LATIMES.COM WSCE TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2019A
cisco, possibly in the 40s.
And with rain probably
persisting in Southern Cali-
fornia into Thanksgiving
evening, with a slight chance
of thunderstorms, the holi-
day week might lead to the
discovery of new roof leaks.
“Put your water buckets
next to your turkey,” Patzert
said.
But as you imagine a
rain-slicked ride to your holi-
day dinner or a soggy drum-
stick, there is something
positive to say about the
wet Thanksgiving forecast.
“This could put an end to the
fire season. This is large
enough, if it delivers,”
Patzert said.
Much of California has
been abnormally dry so far
this autumn, leaving vegeta-
tion tinder-dry and threat-
ening to keep fire danger
high until rains arrived.
Some of California’s most re-
cent destructive blazes have
hit during November and
December while rainfall has
been absent, such as the
Camp fire that ignited on
Nov. 8, 2018, destroying much
of the town of Paradise and
killing 86 people, and the
Thomas fire in Ventura and
Santa Barbara counties,
which began on Dec. 4, 2017,
burning more than 1,
structures and killing two.
Fire danger continued
Monday, with a fast-moving
brush fire threatening nu-
merous homes in Santa Bar-
bara. The Cave fire was be-
ing pushed down from Los
Padres National Forest
toward communities by
powerful winds. Highway 154
was closed, and officials
were dealing with spot fires
breaking out dangerously
close to homes. Firefighters
are hoping they can hold off
the blaze until the rains ar-
rive.
Until this storm, the fall
of 2019 has been among the
top five driest starts to the
water year across Northern
California, which began
Oct. 1, said Nina Oakley, re-
gional climatologist for the
Western Regional Climate
Center in Reno.
Sacramento has re-
ported no measurable pre-
cipitation between Oct. 1
and Sunday — a parched sit-
uation that has occurred in
only four other years since
records began being kept in
1877, Oakley said. San Fran-
cisco has seen only 0.03 inch-
es in the same period.
“It’s not unprecedented
to have fires in November or
even December in parts of
Southern California, but it
really is in far Northern Cali-
fornia,” said Daniel Swain, a
climate scientist with UCLA
and the National Center for
Atmospheric Research.
“This is already pretty much
the latest fire season I think
that anyone can remember
in the northern part of the
state.”
Los Angeles has seen just
42% of the average of 1.
inches expected by this
point in the water year.
Unfortunately, scientists
say drier autumns and later
starts to fall rains are a trend
in California’s future, which
is expected to worsen with
climate change.
How this rainy season
will fare for California is hard
to say. At this point, the
chances of a rainier-than-av-
erage or a drier-than-aver-
age winter are basically a
toss-up, Patzert said.
The winter weather will
begin hitting California on
Tuesday, as a weather phe-
nomenon known as a bomb
cyclone will develop off the
West Coast. A bomb cyclone
refers to a low-pressure sys-
tem that quickly strength-
ens, Swain said.
Strong winds are ex-
pected on the far northern
edge of California on Tues-
day, with gusts of 72 mph
forecast in Weed, 66 mph in
Crescent City and 53 mph in
Eureka. With waves break-
ing as high as 35 feet along
the coast, there’s a risk of ex-
tensive coastal erosion in
many areas. Hail is also a
risk through Wednesday.
The season’s first major
snow will make landfall in
the Sierra Nevada on Tues-
day afternoon, with most of
it falling Tuesday night and
Wednesday. Forecasters are
highly discouraging travel
into the northern and cen-
tral California mountains af-
ter Tuesday midday all the
way through Thanksgiving
afternoon.
“Thursday, it won’t be as
bad, but it will still be snowy
and not fun,” said Karleisa
Rogacheski, meteorologist
with the weather service’s
Sacramento office.
All roads to the Lake
Tahoe and Mammoth ski re-
sorts could be be difficult or
impossible to travel on be-
tween Tuesday and Thurs-
day, including Interstate 80
and U.S. Routes 50 and 395.
Central California was al-
ready dealing with difficult
weather conditions Monday
ahead of the storm, with
strong winds blowing over abig rig on Highway 58 in Kern
County.
Wind-blown dust storms
may have triggered a multi-
ple-vehicle accident on
Highway 41 in Fresno
County.
Snow is expected to snarl
traffic in the Southern Cali-
fornia mountains Wednes-
day.
Starting Wednesday
night and ending Friday, up
to 6 inches of snow could fall
along the Grapevine section
of Interstate 5. Alternative
routes on Highways 14 and
58 could also be hit with
snow.
In the Los Angeles area,
steady rain was expected to
start late Tuesday night into
Wednesday morning. Poten-
tial thunderstorms are pos-
sible Wednesday night into
Thursday. The coast and
valleys could get 1 inches to 2
inches of rain.
The weather may be
more severe for Orange and
San Diego counties and the
Inland Empire, where the
weather service has called
for a flash flood watch.
Rainfall could be up to 3
inches in areas east of San
Diego and east of Riverside
— stronger than L.A., be-
cause the low-pressure sys-
tem from the northwest will
be colliding with a small at-
mospheric river from the
southwest.
The big question for
many might be: Will it actu-
ally be raining when Thanks-
giving dinner is served?
That is hard to say. In the
L.A. region, at least, most of
the raindrops from this
storm are expected to fall
Wednesday and into Thurs-
day morning, but scattered
showers are still expected
through Thanksgiving night
and into Friday, said Keily
Delerme, meteorologist
with the weather service’s
Oxnard office.Lin reported from San
Francisco, Fry from Los
Angeles.Wet Thanksgiving could
bring fire season to an end
[Storm,from A1]
JOAN HAVENS,2, of Phelan walks through the first
snowfall of the season in Wrightwood, Calif. Up to 2
feet could accumulate in the resort community.Gina FerazziLos Angeles TimesNEW YORK — At a time
when anti-Semitic incidents
are on the rise worldwide,
schools should take steps to
teach empathy as an anti-
dote to racism and religious
hatred, several rabbis at-
tending an international
conference said.
The religious leaders
praised a pilot project in El
Paso that requires students
to pause each day to con-
sider others. Children are
given a small box shaped like
Noah’s ark. They collect
money in it daily and give it
to charities chosen by their
classes.
“If you want to change the
trajectory of the way things
are going, you have to nip
hatred in the bud,” Rabbi
Levi Greenberg said at the
International Conference of
Chabad-Lubavitch Emis-
saries, a branch of Hasidism.
The annual event ended
Monday.
“Every child is a potential
hater, but is also a potential
lover. You have to make sure
you cultivate that potential
love that they have within
them,” he said.
Greenberg, who lives in
El Paso, approached the El
Paso Community Founda-
tion in 2018 with an idea after
seeing a similar program ini-
tiated by colleagues in
South Africa.
The theory is that daily
giving connects the stu-
dents emotionally to others
outside their normal envi-
ronment. They become
more compassionate and
empathetic to other cultures
and circumstances, Green-
berg said.
“Lectures are important
but action is transforma-
tive,” and the repetition of
the daily giving brings subtle
changes. “It’s like muscle
memory,” he said.
So far, the boxes have
gone to 1,500 students of all
ages, but plans are to reach
“tens of thousands more,”
Greenberg said.
The program started in
two schools and took on add-
ed poignancy in August after
a gunman walked into a Wal-
mart in El Paso, killing 22
people. Police say the assail-
ant targeted Mexicans.
Another school was add-
ed to the pilot when fall
classes began.
Greenberg said his best
anecdote came from a prin-
cipal who talked about a 15-
year-old upper-middle-class
student who ignored the
destitute people who often
waited with him each morn-
ing to cross the border to ElPaso from Ciudad Juarez,
Mexico. That has changed.
Collecting the money daily
raised his awareness about
the lives of the poor in his
community.
“He started to have em-
pathy. That is very powerful
feedback,” the rabbi said. “It
all happened because he was
giving every day. He wasn’t
listening to lectures or
speeches or anything like
that.”
Similar pilot programs
are underway in several
communities, including
Lawrence, Kan. Greenberg
and others were approached
by hundreds of attendees
seeking to import the pro-
gram locally.
The El Paso program is
an extension of the philoso-
phy of the movement’s late
leader, Rabbi Menachem
Mendel Schneerson, known
as the Lubavitcher Rebbe,
who was one of the most in-
fluential global leaders in Ju-
daism during the time he led
the group.
Earlier this year, Israeli
researchers reported that
violent attacks against Jews
increased significantly in
2018, with the largest re-
ported number of Jews
killed in anti-Semitic acts in
decades.
Capped by the deadly
shooting that killed 11 wor-
shipers at Pittsburgh’s Tree
of Life synagogue on Oct. 27,
2018, assaults targeting Jews
rose 13% that year.Rabbis urge teaching empathy
It’s a way to counter
racism and hatred,
they say, noting that
anti-Semitic attacks
have increased.
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