So hot! Silent era film star and original Hollywood “It Girl” Clara Bow whoops it up at her Malibu Colony beach house, in the summer of 1930. Olympic swimmer and legendary surfer-turned actor Duke Kahanamoku was a regular visitor in Malibu in the late 1920s. Local legend says he taught his friend and co-star Ronald Coleman and other Colony residents—including Clara Bow, Myrna Loy, and Joan Crawford—how to surf. Malibu would never be the same! Clara is showing her comedic side here, posing with a revolver and sombrero, but her love for surfing was real. TNT artist and graphic designer Urs Baur created our cover from a publicity photo of Clara Bow that appeared in the August 1930 issue of Motion Picture Magazine.
Cover Art & Design by Urs Baur. Original photo is part of the Cary Weiss Photo Archive and credit is Paramount Studio photographer Otto Dyar
In our last issue, we looked at the El Niño winter of 1983 and discussed the similarities between that year and this year’s forecast. This week, a large section of the Westward Beach access road in Malibu was severely damaged by powerful waves generated by the El Niño-fueled monsoon season. The road is closed indefinitely. During the same week, a section of sea cliff near Zuma Beach collapsed into the ocean. Fortunately, no one was injured in either incident, but the damage is another reminder that the local coast is highly vulnerable to erosion and a warning that this winter has the potential to bring even more drastic impacts to the coast.
Wildfires are devastating parts of Europe, Canada, and the Pacific Northwest. In Oregon, 1.8 million acres have already burned this season, and hot, windy weather continues to generate extremely dangerous conditions.
Fire risk in the Santa Monica Mountains remains high. The plume of smoke from an August 2 brushfire in Agoura Hills was visible as far away as Saddle Peak in Topanga. Fire crews, including air support, acted quickly, and the fire was held to five acres. The incident was a reminder that peak fire season is rapidly approaching and conditions this year are explosive.
All over the world, countries are bracing for the potential impact of this unusually strong El Niño or are already grappling with its impact. In the US, however, the Trump administration has gutted key weather monitoring programs that help federal agencies and the rest of us prepare.
Now, a group of NOAA employees who were terminated by the administration are fighting back. After climate.gov, the US government’s official climate science website, was eliminated, they launched Climate.us, an independent, crowdfunded platform restoring over 15 years of climate data and the Fifth National Climate Assessment.
The new website and the data it preserves and makes available to the public have the support of more than 80 volunteer researchers. Though no longer employed by the government, they remain committed to making their research available.
Elections have consequences for everything—even the weather—and those consequences impact not only voters but also those who don’t vote. California makes it easy for all legal citizens to participate in elections. County elections officials will begin mailing ballots for the November 3 General Election by October 5, 2026—less than two months away. Now would be a great time to register to vote or update any changes, such as a new address.
And speaking of voters and the government, California’s new DROP Act went into effect on August 1. DROP—Delete Request and Opt-out Platform—allows California residents to submit a single data deletion request that goes to all registered data brokers operating in the state. The program was launched on January 1, but August 1 marks the day when the state began enforcing the new law.
DROP can help limit the information collected by data brokers—info that can include an alarming amount of personal data, from Social Security numbers to search histories. DROP only includes registered data brokers, not companies like Google or Meta that gather data but aren’t officially data brokers.
It also won’t help with illegal data brokers, and the data that registered data brokers have already gathered and sold will still be out there; but at least it’s a start.
Ironically, one must provide personal information to the state in order to participate in the program. However, the upside, provided DROP functions as intended, should be a decrease in the amount of spam, scams, and “targeted ads” to which participants are exposed.
In a different political climate one might hope that this law might be adopted nationwide, but at least this is a start. Learn more at https://privacy.ca.gov/drop/
Stay safe, be well.
