Palo Alto

Local officials and scientists have yet to nail down how many fish have died, but the reports have been coming in non-stop since Friday.

The carcass of a 41-foot adult female gray whale landed at San Francisco’s Crissy Field on March 31. A second adult female was found April 3 at Moss Beach in San Mateo County. A third was found April 7 floating near the Berkeley Marina and the following day another at Muir Beach. A video of the fifth dead whale was posted on social media Friday.

The carcasses of four gray whales have been found around the San Francisco Bay Area in eight days -- an alarming string of deaths that constitutes an unusual mortality event, defined by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as a significant die-off of a marine species.

A gray whale carcass washed ashore at Crissy Field on Wednesday morning. Veterinarians and biologists from the center and from the California Academy of Sciences plan to perform a necropsy in coming days on the island to determine the cause of death.

As California streets empty under the stay-at-home measures to “flatten the curve” of the novel coronavirus outbreak, wild animals have come to reclaim their domain.

According to the National Weather Service, 36.5 million residents, 98% of Californians, are under a heat advisory Friday as a high-pressure system broils the state from the Oregon to Mexico borders.

Sea level rise will affect the Bay Area. A new study by UCS projects when will flooding happen regularly, and what areas will affect to help communities prepare for the changes to come.

Sightings of wild animals increase as humans shelter in place

OAKLAND, Calif.— At least 51 whales have died along the West Coast already this year, according to an analysis of public data and media reports by the Center for Biological Diversity. If whale deaths continue at this rate, 2026 could rank among the deadliest years for West Coast whales — second only to 2019, when a record-setting 122 whales died.

The areas that could see particularly severe rainfall as the large plume of moisture heads toward land will likely stretch from the south of Portland, Oregon, to the north of the San Francisco area.

A late-season Pacific storm that brought damaging winds and more rain and snow to saturated California was blamed for at least two deaths.

Coyotes’ recent occupation of one of the most densely human-populated cities in America may have started around 2003. That’s when a team led by Benjamin Sacks of the University of California, Davis extracted DNA from the blood of a male coyote captured in the Presidio and later returned there.