#california mudslides

[thechembow]

Flooding, mudslides impact millions across Southern California amid heaviest rain since August

Dec. 22, 2023 - CBS Mornings

Heavy rain and flooding wreaked havoc across Southern California, with mudslides threatening hillside homes and rising waters inundating streets... This event marks the heaviest precipitation since Tropical Storm Hilary's impact in August.

[xtruss]

Nearly 500 Mudslides in California As Deadly Storm Damage May Reach $11 Billion

An Atmospheric River unleashed record rainfall in California, causing over 100 mudslides, while winds gusted to 160 mph in the mountains.

— By Jesse Ferrell | February 7, 2024

A deadly and extreme atmospheric river overtook California Saturday and remained over the southern part of the state through Tuesday. The storm caused record rainfall, heavy snow and high winds, which knocked out power to nearly a million people while snarling travel.

More than 475 mudslides or debris flows were reported and at least nine people were killed by the storm, according to CNN.

AccuWeather estimates the preliminary total damage and economic loss from the intense storms and record rainfall in California this week will be between $9 billion and $11 billion. The storm is still impacting the most heavily populated part of the state and has caused damage to homes and businesses in highly developed and well-populated areas, including some of the most expensive neighborhoods in the State.

This is a preliminary estimate, as the storm effects are continuing to be felt and some areas of the state have not yet reported complete information about damage, injuries, and other impacts.

On Sunday, Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency for eight California counties, including Los Angeles and San Diego. On Sunday and Monday, downtown Los Angeles recorded 7.03 inches of rain -- roughly half of that city's historical average annual rainfall. It was the highest two-day rainfall ever recorded in February and the third-wettest two days since records began nearly 150 years ago. By Tuesday evening, L.A. had counted 13.95" for their rainfall season total - surpassing their historical average.

Northwest of downtown, several stations reported more than a foot of rain as of Tuesday evening.

Hurricane-force winds plagued the mountains, including the 10,820-foot peak of Ward Mountain, where a gust of 162 mph was clocked. In 2017, Ward Mountain set the state wind gust record of 199 mph. Other impressive wind gusts reported on Sunday included 148 mph at Palisades Tahoe and 125 mph at Mammoth Mountain.

In the higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada, 3-6 feet of snow fell, causing road closures, avalanches and blizzard conditions.

At lower elevations, winds were not as extreme but were unusually high across a wide area Monday, felling trees and knocking out power to nearly 900,000 customers Sunday evening, according to PowerOutage.US.

Near the coast, San Francisco airport reported 67-mph gusts while Sacramento topped out at 59 mph.

— Jesse Ferrell, AccuWeather Meteorologist and Senior Weather Editor

[pwrn51]

True Story of Loss, Courage, Hope, and Survival

  In 2018, Montecito, California, was struck by a devastating mudslide, an aftermath of heavy rainfall and deforestation from the recent Thomas Fire. Kim Cantin, the author of “WHERE YELLOW FLOWERS BLOOM,” tragically lost her husband, Dave, and their son, Jack, in this calamity, along with her home and beloved dog. The book documents Kim’s heart-wrenching journey through grief, as well as her…

[faithinthefuture-louis]

x

[reasonsforhope]

"The U.S. government is entering a new era of collaboration with Native American and Alaska Native leaders in managing public lands and other resources, with top federal officials saying that incorporating more Indigenous knowledge into decision-making can help spur conservation and combat climate change.

Federal emergency managers on Thursday also announced updates to recovery policies to aid tribal communities in the repair or rebuilding of traditional homes or ceremonial buildings after a series of wildfires, floods and other disasters around the country.

With hundreds of tribal leaders gathering in Washington this week for an annual summit, the Biden administration is celebrating nearly 200 new agreements that are designed to boost federal cooperation with tribes nationwide.

The agreements cover everything from fishery restoration projects in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest to management of new national monuments in the Southwestern U.S., seed collection work in Montana and plant restoration in the Great Smoky Mountains.

“The United States manages hundreds of millions of acres of what we call federal public lands. Why wouldn’t we want added capacity, added expertise, millennia of knowledge and understanding of how to manage those lands?” U.S. Interior Assistant Secretary Bryan Newland said during a panel discussion.

The new co-management and co-stewardship agreements announced this week mark a tenfold increase over what had been inked just a year earlier, and officials said more are in the pipeline.

Newland, a citizen of the Bay Mills Indian Community in northern Michigan, said each agreement is unique. He said each arrangement is tailored to a tribe’s needs and capacity for helping to manage public lands — and at the very least assures their presence at the table when decisions are made.

The federal government is not looking to dictate to tribal leaders what a partnership should look like, he said...

The U.S. government controls more than a quarter of the land in the United States, with much of that encompassing the ancestral homelands of federally recognized tribes...

Tribes and advocacy groups have been pushing for arrangements that go beyond the consultation requirements mandated by federal law.

Researchers at the University of Washington and legal experts with the Native American Rights Fund have put together a new clearinghouse on the topic. They point out that public lands now central to the country’s national heritage originated from the dispossession and displacement of Indigenous people and that co-management could present on opportunity for the U.S. to reckon with that complicated legacy...

In an attempt to address complaints about chronic underfunding across Indian Country, President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed an executive order on the first day of the summit that will make it easier for tribes to find and access grants.

Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told tribal leaders Thursday that her agency [FEMA] began work this year to upgrade its disaster guidance particularly in response to tribal needs.

The Indigenous people of Hawaii have increasingly been under siege from disasters, most recently a devastating fire that killed dozens of people and leveled an entire town. Just last month, another blaze scorched a stretch of irreplaceable rainforest on Oahu.

Tribes in California and Oregon also were forced to seek disaster declarations earlier this year after severe storms resulted in flooding and mudslides...

Criswell said the new guidance includes a pathway for Native American, Alaska Native and Hawaiian communities to request presidential disaster declarations, providing them with access to emergency federal relief funding. [Note: This alone is potentially a huge deal. A presidential disaster declaration unlocks literally millions of dollars in federal aid and does a lot to speed up the response.]

The agency also is now accepting tribal self-certified damage assessments and cost estimates for restoring ceremonial buildings or traditional homes, while not requiring site inspections, maps or other details that might compromise culturally sensitive data."

-via AP, December 7, 2023

[buckera]

Wip Wednesday ☔️

Tagged and tagging @diazsdimples @theotherbuckley @exhuastedpigeon @nmcggg @disasterbuckdiaz @ladydorian05 @daffi-990 and my lovelies @malewifediaz @spagheddiediaz @jeeyuns mwuah mwuah💛💛

Guess what, guys? The first chapter of the mudslide fic is getting posted tomorrow! Which is just so unbelievable to me?? Despite posting 10 fics prior to this one, it was the first fic I started writing for this ship and I've been working on it (on and off) since september and now here we are... absolute bonkers if you ask me.

Now, I know there are like 4 people who are actually interested in this fic – and that's fine, honestly –, but I for one am very excited. So I thought I'd give you guys a longer snippet for today. I actually shared parts of this scene in like 3 different instalments from both of their povs lmao but this one is from chapter one so you'll get the full(ish) picture tomorrow.

“Eddie, a-are you sure you’re alright?” “Yeah, sorry. I guess I’m just tired.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Eddie, if there’s something going on, you have to tell me.” “There’s nothing going on, I promise.” Buck raised his eyebrows challengingly and as it had so many times before, it made Eddie sigh in defeat. “It’s. It’s the weather.” He gave in with a heavy sigh and it didn’t quite stop Buck from frowning, but he had to admit, it made sense. It’s been raining for over two weeks now as a storm came to California and Buck would be lying if he said that it didn’t affect him in any way, but he was handling it. The only thing he didn’t account for was that maybe Eddie wasn’t. “Hey, it’s okay.” Buck stepped closer and for some reason Eddie was avoiding his gaze now, so he didn’t stop walking until they were standing toe to toe, the proximity forcing his eyes back onto Buck’s face. “Look. This?” He pulled the neckline of his shirt aside to show Eddie more of the scarring over his neck and chest. “This is a reminder that I pulled through.” He knew what kind of marks a lighting strike could leave on someone’s body, but he never really got to see his own. By the time he woke up from his coma, the patterns were gone — unlike the painful and itchy blisters that took over their place; they lasted for nearly two months and despite all the cold compresses and cooling gels, they still left a hefty amount of scar tissue behind, in the shape of abstract lines and ragged edges. Eddie reached out and traced some of the lines above his collarbone with his fingers and Buck couldn’t help but let his eyes flutter shut for a second with the softness of his touch. The pads of his fingers were warm as they brushed over the shiny silver lines and patches, yet Buck could still feel goosebumps build on his forearms and thighs with every microinch he covered. Suddenly, Eddie’s fingers were gone, pulled away abruptly, almost as if they got burned by the contact, leaving his hand to float in the air between them aimlessly. “Sorry.” Eddie whispered and they were just so close. All the what ifs have started to murmur in the back of Buck’s skull with renewed vigor, buzzing like radio static behind his eyes, begging to be turned up for clarity. “Eddie I—” “It’s okay, Buck.” He flattened his palm over Buck’s heart, only the thin layer of his shirt separating them now. “Thank you, for this.” Eddie patted his chest and stepped back, leaving Buck dumbfounded as to what exactly just happened.

[oolathurman]

so apparently the first official tropical storm warning for southern california has been issued which is going to be objectively hilarious and horrible at once bc I'm already bracing myself for folks who live in like. areas where mudslides are more common. and also there's gonna be so many leaky roofs. and also I'm worried about homeless folks getting shelter

but that said it's hilarious that I'm actually filling up the tub with water and target is out of water bottles

don't look forward to trying to drive to work on monday morning tho bc no one in socal can drive in the rain

and if this is gonna be The Worst Rain Ever... well i better leave early if I'm getting to the office on time bc you KNOW there's gonna be accidents every half a mile lol

[beardedmrbean]

California is facing a record $68 billion budget deficit.

This is largely attributed to a “severe revenue decline,” according to the state's Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO).

While it’s not the largest deficit the state has ever faced as a percentage of overall spending, it’s the largest in terms of real dollars — and could have a big impact on California taxpayers in the coming years.

Here’s what has eaten into the Golden State’s coffers.

Unprecedented drop in revenue

California is dealing with a revenue shortfall partly due to a delay in 2022-2023 tax collection. The IRS postponed 2022 tax payment deadlines for individuals and businesses in 55 of the 58 California counties to provide relief after a series of natural weather disasters, including severe winter storms, flooding, landslides and mudslides.

Tax payments were originally postponed until Oct. 16, 2023, but hours before the deadline they were further postponed until Nov. 16, 2023. In line with the federal action, California also extended its due date for state tax returns to the same date.

These delays meant California had to adopt its 2023-24 budget before collections began, “without a clear picture of the impact of recent economic weakness on state revenues,” according to the LAO.

Total income tax collections were down 25% in 2022-23, according to the LAO — a decline compared to those seen during the Great Recession and dot-com bust.

“Federal delays in tax collection forced California to pass a budget based on projections instead of actual tax receipts," Erin Mellon, communications director for California Gov. Gavin Newsom, told Fox News. "Now that we have a clearer picture of the state’s finances, we must now solve what would have been last year’s problem in this year’s budget.”

The exodus

California has also lost residents and businesses — and therefore, tax revenue — in recent years.

The Golden State’s population declined for the first time in 2021, as it lost around 281,000 residents, according to the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC). In 2022, the population dropped again by around 211,000 residents — with many moving to other states like Texas, Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona.

Read more: 'It's not taxed at all': Warren Buffett shares the 'best investment' you can make when battling inflation

“Housing costs loom large in this dynamic,” according to the PPIC, which found through a survey that 34% of Californians are considering moving out of the state due to housing costs.

Other factors such as the post-pandemic remote work trend — which has resulted in empty office towers in California’s downtown cores — have also played a role in migration out of the state.

Poor economic conditions

In an effort to tame inflation in the U.S., the Federal Reserve has hiked interest rates 11 times — from 0.25% to 5.5% — since March 2022. These actions have made borrowing more expensive and have reduced the amount of money available for investment.

This has cooled California’s economy in a number of ways. Home sales in the state are down by about 50%, according to the LAO, which it largely attributes to the surge in mortgage rates. The monthly mortgage to buy a typical California home has gone from $3,500 to $5,400 over the course of the Fed’s rate hikes the LAO says.

The Fed’s rate hikes have “hit segments of the economy that have an outsized importance to California,” according to the LAO, including startups and technology companies. Investment in the state’s tech economy has “dropped significantly” due to the financial conditions — evidenced by the number of California companies that went public in 2022 and 2023 being down by over 80% from 2021, the LAO says.

One result of this is that California businesses have had less funding to be able to expand their operations or hire new workers. The LAO pointed out that the number of unemployed workers in the Golden State has risen by nearly 200,000 people since the summer of 2022, lifting the percentage from 3.8% to 4.8%.

Fixing the budget crunch

The LAO suggests that California has various options to address its $68 billion budget deficit — including declaring a budget emergency and then withdrawing around $24 billion in cash reserves.

California also has the option to lower school spending to the constitutional minimum — a move that could save around $16.7 billion over three years. It could also cut back on at least $8 billion of temporary or one-time spending in 2024-25.

However, these are just short-term solutions and may not address the state’s longer term budget issues. In the past, the state has cut back on business tax credits and deductions and increased broad-based taxes to generate more revenue.

Mellon did not reveal any specifics behind the state’s recovery plan in her comments to Fox News. She simply said: “In January, the Governor will introduce a balanced budget proposal that addresses our challenges, protects vital services and public safety and brings increased focus on how the state’s investments are being implemented, while ensuring accountability and judicious use of taxpayer money.”

[madamlaydebug]

As within...so without...find balance in self so these self projections will stop manifesting chaos...or is this just necessary change for the new earth? Is there anything new about you to coincide with this new earth you're talking about? What is man's relationship with his environment?

Just incase you didnt know: 😞😞

🔥 California is on fire.

🔥 Oregon is on fire.

🔥 Washington is on fire.

🔥 British Columbia is on fire.

🔥 Alberta is on fire

🔥 Montana is on fire.

🔥 Nova Scotia is on fire.

🔥 Greece is on fire.

🔥 Brazil is on fire.

🔥 Portugal is on fire.

🔥 Algeria is on fire.

🔥 Tunisia is on fire.

🔥 Greenland is on fire.

🔥 The Sakha Republic of Russia is on fire.

🔥 Siberia is on fire.

⛈️Texas is under water

⛈️ India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, experience record monsoons and massive death toll.

⛈️ Sierra Leone and Niger experience massive floods, mudslides, and deaths in the thousands.

🌞Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia are crushed in the death grip of a triple digit heat wave, dubbed Lucifer.

🌞Southern California continues to swelter under triple digit heat that shows no sign of letting up.

🌞In usually chilly August, the city of San Francisco shatters all-time record at 106 degrees, while it reaches 115 degrees south of the city. Northern California continues to bake in the triple digits.

((🌎)) Yellowstone volcano is hit with earthquake swarm of over 2,300 tremors since June, recording a 4.4 quake on June 15, 20017 and 3.3 shaker on August 21, 2017.

((🌎)) 5.3 earthquake rumbles through Idaho

((🌎)) Japan earthquake 6.1 possible tsunami..

((🌎)) Mexico earthquake 8.2 imminent tsunami. Beach lines are receded atleast 50+ meters

🌊Hurricanes Harvey, Irma (biggest ever recorded), Jose and Katia are barreling around the Atlantic with 8 more potentials forming

And last but not least an X10 C.M.E solar flare last night . The highest recorded solar flare ever!

#wakeupfromthatsunkenplace

[thechembow]

Third deadly storm to hit California brings mudslides, landslides and sinkholes

Jan. 10, 2023 - CBS Mornings

Unprecedented rainfall, 4 times above average for California at this time of year. Massive flooding, landslides, and mandatory evacuations.

This unfortunately may be the only way to erase the drought lie of the state.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Ash… please hurt Finn <3

Just something short and sweet for your Friday...

CW: Dehumanization, captivity, pet whump sort of, sadistic whumper

Rancher's Rest, California, January 2005

The man who used to be Finn Schneider - who even in his own thoughts more and more called himself by the nickname his captor had given him - slept as much as he could during the day.

It helped him escape the unrelenting smell of decay from the basement that seemed to seep up through the floorboards like water soaking a sponge. Sometimes Robert lit overwhelming candles, brown sugar and vanilla, oranges and cinnamon. They didn't cover the bad smells so much as join with them to create something far, far worse.

When he slept, he could stop smelling things. Sleep helped himescape the screaming he could hear, sometimes, inside his head or out of it. He wasn't always sure if there was someone alive in the basement or if he was just listening to the echoes of ghosts.

Sleep helped him forget he spent the days in a dog cage built to hold a man.

The muzzle firmly covered his jaw, mouth, and nose, with airholes to breathe but no room to speak. Even his screams were too muffled to carry far. He had stopped trying a long time ago. Easier not to.

In any case, the days passed faster if he slept through them.

So he tried.

He blinked awake at the sound of the key in the door, rolling his shoulders and shifting on the pile of folded blankets and old, flat pillows. He used to feel his heart start pounding and a cold wash of terror every time Robert came home.

Now he just felt... tired.

Robert stomped inside, humming cheerfully. Weak winter sunlight cut briefly across the floor in front of the cage, then disappeared as the door closed again. "Take your boots off, Bobby," He muttered to himself, shaking his coat from his shoulders and hanging it in the wooden rack attached to the wall by the door. "Boots off, then inside. Can't track mud in. Boots off."

Clunk clunk. The boots went onto the woven rag mat, and Finn closed his eyes.

"Shit weather all day," Robert grunted. Maybe to Finn. Maybe himself. Finn didn't know or care any longer. "Sun finally showed up but it's still mud all over the place. Landslides down south. Mudslides taking out houses, all kinds of damage out there."

He moved with flat feet in their dull socks, once white but gone gray, from the door and moving past Finn in his cage, past the basement door where only bones and barrels waited today, into the kitchen. The smell of diesel followed him like scent trails in a cartoon, settling heavy around Finn's face and making his stomach flip.

More thumping footsteps, and Finn let himself doze, vaguely aware but caring so, so little about what could happen next. It didn't matter.

Whatever it was, it would hurt.

He must have fallen asleep once more - he heard the shower shut off and the radio playing in the kitchen, afternoon news delivered by soothing voices.

-holidays give us all a chance to be generous to those we love who love reading. I want to begin my recommendations with a Christmas story about a Christmas story. Novelist Paul Auster's beautifully illustrated little tale about being commissioned by the New York Times in December of 1990 to write a Christmas story, and the surprising pleasure this brought him.

A man from the New York Times called me and asked if I would-

"All right, little Mouse," Robert said cheerfully, interrupting the soft-spoken novelist on the radio with his own rougher, raspier voice. "Work day's done. Out you come."

Finn watched him, and felt the first trickle of nerves and the cold stone of the fear he never quite overcame settling heavy in his chest. When the cage was opened, Robert using the key he wore always on a string around his neck to unlock the padlock, Finn didn't move at first.

He shook his head, just a little.

Then Robert grabbed his arm and yanked him out.

Finn grunted behind the muzzle as his head banged into a metal bar, briefly flashing white behind his eyes as he flinched. His hands scrambled for purchase along the sticky, sharp carpet fibers. Robert chuckled, enjoying the sight, and ruffled Finn's greasy, dirty hair affectionately.

Finn caught himself making a sound far too much like an animal's whimper as Robert's thumb ran over the spot where he'd hit the bar, pressing down.

"Don't be so stupid next time and it won't happen like that," Robert said, cloying and mockingly affectionate. "Stupid thing. Now come on, Mouse."

Forehead throbbing, Finn followed him - crawling on hands and knees like a dog, head down, eyes on the floor. His own breath felt loud, from within the muzzle. Humid and damp, in and out, barely getting enough fresh air. His head spun, a little.

That might just be from hunger, though.

Robert snapped his fingers and pointed to a spot on the floor near the table, and Finn shuffled hurriedly forward to sit there, legs crossed, watching him with dull eyes as he went from the cupboard to the stove, dumping some kind of beef and potato soup from a can into the pot sitting there. The gas flame flickered to life, and Finn wondered what it would take to make this house explode.

"The guys at work had this mysteries show on today," Robert said, all cheerful conversation, as he popped open a beer and took a drink, sitting in a creaking wooden kitchen chair and leaning over to undo the buckles that held Finn's muzzle on. It dropped to the floor, and Finn stared down at it.

He wanted it back.

His face felt all wrong without it.

"You were on it, did you know that?"

It took a second for the words to filter in, and then he turned to look up at Robert. He couldn't remember the words, at first. Or he knew the words but couldn't remember how to form them with his mouth. He managed, hoarsely, "I was?"

"Sure were, Mouse." Robert was in a good mood - he leaned down and put the chilly aluminum edge of the can to Finn's lips, feeding him tasteless foamy American beer cold as ice sip by sip. "Special episode on people like you, went missing in Death Valley. Not even the only German who was featured. Neat episode. Talked about this whole family that just up and vanished. They'll never find them, for sure. Nobody will find you, either, when I'm done with you. Maybe I should put you back."

Finn struggled - Robert talking tended to just move like water around him now - but he turned to look up. "Put... Put me back?"

"Yeah. Dump your bones right back in the Valley, let them find you somewhere they've looked before. Wish I had recorded it or something, could show it to you. Oh, well. Your mom's looking real rough these days."

Finn had to turn away at that, his heart twisting itself as he thought of her, afraid and alone and probably sure he was dead by now. Even if she kept looking... She was looking for bones.

Some of the beer Robert was feeding him missed when he moved, dribbled down his chin to his collarbone, making him shiver.

"Hey! Spilling beer is a capital offense in this house, you stupid piece of shit!"

Finn knew he should apologize, but his mouth wouldn't move. He thought of his car, wrecked just off the road. Bottles of water, his book of CDs, clothes and all his things. He thought of his mother sifting through looking for anything-

Anything at all-

Any sign he was alive-

Being told over and over that no one would ever find him-

"Listen to me when I'm talking to you!" Robert's voice was a deafening roar, and his foot caught Finn in the side of his head, kicking him onto the dirty tile before grabbing his hair and slamming his head down into it.

Finn cried out, instinct overriding emptiness as he scrabbled with his useless hands to try and paw Robert away.

He took a punch to the face. White light burst and pain without sound, like a star exploding inside him. He went limp. The rest of the beating hurt, sure, but at least Robert had stopped talking about his mom.

He could be grateful for that.

They'll never find you.

-

Carriozo, New Mexico, 2009

The man who was Finn Schneider was currently going by the name Bennett Collins. He laid on his back in a broken-down motel in a town no larger than his hand, staring up at the ceiling and decidedly not thinking about scorpions. He'd put his shoes up on a shelf in the closet, just in case.

His phone rang, and he groaned as he shifted onto his side, flipping it open and putting it to his ear. "We don't meet until tomorrow," He said by way of greeting.

"I know, I know. But hey, I have some good news for you." Noah's good cheer made his skin crawl, but he owed the man his life and freedom, even if he didn't know what to do with it.

"What good news?" Maybe the job was called off. That would be nice. His birthday was coming up, not that he had ever told anyone his birthday, and he had had a dim thought he might spend it with a book. If his eyes would let him read one. If his mind would focus on it and not just stare at the same sentences over and over without ever taking them in.

"They found the Germans!"

Finn waited a beat. "Noah, we have a whole country. If no one had found us before now, that would be odd."

"Not-... Okay, fine. Be that way. The Death Valley Germans, that family went missing back in the 90s? We talked about it a couple of times?"

Noah had talked. Finn had stared off into space and made noises like he was listening and tried not to think about it too much. To think about their car found off the road with flat tires and no water and emptied bottles of wine.

His own car, full of water, with no him.

His own family, his mother searching, forever-

He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. The motel air was stale and musty, but at least it smelled like the window unit A/C on blast and not like rotting bodies or the Death Valley sand. "Yes. What do you.meam, they found them?"

"Some hikers did. Found some bones and IDs, a friend of mine works with the local police and told me about it. That's good stuff, right?! They found them! Maybe they'll find you some day, huh?"

"You keep me moving too much for that."

"You've never asked me not to."

"I-..." Noah was right. He hadn't ever asked. He had just done the work, and not lifted his head, not looked back. What could he give anyone who had known him? A walking corpse, luckier than the other dead bodies. Maybe. He could pay them back for their love and for looking for him by giving them back a shadow that looked like their son.

"It's fine. I don't mind taking care of you. You'll be at Albuquerque tomorrow for our next job, yeah?"

"Sure."

"Good. Hey, make sure you eat some dinner tonight. I'll be here if you need anything, little Mouse."

Finn's chest went cold. "... What? What did you-"

What did you call me-

"What did you, um, say? Couldn't-... hear you."

Weight pressed down like a boot on his chest, heavy and steel-toed, pushing away air as he tried to breathe in. The air smelled like decay and lemon cleaner. His stomach flipped.

"What?" Noah paused. The pause felt too long. "Oh, I said I'm here for you. At my house."

No, you didn't.

"... Okay. I'll... I will see you tomorrow, Noah?"

"Yeah. Keep your head down. Oh, hey, you're in Carriozo, right?"

Had he told Noah that was where he would stop?

"Y-yes."

"Cool. I stayed there once. Nice diner, makes the best beef and potato soup..."

Finn hung up the phone, launched himself from the bed, and barely made it to the toilet before the nothing he had eaten all day found its way back up.

By the time he could stop, his head was throbbing, and all he wanted was to curl up in his cage in the dark. He moved on his hands and knees back to the bed in the little motel, opened his laptop where it has been charging, and typed with pointer fingers one letter at a time. Death... Valley... Germans...

Death Valley skeletons solve riddle of missing German tourists, read a headline. The letters swam like fish across his vision.

Finn laid his head down on the pillow, closing his eyes and trying to tell himself to breathe. They found them. Thirteen years but they found them. He might have smiled.

Robert had been wrong.

About that, anyway.

-

@finder-of-rings @endless-whump @arlin-always-writing @thefancydoughnut @newandfiguringitout @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @boxboysandotherwhump @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump @whump-tr0pes @whumptywhumpdump @whumpiary @orchidscript @nonsensical-whump @outofangband @eatyourdamnpears @hackles-up @grizzlie70 @mylifeisonthebookshelf @keeper-of-all-the-random-things @burtlederp

@whumperfully @pigeonwhumps @squishablesunbeam @darkthingshappen @whumper-soot @pumpkin-spice-whump @pardonmekreature @d-cs @honey-is-mesi @whump-queen @sowhumpful

-

[gwydionmisha]

Historic rainfall and heavy snows bring flooding, mudslides to California

[stele3]

If you live in Los Angeles, I’m telling you: get to higher ground now. 10” of rain over the next 7 days.

(Higher ground does not include Santa Barbara. They’re gonna get it, too. Get to Bakersfield, or Vegas.)

[ingek73]

PRINCE HARRY EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

‘This is not about trying to collapse the monarchy, this is about trying to save them from themselves’

By BRYONY GORDON

Montecito is on mudslide alert, its residents nervously awaiting an evacuation order. I wake up on the morning of my meeting with Prince Harry to a media storm – his book, Spare, has found its way into Spanish shops almost a week before publication – and a meteorological storm, this normally bone dry part of southern California being battered by rain. Both squalls are doing a good job of reminding me that, while you might be able to run 5,000 miles from the source of your pain, you can rarely escape from it.

When I finally reach Montecito’s most famous resident – and possibly, right now, the world’s – he is nonplussed about the weather, which some have described as biblical, but I might describe as… well, British. Prince Harry tells me that the day before I arrived, he put on his waterproofs and headed down to the beach in the pouring rain with his dog, Pula, ignoring all offers of an umbrella from those around him. (I don’t tell him that I already know this, having seen pictures of said outing on a website that morning.)

And yet, even with the threat of mudslides, the Duke of Sussex clearly feels safer here in his Montecito home than he ever did in the royal palaces where he grew up. You could hardly blame him. The house is a sanctuary, surrounded by acres of greenery, complete with chickens, a play area and a teepee so lovely that I find myself jokingly asking if I can move into it. I am taken to a finca-style guest house where I find a generous spread of crudités alongside umpteen types of tea, served, of course, in the finest china. Soft music tinkles in the background. Candles flicker. It would all feel very relaxing, were it not for the fact it is only a matter of hours since the book somehow leaked to The Guardian newspaper and went on sale early at a chain of Spanish book shops.

There is some amusement from Harry about how the passages on his “frost-nipped penis” might have come out in translation, but mostly he is sad and disappointed that the general public’s first encounter with the contents of Spare will come not through reading the book itself, but via newspaper headlines.

In the book, he describes those who work on Fleet Street as a “dreadful mob of dweebs and crones and cut-rate criminals and clinically diagnosable sadists”, and that’s the more polite stuff. Am I mad to be speaking to him on the day that many of my colleagues are ripping him to shreds, especially knowing, as I do, that he has killed 25 members of the Taliban while on a tour of duty in Afghanistan? But the moment he walks through the door, a trail of dogs in his wake, I am reminded of his warmth and down-to-earth humour.

Today he is dressed in the TK Maxx uniform of T-shirt and jeans that he writes about in Spare. He welcomes me with a hug and rushes to make the tea. He is bright-eyed, looking far happier and healthier than when I last saw him at Buckingham Palace in early 2020, on his final day as a working member of the Royal family. He seems relaxed, more free – the nerves he had during our first interview, back in 2017, are gone, replaced with the quiet confidence of someone far more at ease with himself.

We sit on enormous cream sofas in front of a roaring fire, overlooked by a watercolour painting of a beach. I apologise for bringing my jet lag with me. He looks at his watch. “Think of it this way – it’s 11.10pm in the UK. You’re in the pub.” He quickly remembers that I don’t drink. “Or you’re not in the pub, but you’re OK. You can do this!” And so I switch on my tape recorder, and we begin.

He tells me that he is “someone who likes to fix things”. “If I see wrongdoing and a pattern of behaviour that is harming people, I will do everything I can to try and change it.” He worries about the other “spares” in the family. “As I know full well, within my family, if it’s not us,” and at this he points at his chest, “it’s going to be someone else. And though William and I have talked about it once or twice, and he has made it very clear to me that his kids are not my responsibility, I still feel a responsibility knowing that out of those three children, at least one will end up like me, the spare. And that hurts, that worries me.”

I first met Harry in 2016, when I began working with him and his brother and sister-in-law on their mental-health campaign, Heads Together. Right from the get-go, he seemed to grasp the issue of mental illness in a way that seemed quite unexpected from a member of the traditionally buttoned-up British Royal family.

I have only wonderful, warm memories of that period, which culminated in Harry coming on my podcast, Mad World, and speaking for the first time about the anguish he experienced trying to process the death of his mother. We developed what I would call a working friendship, which saw me get involved with various Heads Together and Royal Foundation events, and we have stayed in touch over the years.

The Harry I have come to know is perhaps best summed up via an anecdote in Spare, where he develops trench foot while out on an army exercise in Wales. He has been yomping through the countryside for several days, with equipment equivalent to the weight of a young teenager strapped to his back, during a heatwave. Halfway through, the heatwave breaks with a storm of torrential rain. They continue marching. Eventually, he realises that his foot is burning. At a checkpoint, Harry takes off his boots and socks, and the bottom of his right foot peels away. Medics inform him that the exercise is over for him, but when a staff sergeant tells him that there are “only” eight miles left, he resolves to tape his feet in zinc oxide and get the hell on with it.

“The last four miles were among the most difficult steps I’ve ever taken on this planet,” he explains. “As we crossed the finish line I began to hyperventilate with relief.” He hobbled about like an old man for the next few days, proud as punch that he pushed on through.

Here we have Harry – or Harold or Haz or H, depending on who you are – to a tee. You can say what you like about him (you probably have), and throw what you like at him (you may wish you could), but when he feels he is on the right path, he keeps going, through thick and thin and trench foot. What you see with Harry is what you get – a quality that made us love him until relatively recently, when it suddenly became the reason he has come in for so much hate.

He has been called a “cycle-breaker”, which is a term that refers to a person who changes decades – nay, centuries-old family patterns. There are some who cringe at all this “therapy speak”, dismissing it as “woke” Californian psycho-babble. That might have been the case way back in the 80s, but it isn’t now. The truth is that when Harry speaks about his feelings, about his escape from dysfunction, he doesn’t sound that different from any other person in their 30s who has been forced to confront issues with their mental health.The only real difference is a claim to the throne dating back to William the Conqueror. He speaks the language of recovery. And like most languages, being forced to learn it is painful. It is often messy, and mistakes are made. But boy is there a tremendous sense of reward when you start to be proficient in it.

Harry is matter-of-fact about this process. He accepts that any chance of reconciliation is unlikely at the moment. “What I’ve realised is that you don’t make any friends, especially within your family, because everyone has learned to accept that trauma [as] part of life. How dare you, as an individual, talk about it, because that makes us all feel really uncomfortable? So right, you may not like me in the moment, but maybe you’ll thank me in five or 10 years time.”

As someone who writes about mental health, I am far more interested in the detrimental effects of what Harry describes as living in “fancy captivity” than I am in the minutiae of who said what and to whom. To me, the most shocking thing about Spare is that he kept all of this inside him for so long, with only the one altercation with paparazzi. For all the side swipes about his privilege, trauma is trauma is trauma – whether it takes place in a damp bedsit or in front of a worldwide audience of billions as you walk behind your mother’s coffin. In Spare, Harry reveals that for 10 years after Diana’s death in 1997, his brain went into a state of complete shock, refusing to believe that she was actually dead, instead engaging in the kind of magical thinking that is most often seen in people with severe obsessive compulsive disorder or psychosis.

For an entire decade, Harry’s grief was buried so deep that he believed his mother had gone into hiding, that she would return to him and his brother at any moment. He refers to it throughout as “the disappearance”, a detail so heartbreaking that you would have to be cold-blooded not to be moved by it. At Eton, his brother shuns him – an occurrence relatable to most younger siblings, but one that nevertheless blows apart the narrative that Willy and Harold had been attached at the hip until Meghan came along. At 15 he has his head shoved in a deer carcass, an act that is seen as an aristocratic rite of passage at Balmoral, but that would be seen as child abuse anywhere else in the world. At 16, he is splashed across the front pages of the papers and frogmarched by his father to spend a day at a rehab in Peckham, because he has indulged in a spot of adolescent experimentation with cannabis (it’s hard to see how this story would be justified today). All credit to him, really: I think, had all of this happened to me, that I would have been on even harder drugs by the time I turned 13.

“Lots of people go through lots of s--t,” he shrugs, when I express sympathy for the litany of misfortune he has gone through. His critics have accused him of playing the victim, and yet I find a man who is anything but. “It’s interesting because so many of those moments have made me the man I am today. Would I encourage Archie to stick his head inside a carcass? Probably not. But people who’ve experienced trauma deal with it in different ways. I think when it comes to me and William, the fascinating part is that we both experienced a similar traumatic experience.

“He wanted to talk about it when [we were] younger, which built up a little bit of resentment. It wasn’t anything against him, I just didn’t want to talk about it. And then as we got older, I started to go slightly off the rails, and deal with it through drinking and drugs, and he went completely silent and completely shut down. And then my life started to alter and completely change, because I wanted, or had no other choice, than to confront the very thing that I had been running from, or scared of, for all those years.”

He tells me that he wasn’t walking around thinking of his mother the whole time. “I was doing everything humanly possible not to think about her.” Therapy, at first suggested by his brother, but properly engaged with once he got together with Meghan, changed everything. “It was like clearing the windscreen, clearing away all the Instagram filters, all of life’s filters.”

It allowed him to deal with the guilt he felt about his inability to cry (in the years after his mother’s death, before therapy, he shed tears only twice – once at the burial at Althorp, and then years later on a skiing holiday with his girlfriend at the time, Cressida Bonas). “I started to confront the idea that mummy wanted me to cry,” he tells me. “I convinced myself that she must have wanted me to cry, that that was the only way I could prove to her that I still miss her.”

He took ayahuasca, a psychedelic, with a professional – there is some research that the plant has positive effects on mental wellbeing. “After taking ayahuasca with the proper people,” he says, sipping his entirely non-mind altering chamomile tea, “I suddenly realised – wow! – it’s not about the crying. She [Diana] wants me to be happy. So this weight off my chest was not the need to cry, it was the acceptance and realisation that she has gone, but that she wants me to be happy and that she’s very much present in my life. And now, as two brothers, if one of you goes through that experience and the other one doesn’t, it naturally creates a further divide between you. Which is really sad. But as much as William was the first person to even suggest therapy, I just wish that he would be able to feel the same benefits of that as opposed to believing what he doesn’t need to.” (Harry claims that William thinks therapy has made him delusional.)

Maybe if the brothers had taken an ayahuasca trip together, none of this would have happened. As it is, Harry concedes that “it couldn’t be worse”. But he sees Spare as a last resort – not as a reconciliation, but an attempt to get his side of the story out (he doesn’t know the exact number of unofficial books that have been written about him, but believes it to be in “three figures”). He has been accused of airing his family’s dirty laundry. “But I always say: ‘What’s the difference between airing lies about your family through the British press, or airing truth through a book?’ In my case, this is all contained in one place where I hold myself entirely accountable and responsible for what I am saying.

‘William was the first person to suggest therapy – I just wish he could feel the same benefits’

“I don’t see why it’s so ingrained [in society] that whatever happens in your family, you should never talk about it. That no matter what’s happened, I can’t do this. But they [the Royal family] can? Because of who they are and what they represent? The way I was brought up is that, as a member of the Royal family, you lead by example. So you shouldn’t be able to use that privilege to get away with more things. No institution is immune to criticism and scrutiny, and if only 10 per cent of the scrutiny that was put on me and M was put on this institution, we wouldn’t be in this mess right now.”

“It’s so…” he shudders, and makes a guttural “urggh” sound. “It’s so dirty. It’s so dark. And it will continue and it will carry on and I look forward to the day when we are no longer part of it, but I worry about who’s next.”

He says he knows that the press “have got a s--t-tonne of dirt about my family. I know they have, and they sweep it under the carpet for juicy stories about someone else.” He tells me about some of the darkest moments in 2019. “I was coming back to Frogmore after Archie was born, and I would walk into the nursery and there she [Meghan] was in floods of tears, tears dripping on Archie while she was breast-feeding him. That was a breaking point for me. And she is someone who doesn’t read the stories. She would be dead if she was reading the stories.”

We talk about his reasons for doing this. “This is not about trying to collapse the monarchy, this is about trying to save them from themselves. And I know that I will get crucified by numerous people for saying that.”

The question so many have put to him is: is it worth it? His response is simple. “I feel like this is my life’s mission, to right the wrongs of the very thing that drove us out. Because it took my mum, it took Caroline Flack, who was my girlfriend, and it nearly took my wife. And if that isn’t a good enough reason to use the pain and turn it into purpose, I don’t know what it is.”

I tell him that from reading Spare, it seems clear that it nearly took him, too. “Yeah.” I get the impression that he didn’t want to exist, and then he met Meghan, and he had an experience of… “I want to live. I was never aware of how unhappy I was. I didn’t allow myself to think about it.”

I put it to him that even if Meghan is difficult – and I don’t think she is – it is unlikely that the monarchy have never encountered a difficult member of the family before. “But that’s the thing,” he nods, “that’s the unconscious bias. But they always tell on themselves. The press will tell on themselves and the family will tell on themselves as well. You look back on the history of how many members of my family have shouted at staff, [and] that is apparently all forgotten about and Meghan’s the bully.” He shakes his head. “It’s like, what? No, no, no. The members of this family that are literally brought up within this construct, have some issues to deal with.”

I talk to him a bit about the process of writing the book with the ghost-writer J R Moehringer. “It was definitely cathartic. It was painful at times. It was eye-opening.” In the book, he talks about “The Wall”, a mental block in his brain that divides his life before and after his mother died. “There were memories that I managed to pull up and over The Wall that I had forgotten about, that I didn’t even know existed. And there were times when I scared the s--t out of myself as well.”

In what way? “For example, Afghanistan. There were moments there that took me back. I would close my eyes and put myself back in the cockpit and fly those missions again. And JR was amazed by the level of detail that I could remember.” He tells me that the first draft was 800 pages, whereas the finished manuscript is just over 400. “It could have been two books, put it that way.” Some stuff, such as his life-changing trip to Nepal in 2016, had to be removed because of space issues. “And there were other bits that I shared with JR, that I said: ‘Look, I’m telling you this for context but there’s absolutely no way I’m putting it in there.’”

And why wouldn’t he put those bits in? “Because…” he pauses. “Because on the scale of things I could include for family members, there were certain things that – look, anything I’m going to include about any of my family members, I’m going to get trashed for. I knew that walking into it. But it’s impossible to tell my story without them in it, because they play such a crucial part in it. And also because you need to understand the characters and personalities of everyone within the book. But there are some things that have happened, especially between me and my brother, and to some extent between me and my father, that I just don’t want the world to know. Because I don’t think they would ever forgive me. Now you could argue that some of the stuff I’ve put in there, well, they will never forgive me anyway. But the way I see it is, I’m willing to forgive you for everything you’ve done, and I wish you’d actually sat down with me, properly, and instead of saying I’m delusional and paranoid, actually sit down and have a proper conversation about this, because what I’d really like is some accountability. And an apology to my wife.”

His wife is up in the main house, with the kids. We go there after the interview, with a smiling Meghan greeting me at the door. We spend some time together, drink turmeric lattes, and I get to see Harry in his element – Husband Harry, Dad Harry, the normal bloke in thoroughly abnormal circumstances. The children run around, the dogs jump on the cream sofas with muddy paws, and all is much as you would find it in any other home, during the witching hour just before the kids tea.

Before I go, Harry is keen to show me another wall, one he feels a little bit more positive about than the screen that sprung up in his head after his mother died. It’s a picture wall on a staircase, the kind found in homes all over the world. It features scores of framed photographs of his wife and children, alongside lovely hand-written cards from his grandparents. He has just finished putting it together, and as we admire it, I recognise that familiar look of pride I have seen on the face of my own husband – the look of a dad who has just completed a DIY task without destroying the plaster.

It’s tea time for the kids, and the early hours of the morning for my jet-lagged brain, so I say my goodbyes to Harry and Meghan, who pack me off with hugs and homemade jam. But I think about that wall for the whole of the drive back to Los Angeles, and then, on the plane, all of the way back to London. I think about the glee Harry found in it, the smile on his face as he showed me it. But mostly I think about how nice it would be for Harry’s brother and father to see the wall, and one day maybe even have some of their own carefree photographs included on it.

Lead picture credit: Bryony Gordon