-March 2,2023-
Chasing a Record Wet March is expected with a good chance of a record water year in the southern Sierra and perhaps all over California.With a month to go in the typical rainy season, the Sequoia Park region is forecasted to get another 4 inches of precip by March 6. Models predict a potential nine rainy days coming into the state through March 17 including a couple of stormy AR events, maybe warm. Official word of how the snowpack is doing will come this Friday from DWR. The Central Sierra Snow Lab in Tahoe reports they have 44 feet of snow to date with a ways to go to reach the 1951 record for snowfall of 67.6 feet. For California the rain record was in the 1982-83 season when we got 42.81 inches in that water year. But the precip record in the Tulare basin is 56 inches in 68/69. To date we have 32 inches in the bucket as of this March 1- a ways to go.
Yosemite Foods Stockton-based Yosemite Foods, a meat processor, has purchased the interests of Smithfield Foods in the Corcoran hog farm. Smithfield Foods has closed all locations operating in California including their big packing house in LA, claiming it is too expensive to do business in the state. Yosemite Foods is a small poultry, beef and pork processor owned by Michael Lau. The company was a recipient of a grant from the USDA looking to promote more competition from small producers in the meat industry. The Corcoran hog farm has a long history in Kings County previously owned by Hormel and then Smithfield. It provided pork marketed under the Farmer John label and Dodger Dogs.
Property owners within a mile of NAS Lemoore were recently notified by the base about findings of groundwater contamination from PFAS-Per-and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances used in the past at military bases. The Navy said they are doing testing of groundwater looking for the solvent used for years for fire fighting and as a cleaner.
The Kings County Board of Supervisors are studying a plan put forward by the Tachi Yokut Tribe to bring in about 37 acres into their trust lands to carry out development plans west of the gaming center. The county would lose the tax base if it goes into trust. The tribe wants to build a tribal cultural center or museum as well as some commercial buildings for member businesses on the Rancheria.
Gang sweep Looking to work to clean up the gang problem in the Central Valley, a team of 17 law enforcement agencies carried out a 4-day crackdown arresting 26 people and searching 97 homes and 23 prison cells. The raid, led by the Tulare County Sheriff department was in response to the horrific “cartel-style execution” of six people in Goshen, including a teenage mother and her baby, that investigators think was a result of gang rivalry
Cheaper diabetes drugs Good news for the thousands of diabetes sufferers in the Central Valley. Under pressure by the government, the drug company Eli Lilly has announced they will reduce the cost of insulin to $35 – a 70% drop. Medicare patients already get the cheaper price. California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced the state will begin making its own insulin to help lower the cost of the diabetes medication.
According to a 2019 Hanford Sentinel article the California Health Interview Survey said 16.2 percent of adults in Kings County have diabetes, compared to the statewide average of 9.9 percent. Diabetes leads to increased rates of hospitalization and death. Hospitalizations in Kings County due to diabetes exceed 21 per 10,000 people, compared to the statewide average rate of 17, according to the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development.
A UCLA study suggested many more people in Kings County are pre-diabetic. For young adults, pre-diabetes rates ranged from lows of 26 percent in Lake County and 28 percent in San Francisco County to a high of 40 percent in rural Kings County and Imperial County.