Newsletter: Wild, wet weather drenches the region

Good morning. It is Saturday, Feb. 18. Here’s what you don’t want to miss this weekend:

TOP STORIES

The Big One: A storm that forecasters billed as the most powerful in years barreled into Southern California with a vengeance on Friday, flooding multiple freeways, triggering dramatic mudslides and downing hundreds of trees and power lines. The deluge created surreal scenes: Cars trapped by rising waters along the 5 and 110 freeways, churning mud flows ripping through canyon and high-desert roads, and a massive landslide. To the north in Santa Barbara County, communities were battered by up to an inch of rain an hour, turning the Santa Barbara Airport into a lake with small aircraft playing the role of boats. Los Angeles Times

Watch: Check out this wild footage captured by San Bernardino County firefighters of the moment a massive landslide the length of three football fields crumbled down a mountain. Los Angeles Times

Some risks are worth it: Living below the Lake Oroville dam has never been simple. It requires a great deal of “faith in the engineers who designed the nation’s tallest dam and the construction workers who built it more than a half century ago, and faith in the government agencies that maintain and operate it.” Los Angeles Times

A scary thought: The state’s water agency advised five years ago that, if the Lake Oroville dam were to fail, residents living downstream wouldn’t have time to evacuate. Associated Press

Playing politics: L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti is being accused by some of his mayoral competitors of staying silent on the city’s rising crime. It’s a charge he is vigorously denying. Los Angeles Daily News

Take note, Garcetti: At an event Thursday, Los Angeles’ three previous mayors reflected on the best ways to run the city. Los Angeles Times

Whistle-blower vindication: Here’s the story of the Wells Fargo whistle-blower who was the first to notice troubling signs at the bank, and 14 years later is finding vindication. San Francisco Chronicle

THIS WEEK’S MOST POPULAR STORIES IN ESSENTIAL CALIFORNIA

1. The nightmare scenario at the Oroville Dam that officials are fighting to prevent. Los Angeles Times

2. “It’s going to be a mess”: Southern California braces for the worst storm in years. Los Angeles Times

3. A timeline of the Oroville Dam crisis. Los Angeles Times

4. What $1,800 rents you right now in Los Angeles. Curbed LA

5. How Oroville Dam problems became a crisis. Los Angeles Times

ICYMI, HERE ARE THIS WEEK’S GREAT READS

A new community: San Diego County has long been home to a large Iraqi emigre community. But now as the deadly conflict in Syria drags on, the region is drawing many refugees from that war-torn country as well. Los Angeles Times

A bridge over the wall: They think about it as a “mega region.” Part of it is on the Mexican side of the border, and the other part is on the American side. San Diego and Tijuana are intertwined in ways that few people fully comprehend. There’s even a terminal connecting San Diego to the Tijuana airport making it the first truly bi-national airport. This is the most striking example of the two cities’ integration, and it’s why the actions and rhetoric of President Trump worry politicians and residents so much. Politico Magazine

P-22; the baby eater? Here is the latest entry in the Griffith Park mountain lion canon, and it’s straight out of central casting. Enter one recent East Coast migrant who has recently gotten pregnant and P-22 prowling Griffith Park. With this woman’s newfound maternal instinct, she writes “my body a furnace because it now pumped two hearts, I imagined P-22 surveying the moonlit Hollywood sign, savoring the remembered flavor of Koala bones, waiting for the scent of rodents, or escaped domestic animals, or trespassing teenage potheads — or babies. How could I go into labor in a world where hungry, urban pumas were allowed to behave that way?” Elle

“La La Land” in real life: Every aspiring actor or filmmaker knows what their storybook Hollywood ending will look like. For John Geronilla and Stephanie Hoston, “Their story is a real-life mirror of ‘La La Land,’ that pretty, Academy Award-nominated paean to Los Angeles and its fabled neurotic, frantic and often delusional actors, filmmakers and musicians who chase fame but would settle for a decent day’s pay. In the film, perseverance, soul scouring and mended confidences lead inevitably to artistic redemption. But Geronilla and Hoston, and thousands like them, move less surely through a world of Kickstarter promises, frequent disappointments and fleeting victories.” Los Angeles Times

LOOKING AHEAD

Saturday: Storm cleanup begins.

Monday: “Not My President’s Day” rally at Los Angeles City Hall.

Saturday: Gardena residents mark the 75th anniversary of Executive Order 9066, which began Japanese American internment during World War II.

Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments, complaints and ideas to Benjamin Oreskes and Shelby Grad. Also follow them on Twitter @boreskes and @shelbygrad.