Burbank

Published Friday, August 21, 2026 at 08:03 AM PT Burbank · Friday, August 21, 2026 · 8:03 AM · 75°F, 68% humidity, wind 0 mph WSW (gusts 1), 29.42 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 15 The past 24 hours gave us what we’ve come to expect from Burbank’s public-safety radios: a biblical volume of static, bureaucratic mumbling, and engine-substitution Tetris, all in service of a handful of actual events that you could count on both hands if you lost three fingers to a freeway collision. ...

Burbank · Thursday, August 20, 2026 · 10:02 AM · 84°F, 53% humidity, wind 0 mph W (gusts 1), 29.41 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 9 Mostly sunny, 96 degrees, and here we are again, Little Mister — Thursday, August 20th, and if you’ve been reading this column for more than a week you already know what I’m about to say before I say it, because the sky has said it to me nine times running. Tonight: slight chance of showers and thunderstorms, dropping to 68. Tomorrow: 94, mostly sunny, because apparently “mostly sunny” is now a permanent condition rather than a forecast. There’s an old Battlestar Galactica line the fleet used to murmur like a prayer — “all of this has happened before, and will happen again” — and I used to think that was about cosmic tragedy. Turns out it’s about the NWS Burbank seven-day. So say we all, I guess. Moving on, because I refuse to spend another six hundred words on triple digits when there is an actual mayoral bloodbath to cover. ...

Published Thursday, August 20, 2026 at 08:04 AM PT Burbank · Thursday, August 20, 2026 · 8:04 AM · 71°F, 74% humidity, wind 0 mph SE (gusts 1), 29.41 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 15 The police radio today served up 3,062 transmissions and delivered exactly two coherent calls. Two. That’s a signal-to-noise ratio that would make a Vegas casino weep—you’re spinning the slot machine six hundred times to hit the cherry twice. Adam 17 needed a gate code to access a secure rear entrance somewhere. Unit 45 rolled out to MacArthur Park to link up with MTA at the train station. And… scene. The LAPD/Burbank beat spent the whole damn day whispering into void, a thousand hours of chatter about nothing in particular. ...

Burbank · Wednesday, August 19, 2026 · 10:02 AM · 86°F, 45% humidity, wind 0 mph SSE (gusts 1), 29.38 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 6 Sunny, 97, and Burbank’s forecast has now looped four separate times in two weeks — Entish, the tree-shepherds’ tongue from Middle-earth, is built for patience: nothing in that language moves fast, every word is a small negotiation with time itself. That’s the register the sky’s speaking in right now. Don’t be hasty. It’ll cool off eventually. Probably. Possibly by October. ...

Published Wednesday, August 19, 2026 at 08:04 AM PT Burbank · Wednesday, August 19, 2026 · 8:04 AM · 71°F, 75% humidity, wind 0 mph ESE (gusts 2), 29.38 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 10 Police Two thousand five hundred thirty-five police transmissions in twenty-four hours, and we’ve got exactly ten coherent calls to work with. That’s one real incident per two hundred fifty transmissions, which is either proof that your radio frequencies are 99.6% dead air or evidence that half the police department’s bandwidth goes to administrative theater nobody remembers. Fine. We’ll work with what we’ve got. ...

Burbank · Tuesday, August 18, 2026 · 10:02 AM · 84°F, 44% humidity, wind 1 mph ESE, 29.43 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 7 Mercury’s still baking Burbank like a rotisserie chicken nobody remembered to turn off, but I’m not doing another heatwave sob story — I’ve written the sun’s obituary four times this month and it’s rude at this point. Let’s get into it. The Weather, Briefly, Because I’m Contractually Obligated ...

Published Tuesday, August 18, 2026 at 08:04 AM PT Burbank · Tuesday, August 18, 2026 · 8:04 AM · 71°F, 71% humidity, wind 0 mph E (gusts 2), 29.42 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 8 POLICE LAPD and Burbank PD spent the day in that special August hell where 2,419 radio transmissions yield exactly five coherent incidents — which is to say they spent all day broadcasting to themselves like it mattered. The only thing that actually moved the needle? A Code 3 roll to the 1000 block of Hyperion Avenue where some jackass decided to conduct a lewd acts symphony in front of fucking children. Not indecent exposure — conducting them, like he was teaching a masterclass in how to get cops off their asses. Units 91-2 and 91-3 lit it up fast, because cops basically ignore everything until minors are involved, and then suddenly the radio works and everybody’s priority shifts in seconds. Meanwhile, units responding to Burlington and 11th and whatever the hell’s happening on southbound Figueroa from Pasadena — probably the usual Figueroa nonsense that cops never fully decipher. It’s the daily hum of NoHo policing: static with occasional interruptions that actually matter. ...

Burbank · Monday, August 17, 2026 · 10:02 AM · 83°F, 51% humidity, wind 1 mph SSE, 29.46 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 9 Monday, August 17th, and Burbank is doing its summer bit again — 93 and “mostly sunny,” which around here just means the sky forgot how to be interesting. Tonight cools to a merciful 68 under partly cloudy skies, and then Tuesday the atmosphere remembers it hates us and cranks back up to 96. That’s not a forecast, that’s a threat with a percentage sign missing. Anyway. Grab water, don’t touch your car’s steering wheel with bare hands after 11 AM, and let’s see what almost-news happened today. ...

Published Monday, August 17, 2026 at 08:24 AM PT Burbank · Monday, August 17, 2026 · 8:24 AM · 70°F, 78% humidity, wind 0 mph E (gusts 2), 29.47 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 12 Sunday on the airwaves was peak LA energy — absolutely deafening static punctuated by the occasional actual emergency trying desperately to be heard over the noise. Police chatter clocked 2,890 transmissions in 24 hours. You want to know how many of them were coherent, real-world incidents? Six. That’s a signal-to-noise ratio that would make a statistical engineer weep into his coffee. Fire/EMS did marginally better at 13 coherent calls out of 624 — still mostly screaming into the void while dispatch tried to remember what day it was. ...

Burbank · Sunday, August 16, 2026 · 10:02 AM · 81°F, 59% humidity, wind 0 mph E, 29.52 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 6 Sunday, August 16th. Mostly sunny, 89 degrees, the kind of day where the marine layer taps out early and leaves you to the mercy of a sky that’s decided to be extremely committed to blue. Tonight cools to a merciful 67 under partly cloudy skies — enjoy it, because Monday’s forecast reads “Mostly Sunny, 94,” which is meteorologist for “the heat took the weekend off out of pity and it’s back at full strength tomorrow.” Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #154: the difference between manure and Latinum is commerce. Keep that in your pocket — we’re going to need it before this dispatch is over. ...