Category: Central Valley

…but forecast is a duster as of January 5

Good snowfall expected

Here is the 10-day rain and snow forecast for the first 10 days of the new year focussing on the Feather River watershed around Oroville Dam, anchor reservoir for the State Water system that supplies 27 million Californians. It says rain expected through Jan 11 amounts to 11.7 inches or 433% of normal.For the water year it is 154% YTD average.The graph details the arrival of those important colder storms with snow levels down to 3500 ft as opposed to 9500 ft on New Years day. This time year ago it looked to be a dry January.

UPDATED JAN 5

Big Switcharoo

What a difference a few days make as the Jan 5 Feather River forecast calls for just 1 inch of precip over the next 10 day period.

Third Amazon center in the city will employ 471

A plan filed with the City of Visalia January 2, 2026 shows logistics giant Amazon opening a third warehouse distribution center in Visalia, the first new job creating development in the industrial park in a while. This time it’s on Plaza Drive where a 1.27 million square-foot warehouse has been constructed but remains vacant. It sits on 75 acres.

When it was built by CapRock partners in 2024 the proposed tenant was rumored to be Amazon. Now the rumor is fact with the company filing an operational statement with the city that names Amazon as the tenant and saying when the fulfillment center opens, it would employ 471. The huge building is ready for tenant improvements, making it likely that Amazon could begin operations at the site at 4001 Plaza Dr. later this year. The site is north of Riggin.

On the outside the company rep noted, it only needs to paint their typical blue stripe around the building as they do at almost all Amazon warehouses.

Newport Beach-based CapRock was the developer of the two other Amazon warehouses in town. They own the land.

The new building will have associate parking for 731 cars with room to park truck trailers in 524 spaces.

The goal of the new project is “faster delivery” says their statement Here is what it says.

The “building(is) designed to improve efficiency and delivery speed to allow for high-velocity products to be fulfilled faster due to the broader selection
availability. OGS9 will operate for 20 hours per day for 6.5 days per week and will have a maximum headcount of 471 Amazon associates.

Operations include inbound and outbound operations on north and south sides of the building accordingly. Inbound and Outbound docks will be(a) combination of MHE conveyors and pallet staging pots. PIT on these docks will transport packages in and out of trailers(his is a broad category of mobile, power-propelled vehicles used in warehouses, factories, and distribution centers to move, lift, push, pull, stack, or tier materials) while associates will do appropriate segregation for hydrogen-powered PIT to stow packages into respective storage racks, until required to be fulfilled. Once fulfillment is required, hydrogen-powered PIT will procure the relevant packages and drop-off in dedicated drop-off zones in outbound to be sent out. Associates will then segregate and palletize the packages for electric-powered PIT on the dock to load the pallets into the
outbound trailer.”

Amazon uses green hydrogen, produced by electrolyzers from water and renewable electricity, primarily to power fuel-cell forklifts in its fulfillment centers for cleaner operations, with plans to expand to heavy-duty trucks, aiming for net-zero carbon by 2040 through partnerships with companies like Plug Power to create onsite hydrogen production and secure supply

The industrial project is part of the larger CapRock Central Point master plan that will be a total of a 2.7-million-square-foot, four-building campus.

UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain notes Monday Dec 22 that “Rain has been occurring today as high as 10-11k feet in the northern/central Sierra, and as high as 12-13k feet in the Southern Sierra. That means that only the tops of the very highest peaks of the Southern Sierra have been seeing snow today, as opposed to rain virtually everywhere else.”

That appears to be true in the upper Kaweah River watershed in Mineral King as can be seen online on the Mineral King webcam for Dec 21 shop at the horse corral around 7800 ft.The website says “snow is gone” at the corral in the alpine valley.

Swain offers some hope that things will change later this week.” Snow levels will remain extremely high–8k to 10k feet or even higher–until early Wednesday when they will (finally!) begin to fall behind the strong cold front. Until then, nearly the entire Sierra will see rain (quite heavy, in some cases, which will further erode whatever snowpack remains below 9-10k feet). From early Wednesday onward, however, a much more seasonable airmass will allow snow levels to fall considerably to around 6k feet (or locally lower). That means that Lake Tahoe and surrounding ski resorts should finally see meaningful snowfall during this period–and that the high Sierra will see very heavy snowfall in the multiple feet.

So…for the next 48-72 hours, warm rains will continue and most of the mountain chain will be rebuilding its snowpack essentially from scratch. But I promise that Sierra snow is coming later this week!”

Cold weather is needed with China Peak ski resort reporting that is 45 degrees at the resort today.For Mineral King Valley the high today is 33 degrees dropping to a high of 11 by Friday with heavy snow forecast.

Tule fog makes the news 

Going on three weeks,  the Central Valley has been shrouded in Tule fog that could finally clear with a wet pattern coming into the state in late December. The extent of the fog that spreads over 400 miles is documented by this NASA satellite photo. and has spawned widespread news reports. The clouds tend to form in the SJ Valley in colder months when winds are light and soils are moist. 

 A wet XMAS for California 

A pattern change is expected by next weekend as  storms displace the famous blob of high-pressure that has been sitting off the  coast blocking incoming systems or steering them to the north.  A series of storms will be coming into the state in multiple waves dropping precipitation, particularly in the central and northern Sierra. The storms could be warm, continuing the pattern of low snowpack so far this year in the western US. The Climate Prediction Center published this map to show where precipitation is likely to fall..

Snow Drought Takes Hold Across the West

Water Year 2026 precipitation to date is near or above median for many parts of the West. However, much warmer-than-normal temperatures caused precipitation to fall as rain instead of snow across many basins, leading to snow drought despite wetter-than-normal conditions across most of the West.
Nearly every major river basin in the West experienced a November among the top 5 warmest on record.
Snow drought is most severe across much of the Sierra Nevada in California, the Cascade Range in Washington and Oregon, the Blue Mountains of Oregon, and the Great Basin in Nevada, with snow water equivalent (SWE) in most of these basins at less than 50% of median.

Here is the latest statewide snowpack report showing N Calif is just 6% of average to date.

Cold and wet weather is needed to improve snowpack conditions. Sierra ski resorts are hoping it chills out after an early start to the season. Chin Peak closed this week but hopes to reopen next Saturday with colder weather expected.

Sequoia Mall could see new fitness tenant

Owner of the Sequoia Mall, Paynter Realty has submitted plans to the city for a 38,000 square-foot fitness facility taking a place of the former CVS drug store space- the old Longs Drug. The project envisions expansion and remodel of the empty building by 9,000sf with construction valued at $3 million. The fitness tenant would offer both indoor and outdoor areas for exercise.No names related yet.The matter will be heard Nov 19.

Adventure Park wants to sell distilled spirits 

Adventure Park in Visalia has filed a request with the city to start selling distilled spirits at their entertainment complex added to sales of beer and wine already in place. The request requires a conditional use permit.

Building permits continue at a strong pace

Visalia building permits are continuing the strong pace seen all year now, more than doubling the number of single-family permits seen through October last year. Through October the city has permitted 461 new homes compared to 219 this time in 2024.Multi-family is down however.
New commercial permits continue strong as well valued through October at $146.6 million compared to $59.4 million through October 2024. The total value of all permits are up 55% according to the City of Visalia.

Highly successful Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch outside Lemoore now plans to add 40 acres to the project site on Jackson Avenue according to an application filed with the county this week.The expansion promises to bring more visitors to the area at the popular inland surfing center. \ more than 100 miles from any coastal beach.
The application says the company intends the installation of a parking area and security gate on the additional parcels, and up to 46,100 sq. ft. of new structures on the additional parcels.
The new structures include a security room (100 sq. ft.), a proposed bridge over a man-made canal, maintenance and storage buildings (approximately 8,000 sq. ft.), and overnight accommodations with restrooms (approximately 30,000 sq. ft.). It is estimated that the project would be staffed by 100 people, including operations and maintenance, guest services, water safety, and security personnel. Guest attendance is proposed to increase to up to 100 guests per day.
The project also clarifies that the previously approved commercial kitchen will be housed in the existing Surf Operations House and that the existing Airstreams will be relocated to the north side of the existing ski pond.
The Kings County Planning Commission will hold a public hearing to consider the environmental document for the proposed project that is listed above. The public hearing will be tentatively held on Monday, December 15, 2025, at 7:00 P.M., in the Kings County Board Chambers.

Owners of the Leprino East cheese plant have officially filed the state required WARN notice in recent days stating as of January 9 the Colorado firm will lay off 269 long time workers. No news about the disposition of the company’s older mozzarella plant here that is a fixture in Downtown Lemoore.In other locations where Leprino is closing plants they have found buyers to reuse two vacated facilities

Owners of the Valley grown Quesadilla Gorilla! restaurant chain report on social media that they will close their Hanford location on 12/20,after 5 years and their Tulare location will be closing sooner than planned on 11/9. “While our locations in Hanford and Tulare will be closing, this isn’t the end of our story. We’ll continue to serve our guests in Downtown Visalia, the Tower District in Fresno, and San Luis Obispo, and we’re excited to be opening in Clovis off Willow and Shepherd at the beginning of next year.” say Miguel & Mikayla Reyes.

Tule River Indian Tribe of California reclaims over 17,000 acres and reintroduces tule elk on ancestral land. Governor Gavin Newsom recently announced the return of 17,030 acres of ancestral land to the Tule River Indian Tribe- the largest ancestral land return in the Sierra Nevada foothills and Central Valley region.In a late october ceremony pairs of Tule Elk once abundant in the area were set loose in this foothill region.

As of November 22, Hanford ‘s Winter Wonderland opens through January 11, 2025

Along with all California hospitals, particularly rural ones, Visalia’s Kaweah Health got some bad news recently with passage of the “Big Beautiful Bill”, expected to reduce revenues once Medicare and Medicaid cuts are implemented in the coming months. The new law is expected to strip up to $128 billion from CA Hospitals over the next 10 years according to the California Hospital Association.

Kaweah Health CEO Gary Herbst has said the impact on the hospital could amount to $60 million a year by the time all elements of the bill are fully implemented.

Kaweah Health’s service area in Tulare County, California, has a significant Medicaid population, with approximately 62% of its residents covered by Medi-Cal and living near or below the federal poverty level. As a large, public, non-profit hospital, Kaweah Health serves as the primary provider in the region, offering critical services to a population with a high proportion of Medicaid recipients.

This is just one factor as the area’s largest employer struggles with stubborn obstacles. The district has approximately 5,200 employees and a medical staff of about 670 professionals.

Since the arrival of COVID in March 2020, Kaweah Health has struggled to return to financial health, although some months their monthly financial statements presented to the Kaweah Board show a positive bottom line, suggesting they may have turned a corner.

Employee costs up

During the pandemic, the hospital was forced to hire hundreds of nurses and other care providers through contract agencies to handle the flood of patients. Since then, the hospital has been successful in cutting the number of these expensive temporary health care workers. But now the latest monthly financial snapshot shows overall employee costs are up. This year employee expenses have gone from $38.8 million in January 2025 to $43.5 million in July 2025.

In the meantime, one place the hospital earns important income is in surgery cases. But here too the number of procedures is down. In recent years, many types of care are now provided without an overnight stay including cataract surgery, hernia repairs(now done on an outpatient basis that can lead to a faster recovery). Also, Gallbladder Removal,Colonoscopies and Lumpectomiesy, all formerly done in a hospital.

Baby Bust?

Then, there’s a curious decline in the number of births at the hospital. It is a trend seen across the State and nation. In 2023, the most recent year for which the California Department of Public Health records birth data, there were 400,129 births in California. This is down almost 100,000 births from a decade ago, when there were 494,392 births.
With about 70 births per 1,000 women of child-bearing age annually, Tulare County actually has one of the highest fertility rates in California.

But Tulare County is also struggling to maintain enough doctors to provide essential maternity care. Agreements between doctors and hospitals are ending and obstetricians are changing their practices and sometimes moving out of the county or out of state. Some obstetricians have decided they no longer want to deliver babies. Many OB/GYN medical practices no longer accept new patients and in the most extreme instances, hospitals no longer accept maternity patients. That is not happening here.

At Kaweah Health Medical Center, Tulare County’s largest hospital, about 400 babies are delivered each month, although the most recent numbers are down from that. One reason for this decline was the closure of the Visalia OB/GYN Medical Group back in December 2024. This Group accounted for a large number of deliveries, particularly among women with private insurance. For June 2025, Kaweah Health had budgeted for more than 400 deliveries but the actual number came in at 330. During the COVID years, there was a “baby bust” trend at Kaweah.

Outpatient trend

One long-term trend across the nation is that more procedures that were previously done in the hospital are now being done on an outpatient basis. That means the inpatient occupancy of the hospital is lower than budgeted. For example, in June 2025 the budget called for a daily census in the hospital of 440 but just 385 beds were filled. One report says in 2023, the hospital had an average census of 421 patients daily – falling to 405 in 2025.

In July the Trump administration signaled that more surgeries be done in outpatient facilities like ambulatory surgery centers, proposing a Medicare policy that could accelerate the shift away from hospital-based care, says a report from STAT.

“The administration is aiming to scrap Medicare’s list of 1,700 procedures that the program will only pay for in inpatient settings. Medicare officials unveiled their decision to eliminate the so-called inpatient only list in a proposed rule…”

Some trends up

Not that it is all bad news. Kaweah Health’s growing network of rural health clinics are seeing more and more patients around Tulare County. Other hospital-based clinics are also doing well, including its two urgent care centers, its urology clinic and other medical clinics whose patient care volumes are up year over year. The hospital- owned retail pharmacy is making money, up some $596K from budget. Revenue from operation of the Lifestyle Center is up 24%.

But the monthly bottom line number shows red ink for 4 of the 7 months of this calendar year, with the most recent months all minus as to net margin, indicating its profitability or lack of it.

This chart shows it all.

January, February and March of 2025 were all positive with a net income of $7.8 million. But, April, May, June and July were all below the predicted budget number, adding up to a minus $15.7 million, offsetting earlier numbers by double. July, the first month of the new 2026 fiscal year, is still showing more expenses than revenue. A July 2024 to July 2025 comparison shows operating revenue down 10% and employee expenses up 12%.

A memo to the Kaweah Board explained the following trends:

• Salaries and Wages: The $954K unfavorable variance is due to increases in registered nurse expenses compared to budget in inpatient settings.
• Physician Fees: The $765K unfavorable variance is due to payments made to contracted Radiology, Cardiology and Hospitalist groups that were higher than anticipated.
• Humana Cap Expenses: The unfavorable variance of $1.7M is due to higher than anticipated third party expenses (bills paid by Kaweah Health to other non-Kaweah providers for its enrolled Humana Medicare Advantage members).
  People living here show up for medical care whether they have insurance or not. So, Kaweah Health has to write off, on average, $10M-$12M/year (“expected net patient payments”) in bad debt uncompensated care. The standard healthcare industry benchmark for bad debt is 2-3% of Net Patient Revenue. “We are averaging within that range.” explains a memo.

Talk of Towers

The district hospital lays out their financial reports for all to see on their website and both administrators and the Board regularly strategize and work to improve the results knowing that continued red ink could sink perhaps Tulare County’s most important institution. One trend the hospital is no longer talking about – building more patient care towers, although the seismic issue of the Mineral King wing is still unresolved. Hospitals all over the State have sought public funding through bonds, but these efforts have faced voter opposition.

On a regular basis the hospital faces both positive and negative news presented to the public including a recent lawsuit over a claimed wrongful death after an ER visit and kudos this week by U.S. News & World Report who recognized Kaweah Health in seven adult procedures and conditions as a High Performing Hospital in their 2025-2026 rankings.

use this chart showing red ink recently

California Association of Realtors (CAR) reports that California existing single-family home sales totaled 261,820 in July, down 1.0 percent from 264,400 in June and down 4.1 percent from 272,990 in July.
July’s statewide median home price was $884,050, down 1.7 percent from $899,790 in June and down 0.3 percent from $886,420 in July 2024.

California’s spring homebuying season continued to fall short of expectations, as elevated mortgage rates and growing economic concerns restrained home sales from year ago levels for the fourth straight month. Closed escrow sales of existing, single-family detached homes in California totaled a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 261,820 in July, according to information collected by C.A.R. 
Kings sales up 20%
Bucking the trend was Kings County and a few others in the state. Kings County saw a 20% increase in sales in July compared to a year earlier. Tulare County was up 8% and Ventura County was also up at 7.2%.
Back in Kings County, the median price of a home sold in July fell to $365,000 compared to $369,000 in July 2024.
Despite the increase in sales in King County,it’s taking longer to sell a home numbering 35 days in July 25 compared to 17 days in July 24 – about double the time. Tulare County showed a similar trend with the average time on the market numbering 33 days up from 20 in July 2024.
Statewide pending sales slipped from last year’s level for the eighth consecutive month in July, registering the largest year-over-year decline since November 2023. While mortgage rates have dropped to their lowest level since October 2024, the latest uptick in inflation could reverse the recent rate improvement trend and push rates back up closer to 7 percent. As such, housing demand is likely to remain soft through August until buyers and sellers get a better sense of what direction the market and economy are going. 

“The housing market experienced a modest slowdown in both sales and prices in July as some buyers stepped back, waiting for more certainty in the market and broader economy,” said C.A.R. President Heather Ozur, a Palm Springs REALTOR®. “Encouragingly, mortgage rates have recently declined to their lowest level since last October, and that has already led to an increase in purchase applications. If this trend continues, we could see stronger sales.

Ladies Room mural going up in Downtown Hanford
More buildings in Downtown Hanford are being adorned with murals and now add a new eye popping wall painting by Lauren Farrar at the Ladies Room Beauty Parlour at 109 W 8th St, Hanford. Ladies Room owner Courtney Cantwell says Lauren will start work on the new mural Thursday Aug 21 and plans to be finished  by Sept 21. People are invited to watch her progress.
“Just like the customers at Ladies Room, we hope to pretty-up Downtown” says Courtney. The city recently approved the design.
Asked where the unique name for her salon originated from, Courtney remembers it came to her when she started the business some 20 years ago with the 1980s song “Meet Me In The Ladies Room.”
Earlier this year several new murals were approved by the city including one along Irwin Street , at the Kings Art Center and one at The Plunge.

Weak job market

-US nonfarm payrolls rose by 73K in July 2025, well below expectations of 110K. The June figure was sharply revised down from an initial 147K to just 14K, while May’s reading was also cut by 125K. Taken together, these revisions show that employment in May and June was 258K lower than previously reported—suggesting the labor market may be cooling more rapidly than initially anticipated.
US nonfarm payrolls rose by 73K in July 2025, well below expectations of 110K. The June figure was sharply revised down from an initial 147K to just 14K, while May’s reading was also cut by 125K. Taken together, these revisions show that employment in May and June was 258K lower than previously reported—suggesting the labor market may be cooling more rapidly than initially anticipated.

-Trading Economics

Visalia Industrial Park companies are feeling the chill with UPS recently reporting a 3% decline in revenue on deliveries in the current quarter.The company stock is down 30% year to date on tariffs impacts.

–Amazon ,one of Visalia’s largest employers, recently told their staff that AI “would likely lead to a smaller workforce.” reports the WSJ following other companies like Union Pacific and Verizon who are cheering about it.

-More signs of weakness comes from the Inland Empire who also has a big warehouse employment base like Visalia. One report says that area’s overall vacancy rate climbed to 4.8%, up 20 bps quarter-over-quarter (QOQ) and 70 bps YOY, the highest level seen in the past decade.

Mooney losing another retail outlet

The shopping center anchored by Dick’s Sporting Goods in Visalia will be losing a tenant with the closing of Mattress Firm in the center. Mattress Firm is one of 15 mattress stores operating under that name or Mattress Land or Sleep Fit that are closing due to bankruptcy filing.