Plus: RIP to a National Park’s legend and, not-so-shocking, Elon Musk’s DODGE was basically a massive flop.
Hopefully, Santa wasn’t wearing conductive metal jewelry and had his sleigh grounded early Thursday before high winds and lightning strikes filled the skies above San Francisco.
San Francisco is no stranger to wet December weather. Historically, the last month of the calendar year is typically the rainiest spat; last year, as well as the year before that, saw record-breaking levels of precipitation that caused flash flooding; lightning strikes, too, have lit up the region in rare form the past few winters.
While it was a milder winter, San Francisco didn’t escape the usual rain spells and high winds during the Christmas Holiday. The day leading up to Christmas saw the beginnings of what would become a days-long inundation of wet weather. Just about four inches of rain — the historical average for the entire month of December — fell in SF between December 24th and 25th, making it one of the wettest holidays on record; the following three days saw rain showers add about another inch to that collective total.
But what was perhaps more shocking were the wind speeds recorded across San Francisco and the Peninsula. SF, itself, saw sustained wind speeds of around 25mph, with recorded gusts in the upper 30s. San Mateo County and Marin County clocked wind speeds over 90mph — the same measurements commonly recorded in category one hurricanes. And to top it all off, lightning strikes lit up the skies around the region in a rare atmospheric Christmas light show; thunderstorms are regionally infrequent, especially in San Francisco, which has among the fewest thunderstorm warnings issued by the National Weather Service of any American Metro, with less than 40 recorded over the past twenty years.
Bad weather aside, what else happened over the Christmas holiday week? Let’s take a look.
- Instacart’s truly cruel “dynamic” pricing propped up by AI is (thankfully) no more. After complaints from users citing how grocery items surged on average 23% during “peak buying times,” the SF-based delivery service announced it has dropped the pricing model amid widespread criticism; Eversight, the AI pricing optimization software company enlisted by Instacart, is under ongoing scrutiny and could see itself slapped with a hefty FTC fine in the near future for its misleading, maninupalite sales strategies. More info.
- America’s oldest National Park ranger has died at 104. Betty Reid Soskin has lived many lives — but maybe her most famous and iconic ones were lived during her time serving as a National Parks ranger between her 85th and 100th birthdays; Soskin, who was born in Richmond, retired at 100 years old and died on Sunday, December 21st, at 104 years old. More info.
- Basically, Musk’s DODGE did nothing. In a shock to probably no one reading this, an analysis conducted by the New York Times found Musk’s short-lived, government-cost-slashing department did, in fact, not cut unnecessary federal spending … and, to the contrary, likely increased internal spending and added to deficits; the NYT found the majority of its savings claims were grossly hyperbolized or were outright lies. More info.
Feature Image: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
