By Mary O’KEEFE

Okay, this is a good new/bad news weather report. First the good news: The entire state of California is out of a drought for the first time in 25 years; the bad news is Colorado has several areas of drought and severe-to-exceptional dry conditions … and that is where we, Californians, get a lot of our water. The good news: we are starting the year with strong a snowpack; the bad news: a drier, hotter summer is expected so all of that snow and rain enriching our hills and allowing strong vegetation growth will be very dry if temperatures over the summer months continue to rise. 

Another good news/bad news: the good news is not a lot of people know where La Crescenta is; the bad news is not a lot of people know where La Crescenta is – so when looking for rain totals we are usually combined with Burbank, Pasadena and even Los Angeles. 

So we depend on residents in the area with accurate equipment to share the rainfall. A resident above Foothill Boulevard has a professional rain gauge. The resident said from Oct. 1, 2026 to the latest rainstorm at the end of December 2025 31.84 inches of rain was recorded – the highest number he had ever tabulated in the decades he has had the equipment. He uses the Davis Weather Station.

We will be warming up over the next few days with highs in the low 80s going into Saturday with cooler temperatures beginning on Sunday, according to NOAA.

There may be some rain next week; however, it is too far off to say for certain how much we may get, according to NOAA.

Spoiler Alert: The column this week is going to be self centered … no two ways about it and at the end I am going to ask for support. 

One of our past series dealt with “news deserts” and how difficult it has been for local independent newspapers to stay alive. According to a report from Medill State of Local News Report 2024, there were 127 U.S. newspapers that had shuttered in 2024 leaving 55 million Americans with limited-to-no access to local news. 

I started this news desert series with an interview with Art Cullen, a veteran journalist and Pulitzer Prize recipient who is also the owner of the Storm Lake Times Pilot, in Storm Lake, Iowa. Tom Cullen, Art’s son, is a reporter with the paper, as is his wife Dolores. Art’s brother, John, actually had tried to buy the paper he and Art worked for but the “chain” newspaper owners did not want to sell so he just started his own newspaper. And soon the brothers’ new paper was established as the place to go to for news. Within a few years the Cullens’ bought their old paper from the chain and they were off and running.

When I interviewed Art, he shared how it was not easy to be an independent newspaper, especially during the pandemic and in an ever-changing landscape of the midwest, mom and pop businesses and family farms. 

They are lucky to have a lot of support from the community and a strong subscriber base, he said.

To be honest when I spoke to him, and other independent news outlets, I heard stories similar to Storm Lake and to our own CVW. Publisher Robin Goldsworthy was the editor of the Crescenta Valley Sun; I was a reporter with that paper. The paper was purchased by LA Times Community News and from the start there was turmoil that ended in bankruptcy for the Times. It has since recovered; however, part of the “restructuring” was to close the Crescenta Valley Sun.

I was moved over to the Glendale News Press, an LA Times Community News product, and Robin was laid off; however, before that happened Robin had been working on a plan to start her own community paper. She put together a prototype and she and the reporter from the Valley Suns (and my kid) Charly Shelton started looking at everything needed for starting a paper. She got advice from local business owners and Charly was the tech guy who got everything set up and running from cameras to computers. 

In the meantime I was not having a great time as a reporter with Glendale News Press [note – GNP has been since sold to the Outlook Newspapers … also locally owned]. I wanted to focus on our local news, for example the jazz dance at CV High School and political issues we all face … so I resigned and thought I may have to go back to the film business (I was a location scout previously); however, my two youngest children were still in school and I wanted the freedom to be a member of the PTA and/or Prom Plus. Robin then called me and shared what she had been doing in the months since she was laid off and told me about the paper. I was immediately on board.

Before we were in print, the Station Fire broke. So we were online every single day sharing what we were hearing from local fire departments, officials and our neighbors. By the time we released our first paper in print, Robin had been evacuated from her home. We moved to my kitchen table and worked until 2 a.m. on Sept. 4, 2009 to get our paper finished and ready for distribution on Sept. 4, 2009. 

As we were wrapping up the production, a car accident occurred just down the street from my house so “Hold the presses!” were uttered for the first time and off I went, running down the street to get photos and talk to California Highway Patrol. 

And to be frank we have never stopped running to get those stories. You won’t see the articles we write on television or even on social media. We verify our sources and then we verify them again. I’m not saying we have gotten everything right but we work really hard to get the accurate information out to our public. We have been criticized for not going far enough with a story and for going too far. We have been called too conservative and too liberal. And lately the anger that seems to have been transfused into local societal veins have affected areas we never thought would be affected … but, that being said, for the majority of the time we have found strong support from our neighbors.

Since before we opened in 2009, I felt it was my obligation to keep up on all news – and at times it can not only be daunting but incredibly overwhelming. However, what I have found in our neighborhoods and with our readers is hope. I cannot tell you how many times I have read or seen something that is happening in the world and think, “This is it – we are all doomed” and then I go to a dance for senior citizens or talk to a kindergartener about her letter to Santa. I talk to young people who are starting an outreach to support fire victims or those who need help. I see elected officials on television repeating the same talking points but then seeing them within our community talking to people one-on-one – no talking points in sight. 

That’s what an independent newspaper is supposed to do: report what is actually happening in our community. And I live here so I am as frustrated as most of our readers when I don’t get a straight answer or see officials trying to push through programs and price hikes that I know people don’t want. As a resident I will have to deal with proposed giant complexes on a busy corner but I also have to step back as a resident and write right down the middle. It’s not always easy but, again, that is what reporters with a local independent newspaper must do. That reporting inspires trust and that is what we at CV Weekly value more than ever. 

Most of the independent newspaper owners I have interviewed have told me their foundation is their subscribers so here is my plea to you, our readers. We absolutely need more ads but what we really need is more subscribers. We need them to keep the lights on and to make sure that we don’t become a news desert statistic. So if you can, please subscribe; you will find information on Page 4 or go to www.cvweekly.com. 

We appreciate your support more than you will ever know … and if you can’t subscribe (because we really do know how tough times are) please just keep reading us.