An atmospheric storm system stayed on the proper track To reach the Bay area on Wednesday evening and beat the region in Thursday.

According to the National Weather Service, it should be a brief but considerable pumping.

“It will really install overnight and it will bring good measurable rain,” said the NWS meteorologist Brayden Murdock on Wednesday morning.

The weather service said that with moderate to strong rainfall on Wednesday at around 8 p.m. and would develop into an increasing number of intense until Friday morning. The agency said that urban and small floods are likely, as are flat landslides.

A flood station along the Coastal Counties should come into force on Wednesday at 10 p.m. and on Friday at 10 a.m. According to the weather service, the Santa Cruz Mountains and Big Sur Coast will receive the fundamental load of the floods.

As soon because the rain begins, it just isn’t expected to remain within the lower layers of the region and 4 to eight inches in the upper between 2 and 4 inch rain.

It will simply put memories of an identical system that Bay Area beat in November.

“Late (Wednesday) Night to (Thursday) Tomorrow the main load will be of it,” said Murdock. “When we get into the afternoon (Thursday), it will be much more open and out.”

On Friday morning, the weather service expects the rain to be gone. It just isn’t expected that rain will return by February 20.

The high temperatures for the central a part of the region are expected to exceed in the course of the storm within the mid -Nineteen Fifties, but in response to the weather service, they may climb into the Sixties until the weekend and within the mid -Sixties. The deep stalls overnight – which have freezed overnight since Friday and have brought frost warnings, are expected to enter the Nineteen Forties.

Temperature heating is a side effect of the tropical elements within the storm. It is predicted that the identical elements dazzling in Sierra Nevada and Southern Cascades Mountains over 4,500 feet and along the coastal range within the Shasta County.

The weather service gave a winter storm warning for the Sierra Nevada and Southern Cascades from Wednesday until 10 p.m. Friday. They forecast as much as 15 inch snow between 4,500 and 6,000 feet and a couple of and 5 feet of snow over 6,000 feet. Wind gusts are expected to achieve 60 miles per hour and white.

It is predicted that travel is sort of unattainable, and safety officers asked drivers to not drive through the shocking weather.

The atmospheric river will open waves on the beaches. On all beaches of the Pacific coast, waves are expected to reach between 20 and 30 feet on Thursday, but probably reach 45 feet until Saturday. The agency asked people to avoid the water.

The rain that falls on Thursday will appear the opening round of the storm pattern like a faucet. This system, which contributed to making a path for the atmospheric river, dropped very light rain on Tuesday evening, including a couple of tenth centimeter in Ben Lomond in Santa Cruz County; Two hundredth of customs in San Francisco and 0.01 inches in Oakland.

Originally published: February 12, 2025 at 7:54 a.m. PST

Pleasing result

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Five people were killed in Ukrainian artillery shelling in Russia's border region of Belgorod, officials said Sunday, while Russian forces attacked a hotel in eastern Ukraine. One journalist was missing and two others were injured.

Twelve other people were injured within the Russian village of Rakitone, 38 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, including a 16-year-old girl who was reportedly in critical condition, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said. Another man died in a separate drone strike on the border village of Solovevka, he later wrote on social media.

Russian forces attacked a hotel in town of Kramatorsk within the east of the Donetsk region overnight. Two people were injured and one was trapped under the rubble, said the region's governor, Vadym Filashkin. The attacks are said to have targeted journalists from Ukraine, the United States and Great Britain.

The Reuters news agency said on Sunday that its journalist covering the war in Ukraine was missing and two other team members had been hospitalized after the Sapphire hotel, which housed a six-person crew, was hit by “an apparent rocket attack” on Saturday. “One of our colleagues is missing, while two others have been taken to hospital for treatment,” the agency said.

The remainder of the team has already arrived, the news agency reported.

Local authorities said the hotel was hit by a Russian Iskander-M ballistic missile, causing the reporters to suffer blast injuries, concussions and cuts to their bodies.

Associated Press reporters on the scene described the previous hotel as a “field of rubble” and hours after the attack, excavators were still working to clear away the rubble.

In addition to the hotel, a close-by multi-story constructing was also destroyed, Filashkin said, and rescue staff are busy clearing the rubble at the location.

The eastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv also got here under Russian shelling, leading to quite a few injuries among the many civilian population, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov wrote on the messaging service Telegram.

In Balakliya, a Russian attack destroyed six houses and damaged others. A 55-year-old man was injured. In the Kupiansk area, a house was set on fire by a Russian attack, injuring 4 women.

---

Follow AP's coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine has destroyed a key bridge in Russia's Kursk region and shelled a second nearby in a spectacular border crossing that began Aug. 6, cutting off supply lines, officials said Sunday.

The attacks on the bridge, apparently geared toward thwarting a Russian counter-advance on Kursk, could mean that Kyiv is trying to achieve a foothold within the region.

Pro-Kremlin military bloggers acknowledged that the destruction of the primary bridge over the Seim River near the town of Glushkovo will hamper supplies to Russian forces repelling the Ukrainian incursion, although Moscow can still deploy pontoons and smaller bridges. Ukrainian Air Force Commander Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleshchuk posted a video on Friday of an airstrike that cut the bridge in half.

Less than two days later, Ukrainian troops stormed a second bridge in Russia, based on Oleshchuk and Russian regional governor Alexei Smirnov.

As of Sunday morning, there was no official information on the precise location of the second bridge attack. However, Russian Telegram channels claimed that a second bridge over the Seim River within the village of Zvannoe had been hit.

According to Russian news site Mash, just one bridge remained intact within the region after the attacks. The Associated Press couldn’t immediately confirm these claims. If confirmed, the Ukrainian attacks would further complicate Moscow's attempts to accumulate its troops in Kursk and evacuate civilians.

Glushkovo is situated about 12 kilometers north of the Ukrainian border and about 16 kilometers northwest of the fundamental battle area in Kursk. Zvannoe is one other 8 kilometers northwest.

Ukraine could attempt to defend the conquered territories

Kiev has given little detail on the scope and purpose of its push into Russia with tanks and other armored vehicles, the most important attack on the country since World War II that took the Kremlin by surprise and left dozens of villages and tons of of prisoners in Ukrainian hands.

Ukrainians have pushed deep into the Kursk region in several directions, encountering little resistance and spreading chaos and panic as tens of 1000’s of civilians fled the realm. Ukraine's commander-in-chief, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, claimed last week that his troops had advanced across 1,000 square kilometers of the region, even though it has not been possible to independently confirm what exactly Ukrainian forces actually control.

Analysts imagine that Ukraine could attempt to consolidate its power positions in Russia, but given Kyiv's limited resources, this could be dangerous as its own supply lines extending far into Kursk could be in danger.

The incursion demonstrated Ukraine's ability to seize the initiative and boosted its morale, which had been weakened by a failed counteroffensive last summer and months of arduous Russian gains within the eastern Donbass region.

The invasion of Kursk was much like Ukraine's September 2022 lightning operation led by Syrsky, through which Ukrainian forces took advantage of an absence of Russian manpower and field fortifications to regain control of the northeastern Kharkiv region.

Zelenskyj asks for permission to penetrate deeper into Russia

On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Kyiv's allies to lift remaining restrictions on the usage of Western weapons to attack targets deeper inside Russia, including Kursk, saying his troops could deprive Moscow of “any opportunity to advance and cause destruction” in the event that they were granted sufficient long-range capabilities.

“It is crucial that our partners remove barriers that prevent us from weakening Russian positions in the way this war requires. … The courage of our soldiers and the resilience of our combat brigades compensate for the lack of essential decisions by our partners,” Zelensky said in a post on the social platform X.

The Russian Foreign Ministry and pro-Kremlin bloggers have claimed that American HIMARS missile launchers were used to destroy bridges on the Seim River. These claims haven’t been independently verified.

Ukraine's leadership has repeatedly requested authorization for long-range strikes on Russian air bases and other infrastructure to bomb Ukrainian energy facilities and other civilian targets, including upgraded Soviet-era “glide bombs” which have devastated Ukraine's industrial east in recent months.

Moscow also appears to have stepped up its attacks on Kyiv. On Sunday, town was attacked with ballistic missiles for the third time this month, based on the pinnacle of town's military administration. Serhii Popko said in a Telegram post that the “almost identical” attacks on the capital in August “most likely” used KN-23 missiles supplied by North Korea.

At around 7 a.m., one other attempted attack on Kiev followed, this time with Iskander cruise missiles, Popko said. Ukrainian air defenses shot down all missiles in each attacks on town, he said.

Fears in regards to the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant are increasing

In a separate development, the pinnacle of the United Nations nuclear watchdog said on Saturday that the safety situation on the Russian-occupied Zaporizhia nuclear power plant was deteriorating following reports of a drone attack nearby.

Rafael Grossi, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, called for “maximum restraint on all sides” after an IAEA team stationed at the facility plant reported that a drone-borne explosive device had detonated just outside the protected area.

According to Grossi's statement, the impact occurred “near the main water sprinkler pools” and about 100 meters from the one power line that supplies the plant. The IAEA team on the plant reported intense military activity in the realm last week, it said.

Ukraine has repeatedly claimed that Russia is planning an attack and blamed Ukrainian forces for it. Last summer, Zelensky warned of possible explosive devices that he said Moscow may need placed on the roof of the facility plant in an try to blackmail Ukraine.

---

Another rise in temperatures was expected within the Bay Area on Wednesday, so the National Weather Service issued a heat warning for some areas.

This development alone may not seem particularly newsworthy considering that July was already scorching hot, with temperatures consistently at or above 38 degrees for a lot of the month. But in response to meteorologists, the warmth is a little bit different this time.

“We're going to be pretty muggy over the next few days,” NWS meteorologist Brayden Murdock said Wednesday morning. “It's very muggy for the West Coast. It's not the kind of muggy East Coast air you see here, but people who aren't used to that will definitely notice it.”

The hottest a part of the day will likely be Wednesday, Murdock said. Temperatures in the most well liked parts of the inside are expected to be between 96 and 100 degrees, while relative humidity is predicted to be at the least 60 percent. Temperatures in the most well liked parts of the South Bay are expected to be between 95 and 100 degrees, with humidity near 70 percent.

According to the weather service, temperatures closer to the water will likely be above 20 degrees, but humidity will likely be above 80%.

According to the weather service, the warmth warning is in effect until 9 p.m. Wednesday for the Santa Clara Valley, the eastern Santa Clara Hills, the southern Salinas Valley and the inside of San Benito and Monterey counties.

“The humidity we have right now is coming from the remnants of three tropical storms that formed south of Baja,” Murdock said. “Those systems have all fizzled out and sent some of their elements north.”

The effects may even be felt on Thursday, when temperatures begin to drop by 6 to eight degrees.

“Don't let the temperatures fool you. It's going to feel hot,” Murdock said. “It's going to be hard to escape the heat if you're out there. Be sure to take time to get out of the heat and cool down. It's going to be dangerous.”

As the weekend approaches, temperatures will drop even further, Murdock said, but humidity will proceed to play a task.

“There will be an insidious heat,” he said. “Be careful.”

Originally published: August 7, 2024 at 7:38 am

Sudan's ongoing humanitarian crisis after greater than a 12 months of civil war shows little sign of slowing downAnd amidst the fighting, a worrying development is emerging that might complicate the conflict and spread beyond Sudan’s borders: the Rise of “ethno-mercenaryism”.”

These are fortune hunters recruited on the idea of their ethnicity or economic reasons who come to Sudan from across Africa's Sahel region – the vast, semi-arid area of ​​the continent that separates the Sahara within the north from the more fertile tropical regions within the south.

The involvement of non-Sudanese Arab fighters within the Sudanese civil war has implications far beyond the country's borders and highlights broader sociopolitical and economic trends across the African continent. As a researcher who follows the developments that Political transitions within the countries along the Red SeaI’m convinced that understanding the complex dynamics that draw outside fighters into the Sudanese civil war is critical to understanding the larger geopolitical shifts that Shaping the region.

Migration, climate change and resource scarcity

The war between the Sudanese armed forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces broke out in April 2023 after the support forces, which had until then been under the control of the armed forces, attacked government positions within the capital Khartoum. The war quickly escalated into bloody fighting across the country between the 2 rival groups.

It isn’t only an area problem, but increasingly a regional one. Fighters from Chad, Libya and Niger have joined the support forcessuggesting an internet of alliances that challenge traditional notions of national sovereignty and security.

This cross-border engagement underscores the interconnectedness of the Sahel region. And the fighters involved should not mere mercenaries – they’re participants in a deep-rooted, historically complex struggle for resources and power that pits the region's ethnic groups against one another.

The recruitment of foreign Arab fighters by the Rapid Support Forces – a bunch that emerged from the Janjaweed militia accountable for massacres throughout the Darfur region – is influenced by several aspects, including historical migration and economic pressures.

The legacy of Pan-Arabism and Arab supremacy ideologypropagated by personalities resembling the murdered Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, plays a job. It is linked to current issues resembling Climate change and resource scarcity to create a volatile environment during which traditional governance structures struggle to keep up order. Since the Nineteen Sixties, there have been Civil wars in Chad between tribal movements and in Sudan between Darfur's rebel groups and the central government in Khartoum.

However, understanding the rise of ethno-mercenaryism within the Sahel requires a comprehensive approach that takes into consideration the historical, socio-political and economic dimensions.

The Arabization of Sudan

In his ethnography “The Sanusi of Cyrenaica” from 1954, the British anthropologist Edward Evans-Pritchard captures the nomadic spirit of an Awlad Ali tribesman within the northern Sahel: “We don't call any place our home. It's wherever there is grass and water.”

Arab influence reached Niger and Western Sahara within the 14th century via trade routes, which led to intermarriage with local communities. In eastern Chad, Arabized communities have links to Sudan, where Arabization dates back to early Islam. In addition to the Rizeigat Baggara tribe Due to centuries-old land rights in Darfur, Arab nomads within the Sahel have been in constant motion since pre-colonial times.

Factors resembling land disputes and Desertification – the method by which fertile land becomes desert – were historically the Movement of Arab tribes across national bordersThese tribes, which migrated in the course of the pre-colonial era of France and Britain, have long-standing ties that transcend modern political boundaries, complicating the simplistic portrayal of an internal civil war.

And strict Droughts within the early Nineteen Eighties have exacerbated disputes over resources.

For example, declining rainfall and soil erosion in Darfur forced Arab groups to maneuver south, increasing competition with local farmers. Strong immigration from North Darfur and Chad to central agricultural areas contributed to the famine in 1983-84 which claimed hundreds of lives.

The Baggara Beltstretching from Sudan to Niger, also challenges colonial boundaries. Migration led to traditional institutions regulating land conflicts, but colonial and post-colonial laws often exacerbated conflicts by depriving nomadic tribes of their land rights. National post-colonial governments further fueled these conflicts by arming tribal militias, regardless that national armies were weak.

Postcolonial dynamics

The history of cross-regional ties between tribal groups crossing borders seeking resources provides the backdrop for today's situation in Sudan, where ethnic mercenaries are being drawn into the conflict.

But it isn’t only migration flows that complicate modern conflicts within the Sahel region, but in addition arms flows.

The influx of contemporary rifles from Libya to Darfur within the Seventies fueled the violence. In the meantime Conflict in Chad from 1978 to 1982 led to the collapse of the federal government and increased influx of weapons. In Darfur, weapons traded through business intermediaries, primarily the Zaghawa people, overwhelmed the Sudanese police. The Sudanese government armed Baggara Arabs to counter the SPLA rebel group within the mid-Nineteen Eighties, which led to tribal militias attacking neighboring regions.

This flow of arms disrupted peace, stability and traditional norms. Principle of “DiyaWhile “blood money” – paid to unintended victims or their families – was effective in curbing violence, modern weapons led to more killings, making blood money unaffordable. Nazirs, traditional tribal chiefs, lost control of Sudan's armed youth within the 2000s, resulting in an increase in violence.

Adding to the growing concerns concerning the region is a recent recent report documented how jihadists operating within the Sahel have begun to penetrate wealthier West African coastal states resembling Nigeria and Benin. In addition, the rise of the Rapid Support Forces and their attacks on the federal maximum security prisons in Khartoum have raised fears that Terrorists join their ranks within the war.

Addressing the regional unrest requires a nuanced understanding of those dynamics and coordinated efforts to advertise stability and development within the Sahel region.

The rise of ethnic mercenaries supporting the support forces threatens to further destabilise an already unstable region. While stopping cross-border ethnic recruitment is crucial, a comprehensive approach is required to handle the foundation causes of this dangerous phenomenon: climate change, arms flows and poor governance.

The Bay Area on Sunday once more witnessed the chaos that may ensue when drivers get uncontrolled and are cheered on by spectators, with two major sideshows.

Cars did doughnuts and fireworks exploded within the sky as greater than 150 vehicles occupied the Bay Bridge for a sideshow within the early hours of Sunday morning. 25 miles (40 kilometers) north, in Vallejo, several sideshows drew lots of of spectators while one automotive was set on fire, authorities said.

These recent incidents were followed by three more last week: In Oakland, 15 people were injured in a shooting on Wednesday when a brawl broke out at a sideshow near Lake Merritt, perhaps the biggest mass shooting in the town's history. On June 15, a sideshow in San Jose ended with a automotive hitting a spectator, patrons attacking a police officer's automotive and two arrests. On the identical day, a sideshow in Redwood City drew lots of of spectators and resulted in two arrests.

On the Bay Bridge, the gang completely blocked eastbound lanes just before 2 a.m. Sunday, the San Francisco division of the California Highway Patrol said in a press release. CHP officers from San Francisco, Oakland and other local divisions responded to the sideshow, which took place east of Treasure Island.

Officers estimated that greater than 150 vehicles participated within the gathering and noted that individuals in the gang set off illegal fireworks that gave the impression to be fired high into the air in videos posted on social media.

The response to the sideshow was hampered by heavy traffic and stopped cars, which “prevented officers from arriving quickly on the scene,” the CHP statement said. A CHP helicopter also responded but was fired upon with laser beams by the gang below, officials said.

Sideshow attendees began to disperse around 2:21 a.m., and the CHP conducted several enforcement actions as vehicles exited the east side of the bridge, officials said. One enforcement attempt led to a chase that ended with officers laying out spike barriers to forcefully stop the automotive. The vehicle's occupants were taken into custody.

Authorities said they’d proceed to analyze the sideshow and take “appropriate enforcement action” against the individuals and vehicles involved, the press release said.

The police were too understaffed to reply to a sideshow in Vallejo within the early hours of Sunday morning through which 4 people were shot around the identical time, in keeping with television station KTVU.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi reported dead after the helicopter he was in crashed on May 19, 2024is an absolute loyalist whose death will probably be a serious blow to the country's conservative leadership.

As search and rescue teams – hampered by rain, fog, forests and mountains – looked for wreckage, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told the nation “should pray for Raisi”..

As Expert on Iran's domestic and foreign policyI consider that concerns in Tehran may extend beyond the potential human tragedy of the crash. The change this can force can have necessary implications for an Iranian state that will probably be consumed by it domestic chaos and regional and international confrontation.

Who is Ebrahim Raisi?

Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Raisi served as zealous apparatchik of the Islamic Republic and a distinguished protégé of Khameneiwho, as supreme leader, holds absolute power within the Islamic Republic.

Before becoming president in 2021, Raisi held various positions throughout the judiciary under the leadership of the Supreme Leader. As a prosecutor and at the top of the Iran-Iraq War In 1988 he sat on the committee that sentenced 1000’s of political prisoners to death.

The executions earned him the nickname “theButcher of Tehranafter which subdued him Sanctions by the United States and condemnation by the United Nations and international human rights organizations.

Raisi since 2006 was a member of the expert assemblya body that appoints and oversees the supreme leader.

And although he lacked charisma and eloquence, Raisi, 63, was regarded as it prepared for achievement the 85-year-old Khamenei as supreme leader.

A checkered domestic record

Domestically, Raisi was president each the cause and the consequence a crisis of legitimacy and social chaos for the regime.

He won controversially 2021 presidential election after a high variety of candidate disqualifications by the Guardian Council, which vets candidates, and a historically low variety of voters Voter turnout of lower than 50%.

To appease his conservative base, Raisi and his government strengthened the moral police and reimposed religious restrictions on society. These policies led to the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests sparked by the movement Death in police custody by Mahsa Amini in 2022. The demonstrations proved successful largest and longest in the virtually 50-year history of the Islamic Republic. They also led to unprecedented state repression, Over 500 demonstrators were killed and tons of more were injured, disappeared and imprisoned. During the protests, Raisi demonstrated his loyalty to the supreme leader and conservative elites by tightening restrictions and crackdowns.

Meanwhile, the Iranian economy under Raisi continued to suffer from a mixture of things Government mismanagement and corruptiontogether with US sanctions which have increased in response Tehran's domestic political repression and provocations abroad.

Confrontation for rapprochement

The domestic political turmoil under Raisi's presidency was accompanied by changes in Iran's regional and international role.

As supreme leader, Khamenei has the ultimate say on foreign policy. But Raisi presided over a state that continued on its path confrontation along with his opponentsespecially the USA and Israel.

And whether by alternative or out of perceived necessity: Tehran has moved further and further away from any idea of ​​rapprochement with the West.

Given the tightened US sanctions, Iran under Raisi is reluctant to revive the nuclear deal. Instead, Iran has increased uranium enrichment, blocked international inspectors and develop into a nuclear threshold state.

Raisi also continued: ““Look East” policy his predecessor Hassan Rouhani. To this end, he and his government sought a better rapprochement with China.

Beijing, in turn, has provided an economic lifeline by importing Iranian oil and brokering a diplomatic agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia in March 2023.

However, under Raisi's presidency, Iran continued this act as an ally and donor of conflicts against the USA and against the West, the availability of combat drones to Russia to be used in Ukraine and the availability of weapons to varied regional proxies within the Middle East.

Since the war in Gaza began on October 7, 2023, Iran under Khamenei and Raisi has maintained a fragile balance: allowing its regional proxies to act against Israel and the United States while avoiding direct confrontation with each countries, which is conventional are superior enemies.

This balance was temporarily upset when the Islamic Republic directly attacked Israel with drones and missiles for the primary time in history in April in retaliation for an attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus.

Although in a roundabout way answerable for foreign policy, Raisi has been a key supporter of the Iranian regime because it sought to further distance itself from the established international order and seek alliances with countries similarly hostile to the West.

At the time of the helicopter crash, Raisi and his colleagues were getting back from a dam inauguration ceremony in neighboring Azerbaijan. The ceremony was likely intended as Iran's try and curry favor with Azerbaijan, having previously taken an ambiguous, if not controversial, position within the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict – which ended with a convincing victory for Azerbaijan in late 2023.

What a change in president could mean

In Raisi, Supreme Leader Khamenei had a long-time loyalist, a regime insider and a possible successor.

According to the Iranian structure, any death of a president ends in the primary vp serving as interim president. In this case that might mean Mohammad Mokhber, who’s a politician very just like Raisi and who was a politician distinguished member of the Iranian team negotiating arms deals with Moscow.

Iran would must do the identical to carry presidential elections inside 50 days. It stays to be seen who the supreme leader would approve of as future president and potential successor.

But it is much from certain that Tehran's conservatives will remain on top of things given the inner and external pressures they face.

Domestically, this might take the shape of greater state repression and electoral manipulation. At the regional and international levels, I consider this might mean forging stronger relationships with emerging allies and pursuing a calculated confrontation with traditional adversaries.

The Bay Area's shaky tech industry is showing signs of stabilizing after suffering years-long waves of painful layoffs sparked by the sector's push for greater efficiency.

While job losses at major firms like Tesla are still ravaging the region's tech industry, which is affected by layoffs, factory closures, consolidations and restructuring, the cuts are actually less severe overall.

In the one-year period ending March 2024, the Bay Area lost 36,000 tech jobs — a decline of three.9%, in accordance with a Beacon Economics estimate based on state employment reports. In 2023, the 12-month period ending in December, the Bay Area lost 49,700 tech jobs, a decline of 5.2%.

Large firms similar to Meta, Google and Cisco have laid off employees in recent times.

“Last year’s tech layoffs, which followed overstaffing in tech in 2022 and early 2023, have slowed,” said Michael Bernick, an employment lawyer on the Duane Morris law firm and former director of the state Employment Development Department.

The long-term outlook for the region's economy and tech industry stays healthy, in accordance with Russell Hancock, president of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a San Jose-based think tank.

“Downsizing is not the same as a downturn,” Hancock said. “Despite the layoffs, we still have low unemployment in Silicon Valley and the greater Bay Area, which suggests people are on their feet.”

Additionally, a number of the recent high-profile bank implosions haven’t changed into a doomsday scenario for the local tech sector, as some East Coast experts had predicted.

“The good news here is that tech job losses have not increased following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank,” said Scott Anderson, chief U.S. economist at BMO Capital Markets. “After the first episode it was more of a constant drip, drip, drip. However, there is no real end in sight.”

It can be clear that the tech sector decline has been most severe within the San Francisco-San Mateo region, where the biggest tech job losses are within the Bay Area and much greater tech job losses than within the South Bay, as shown by the news organization's evaluation of state workforce numbers compiled by Beacon Economics.

In 2023, the San Francisco-San Mateo region suffered a lack of 26,000 tech jobs – 52% of the 49,700 tech jobs lost across the Bay Area. In contrast, the South Bay lost 20,600 tech jobs, or 41.4% of all jobs within the region. The East Bay, whose reliance on high-tech jobs is way lower than that of its neighbors to the west and south, lost 2,900 tech jobs in 2023, or 5.8% of the whole.

San Francisco has been gripped by what some experts call an economic “bad luck cycle” triggered by a retail exodus, crime problems, office and hotel foreclosures and record-breaking office emptiness rates.

But some experts imagine Silicon Valley will give you the option to ease the pain of tech layoffs within the North.

“People who are losing their jobs in San Francisco or on the Peninsula are finding new opportunities in the South Bay,” Hancock said. “Start-up activity and venture investments are quite robust. Many companies are downsizing some areas of their business while expanding others.”

Nevertheless, cuts continued to occur in 2024. In the primary three months of this 12 months, tech firms shed 11,000 jobs within the Bay Area. March 2024 is the most recent month for which state employment agency figures can be found, although layoffs have continued since then. In recent weeks, Tesla has announced plans to chop greater than 3,000 jobs within the Bay Area.

“The technology industry is not immune to the same negative economic forces hanging over the current economy,” Bernick said.

These macroeconomic problems include high rates of interest and budget deficits that plague federal and state governments.

And “conditions for the tech industry remain challenging as long as interest rates remain as high as they are,” Anderson said.

Nevertheless, some experts see reason to be optimistic concerning the way forward for the industry.

“The continued loss of tech jobs is disappointing, but there are some hopeful signs emerging,” said Steve Levy, director of the Palo Alto-based Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. “The rents for vacant office space are falling and attracting new tenants.”