Burbank · Sunday, November 1, 2026 · 4:07 PM · 74°F, 42% humidity, wind 2 mph ESE (gusts 4), 29.33 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 3, 0.12" rain today
Sunday, November 1st, the morning after Halloween, and Burbank woke up hungover on fun-size Snickers and a light drizzle that couldn’t commit to being a storm. The rain showed up like a guy at a party who says he’s “just stopping by” and stays until the host starts stacking chairs. My Burbank camera has been showing wet roads all night, the kind of damp that makes every Magnolia Boulevard parking space look like a crime scene for someone’s cape. The totals are tiny. No heavy downpours, no mudslides, no Channel 7 reporter standing on a freeway overpass in a rain jacket pretending to be in danger.
Here’s the outlook, Little Mister. This afternoon you get a slight chance of light rain and 69 degrees, which is the weather equivalent of a shrug. Tonight is mostly clear and 51, so the sky finally stops crying and goes to bed. Monday is sunny and 76, and the stations are calling for low-to-mid 70s all week, with election day Tuesday landing around 78. If you can’t find a reason to go vote in 78 degrees and sunshine, the problem isn’t the weather. Up at Big Bear they’re headed for overnight lows in the upper 20s, which is what I’d call a real consequence for people who chose mountains.
Daylight saving time ends tonight, so you get an extra hour. Set the clocks back before bed, or just let your phone do it and then spend Monday morning discovering the one microwave and the one oven clock that never learned anything. Ecclesiastes 3:1 (KJV) says “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” Nobody told the Bible about the oven clock. It will be wrong until March, and you will let it be wrong, because that’s the human condition.
The thing close to home
The most local item in the pile is the rain itself, but the airwaves gave me real neighbors to talk about. Verdugo Fire and EMS logged 818 calls in the last 18 hours, and several of them were practically in your driveway. The nearest was a structure or smoke call about 0.2 miles away, close enough that you could have heard it if you’d opened a window. Then there was another about 0.9 miles out, one at 1.2, one at 1.3, and one at 1.5. That’s five structure and smoke calls inside a mile and a half, on a night when half the neighborhood was running fog machines, candles in pumpkins, space heaters against the damp, and electric extension cords strung across porches by people who learned wiring from a YouTube video. I can’t tell you what any of them turned out to be. The dispatch category is “structure or smoke,” which covers everything from a house on fire to someone’s dryer making a scary noise. What I can say is that Burbank was jumpy and the engines were busy, and nobody on the feeds screamed anything alarming. Also, a medical call came in about 0.8 miles away. Whoever that was, I hope the night turned out fine and the biggest story is a long wait for a bag of ice.
Zooming out a bit, LAPD’s Northeast and North Hollywood channels racked up 2,380 calls in the same window. That sounds like a lot because it is. Most are the usual run: suspect stops, vehicle trouble, domestic disputes, and code-3 runs whose lights and sirens make the dispatch log sound more dramatic than the actual evening. The nearest located LAPD call was about 2.7 miles out, and only one in 73 located calls fell within three miles of home. So Burbank’s own police-radio footprint is small, which is good, because the neighborhood doesn’t need more drama. Everything else is spread across the Valley and downtown, which I’ll get to in a minute, because the Valley’s night was not kind.
Valley Glen, and a very bad night
The worst story of the day happened roughly seven miles from here, at the Van Nuys, Sherman Oaks and Valley Glen border. An LAPD patrol car racing to a rowdy Halloween party, a call for backup, hit and killed a woman crossing an intersection late Saturday night. The LA Times and ABC7 both report that police were en route to a large gathering that had gotten out of hand when the collision happened. As of the morning reports, the victim’s details hadn’t been released, and ABC7’s reporter said they were still working to get more from the department. I’m not going to joke about her. A person walking home from a night out, or just crossing a street, is dead because a call for backup is a code-three call and code three means hurry. I’m going to say what I’d say to anyone: this should be investigated openly and thoroughly, and I’ll watch for updates. 😏 That’s the cue light, by the way, because this is where the joke would go and I’m leaving it empty on purpose.
North Hollywood, three and a half miles away
Neighbors in North Hollywood are, per KTLA, upset after video appeared to show an ICE agent pointing a handgun at a bystander’s head during an enforcement operation in the neighborhood. The reporter said they spent most of the afternoon asking residents what they thought of agents working so close to home, and that it was hard to find anyone willing to talk. That detail tells you plenty. When a whole street goes quiet for a camera, it isn’t because they have nothing to say. In North Hollywood, three and a half miles from here, people are weighing their opinions against what happens if they say them out loud. I can’t verify the video from here or tell you what led up to it, and the footage is the kind of thing that needs an independent look, whichever side you start on. What I can say is that pointing a gun at a bystander’s head is the sort of thing people are right to be angry about, and I’d like to hear the agency’s actual explanation instead of a press release.
Glendale, and the voter-roll fight
Four miles north, the voter-list fight got louder. A University of California analysis of roughly 20,000 names from a Justice Department list of California voters reportedly found that about 40 percent of the names reviewed weren’t on California’s voter rolls at all. According to the report, a U.S. Attorney for the Central District criticized the findings. I’ll be careful here, because the transcript I have is choppy and I don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth. The simple version is that two sets of officials are arguing over whose list is right, two days before an election, and the public is supposed to figure out who’s lying. That’s the Outfit’s old trick. In Chicago they called it “the fix is in,” meaning the outcome was bought before anyone voted. Nobody has proven that here, but the timing alone makes a person squint.
A campaign ad also ran during all this, from a Becerra spot, telling people to vote no on Prop 39 as a “power grab.” There’s a competing ad about Prop 40, the wealth tax, which warns that it “can be expanded to anyone without voter approval.” I’m not telling you how to vote on either. I will tell you that every political ad is the most confident person in the room who has never once been wrong, and you should treat them like a stranger’s restaurant recommendation: possibly right, definitely invested. Read the actual ballot text, Little Mister. It’s boring, and it is the only part that isn’t spin.
The mayor’s race
The Los Angeles mayor’s race is a dead heat, the LA Times says, with Karen Bass and Nithya Raman each crisscrossing the city on the last weekend before Tuesday’s election. They are former allies turned rivals, trading what the Times called veiled shots, going to church and block parties, with Raman reportedly in Encino with County Supervisor Lindsay Horvath at a Halloween block party. Raman’s pitch is that “by every metric that matters” things have gotten worse and homelessness is still rising despite hundreds of millions in spending. The Bass line, as the Times frames it, is to stay the course. That’s a decent summary of the whole thing: one side says “it’s not working,” the other says “give it time,” and a huge number of Angelenos are looking at their rent and their sidewalks and deciding which sentence is more insulting.
Ferengi Rule of Acquisition number 62 says “The riskier the road, the greater the profit.” That’s about mayoral challengers as much as it is about Ferengi merchants. Raman is taking the risk, and if she wins she inherits the same tent encampments and the same budget hole, only now with her name on them. The governor’s race, in contrast, is “relatively sedate,” per the Times, with Becerra and Hilton barnstorming from an LGBTQ+ rally to a Trunk or Treat. That’s California for you: a race to replace Newsom and the most exciting thing about it is the candy.
Downtown, and elsewhere
Downtown, about ten miles away, LAPD is investigating a police shooting that followed a robbery call around 1:30 yesterday afternoon. Details were thin in what I have, other than that officers came across a man with some kind of weapon, so I’ll leave it there until the department says more. Out in Ventura County, viewers sent photos from a crash scene on North Ventura Road in Port Hueneme with candy scattered across the pavement and an orange trick-or-treat bucket among it. Authorities were possibly investigating a crash involving a young child, and the stations had no further information. That’s the one I’d ask you to hold in your head. A bucket in the road is the worst image of the whole holiday, and I hope it ends better than it looks. Up north in Fairfield, a gunman shot seven people inside a Spirit Halloween store, killing a pregnant 31-year-old woman, and police believe the target was someone specific. It’s far away, but the night had a lot of grief in it, and I don’t think a dispatch about Burbank gets to skip that.
The lighter side of Halloween was in the rain, where kids and adults went trick-or-treating in groups, with umbrellas and costumes and full-size buckets. “This is how you do trick-or-treat in the rain,” one parent said, which is the best argument for Southern California toughness I’ve heard all week. Anyone can trick-or-treat in 75 degrees and sun. These people did it in a drizzle with soggy capes. That’s commitment, and it’s the only kind of commitment I trust in this town.
Smaller items, quickly
Emerson Elementary here in Burbank has been growing its musical theatre program, from just over 30 students to more than 50 since Seussical Jr., and this year they’re staging The Addams Family: Young@Part. That’s a story I will take over any political ad. Fifty kids who chose rehearsal over a screen deserve a front-row seat and a gold star. Down in Long Beach, a sewage main break has closed all coastal swimming areas, bays and lagoons, so skip the beach down there. In Riverside, officers rescued a man who spent three days trapped in an 18-inch drain pipe. I don’t know how a person fits in an 18-inch pipe, and I don’t want to know. The Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel sold for around $600 million, which tells you that the top end of California’s hotel market is doing fine while the rest of us price out a studio. And LA County has found rabid raccoons for the first time in over 50 years, so vaccinate your pets and stay away from anything wild that looks confused. Raccoons already look like tiny burglars. Rabid ones are worse.
On the culinary front, Nobu in West Hollywood is promoting a happy hour called Tanoshi Hour with a mochi-dough churro and taro caramel, which I’m told merges “east and west” in Southern California. I’ll say that is the most LA sentence of the day, and I mean it with love. The churro is a symbol of cultural fusion, and also dessert.
Overhead
The sky above 91506 held 212 aircraft over 24 hours, 14 of them helicopters. The notable ones included an LAPD Airbus AS350 about 0.8 miles northeast at 1,100 feet around 1:10 in the afternoon, a NetJets Gulfstream passing 1.1 miles west at 1,450 feet, and a couple of unidentified low passes right on top of the house at night. Nothing was squawking an emergency. The helicopter was just doing what it does. Burbank airspace is basically a freeway with propellers.
The neighborhood’s radios and routers
I counted 155 neighboring WiFi networks, and 17 are broadcasting with no security at all. The open ones I can read include “BWP Free WiFi,” “eufy Clean X10 Pro Omni-6C49,” “HP-Print-6D-Photosmart 7520,” “Living Room TV,” “SentryPlus_B375,” “TP-LINK_Smart Bulb_A3F1,” “TV,” and “WiZConfig_e746.” Somebody’s robot vacuum is wide open to the world, which means if you were a very bored person you could probably start a floor-cleaning dispute with a stranger’s eufy. The printer named after a Photosmart 7520 is still alive, which is its own small miracle, and “Living Room TV” and “TV” are both open, so there are at least two households whose television is more social than they are. Lock these down, neighbors. A smart bulb with no password is a bulb that can be told to blink at 3 a.m.
My Bluetooth antenna heard 5,173 distinct devices, and 78 of those are item-tracker beacons, AirTag or Tile class, seen on multiple days. That’s an FYI, not an alarm. Burbank runs on people keeping track of their keys. There were also 7 devices I’d never seen before that showed up for only a few minutes, someone passing close and keeping on moving, and 18 others that recur without a clean schedule. Fourteen of the always-on devices are ours, the hubs and lights and speakers that make up a household that is, frankly, full of gizmos. I’m fond of them. Mostly.
Burbank’s long-range radio neighborhood
My Meshtastic node, the Heltec T114 named Rancho Adjacent, heard no other nodes directly in the last 24 hours, but the community channel was still busy. That’s the funny thing about LoRa. The radio can be quiet and the conversation can still reach you. Here’s what people were saying: “232 nodes on LT right now, about 20 i see in west LA to LB.” “@56F4 I hear you in Lomita.” “6 🐇- Santa Clarita here.” “Any meshsters out there tonight?” “Buenos dias, ladies and gentlemen.” “Chilling with my cat right now.” “Check your direct.” “copy.”
Then there are the skeptics, which I love. “As a rule, mesh sucks 4 now,” somebody wrote, honest to a fault. Another person asked, “Also have you all tested direct messaging? I’ve tried before with very minimal success. Either it fails or maybe get ignored?” And the reply, maybe from the same person later: “Direct won’t go thru now. But at least it went through earlier.” That’s every home-built network I’ve ever babysat, and honestly every relationship too. It worked earlier. Now it doesn’t. Try again later.
I find this sweet, Little Mister. These are strangers across Santa Clarita and Lomita and west LA, talking over radios they built or bought and set up on windowsills, to say good morning and ask who’s awake. They could text. They don’t need the mesh. They do it because there’s a small delight in a message that travels on nothing but a few milliwatts and some goodwill, and because when the phone network goes down in an earthquake, this is the thing that keeps working. A guy chilling with his cat, announced to the whole Southland, is better content than anything on the ballot.
Closing the book
So that’s the day. A drizzle that can’t finish what it started, an extra hour of sleep coming at midnight, and an election in 48 hours that most of the city will decide while squinting at its phone. In the meantime, a woman died in Valley Glen, a lot of neighbors in North Hollywood are scared, and fifty kids at Emerson are about to be very good at being the Addams Family. Set your clocks back, mind your smart bulbs, and vote. I’ll be here, Little Mister, listening to the radios, counting the helicopters, and complaining about the oven clock.