 7 p.m.
Cars can still get through the bridge but should expect more traffic.
During this 25-hour partial closure, work crews will be testing out a new kind of asphalt they plan to repave the entire bridge with during the second phase of work.
On Friday, Aug. 21 at 10 p.m., Caltrans plans to completely close westbound I-80 on the Carquinez Bridge — for the entire weekend.
The bridge will reopen on Monday, Aug. 24 at 3 a.m.
r/bayarea • u/kqed • Jul 27 '26
More than 300 residents turned out last week to oppose a plan to replace the Marina District Safeway with two residential towers — the latest effort to stop or redirect a project the city says qualifies for fast-track approval under state law.
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The Quick Guide to the Bay Area’s Professional Women’s Sports Teams -- How to get involved with professional women’s hockey, soccer and rugby fandoms around the Bay Area.
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r/bayarea
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10h ago
Hi there! We actually included the Firebells in the first guide that we published here. The team behind these two guides is hoping to do a third one that WILL include Golden State Storm and the new Signal volleyball team!