A winter storm will bring heavy snow to high elevations in the Sierra Nevada this weekend, with some parts of northern California expecting as much as 60 inches of snow.

The incoming storm has prompted numerous National Weather Service (NWS) alerts, ranging from winter storm warnings to wind advisories. The system comes several weeks after a slew of atmospheric rivers brought heavy snow and rain across California in late November, though the Golden State has been mostly dry since.

The weekend storm is the second in a series of back-to-back storms forecast to hit California every few days up until Christmas, meteorologists said.

According to snowfall maps shared by NWS offices in California, northeastern California is expecting the heaviest snow with the incoming system at anywhere from 48 to 60 inches in high elevations of Lassen National Park. Donner Peak could see up to 24 inches, as well as Ebbetts Pass and Sonora Pass.

“A stronger, wetter system will move into the area Friday through Saturday. Here’s a look at the forecast rainfall and snowfall totals you can expect from this weather system,” the NWS office in Sacramento posted on X, formerly Twitter, with a map of the areas expecting to get hit hardest.

NWS lead meteorologist Nathan Rick told Newsweek that most of the precipitation would move out of the area by Saturday night, with Sunday looking “mostly dry.”

Further south, up to 12 inches of snow is forecast for Yosemite Valley, with up to 11 inches hitting Mammoth Lakes.

“Another winter storm will moving through Central California will provide the Sierra Nevada with additional snowfall accumulation starting late tonight,” the NWS office in Hanford posted on X. “Expected 24 hour snowfall accumulation will range from 6 to more than 24 inches across Sierra Nevada.”

Both offices have winter storm warnings in place advising residents of heavy snow.

“Travel could be very difficult to impossible. The hazardous conditions could impact commutes. Gusty winds could bring down tree branches,” the NWS office in Sacramento said. “Persons should delay travel if possible. If travel is absolutely necessary, drive with extreme caution and be prepared for sudden changes in visibility. Consider taking a winter storm kit along with you and anything else that would help you survive in case you become stranded.”

AccuWeather meteorologists previously voiced concerns that the incoming system could become a bomb cyclone.

A bomb cyclone occurs when storm pressure drops quickly, strengthening the disturbance and ramping up wind gusts. Atmospheric rivers are a “long, narrow region in the atmosphere—like rivers in the sky—that transport most of the water vapor outside of the tropics,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Good morning. I’m Gustavo Arellano, a Metro columnist for The Times, which means I’m allowed to express opinions.

Like: La Virgen de Guadalupe is cool.

But before I get into that, here’s what you need to know to start your day.

An O.C. shrine to the Empress of the Americas

Thursday was the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the apparition of the Virgin Mary that the Catholic Church maintains appeared before St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin throughout December 1531 in what’s now modern-day Mexico City. Her image is part of Southern California’s visual landscape: a pregnant, brown-skinned woman in a green veil with her hands clasped in prayer and an angel underneath her feet. She beautifies walls in the form of murals, looms over front yards and backyards in small home altars, adorns lowriders, decorates candles and has even appeared as a water stain on a sidewalk in Artesia.

If you are Mexican and Catholic, there’s a good chance you either stayed up late on Wednesday night or got up early Thursday morning to attend one of the many celebrations for la Virgen across the Southland. I was one of the latter. My place of worship: the massive shrine to Guadalupe constructed by Luis Cantabrana every December for the last 14 years at his house on the corner of Broadway and Camile Street in Santa Ana.

Even if you’re not a person of faith, you can’t help but to stand in awe at this living piece of folk art.

Cantabrana, a native of the Mexican state of Nayarit, covers the left and right side of his Craftsman-style home in green and red Christmas lights to mimic the Mexican flag. The porch is covered in fake roses, from its pillars to ceiling to gable, where Cantabrana places a small Guadalupe statue in its apex. On his home’s sloping roof, Cantabrana fashions a Mexican tricolor cross out of more Christmas lights, which he uses to also spell out “Virgen de Guadalupe” at the base of a second-story gable, where Cantabrana puts another Guadalupe statue.

The centerpiece is the 4-foot tall statue of Guadalupe that stands before what’s usually Cantabrana’s front door. Every year, he changes the theme of her background. In 2023, it was a shot of a Southwestern desert landscape; this year, it’s a forest scene complete with the front steps covered in wrinkled blue sheets meant to mimic a waterfall. They wrap around brown sheets bunched up to form faux rocks.

“People always tell me there are no other altars like this one and every year it gets better,” Cantabrana told De Los last year.

This is no mere neighborhood holiday display contest, though. The guadalupano (devotee of Guadalupe) breaks down the fence around his front lawn to fit tents festooned with red, white and green papel picado. Every night from Dec. 3 through the 12th, Cantabrana lines up rows of chairs to host nightly rosaries, handing out pan dulce and hot drinks — cinnamon tea, champurrado, ponche — at the end.

I’ve been posting photos of this scene every year on Instagram for at least a decade (in 2022, Meta bizarrely took down my Guadalupe post because the company said it promoted violence and hate speech). I’ve gone to Cantabrana’s rosaries, and also to the big celebration on the night of Dec. 11, when Aztec dancers perform in front of hundreds.

This year, I decided to show up at 4 a.m., the traditional time for Mexicans to serenade Guadalupe with mañanitas — our traditional birthday song.

As a proud guadalupano, I was hoping that Cantabrana would host something even more spectacular than anything I’ve seen him do all these years. Instead, all the lights were turned off. I was the only person there.

Even Guadalupe needs to rest, I guess.

I thought about going to one of the two nearby Santa Ana parishes named Our Lady of Guadalupe to warm up. But the Empress of the Americas didn’t deserve to be alone so early in the morning of her feast day. Besides, the scene was gorgeous. All that illuminated us were dozens of votive candles at the base of her feet, most bearing Guadalupe’s resplendent image. The chilly air was fragrant with hundreds of real roses left behind by the faithful. Another large Guadalupe statue — this one topped with a crown — accompanied Cantabrana’s centerpiece.

Someone had placed a bathroom mat on the walkway. I knelt down, recited a few Hail Marys in Spanish and then softly sang the two hymns most associated with Guadalupe’s day: “Las Mañanitas” and “La Guadalupana.” A truck warming up across the street was my musical accompaniment.

Cantabrana will keep up his display until Jan. 6, the Feast of the Epiphany (which Latinos mark as the Día de los Reyes Magos — The Three Wise Men). Swing by and stare in wonder. Leave a couple of bucks in the donation bucket to help Cantabrana pay for his masterwork. And if you know of a better home display that’s visible to the public in Southern California, email me at gustavo.arellano@latimes.com so I can check it out. ¡Que viva la Virgen de Guadalupe!

Today’s top stories

Firefighters battle the Franklin fire next to a business along Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu Tuesday.

(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)

Could Southern California’s high fire threat linger into the New Year?

• By this time of year, Southern California has usually had some measurable rainfall and Santa Ana winds have typically died down. This year, neither is the case.
• Two recent stretches of dangerous Santa Ana winds played out exactly the way forecasters worried they would. And Similar conditions are likely to remain a threat across the Southland, given the latest forecast and climate trends.

Outdoor dining in Los Angeles got a last-minute reprieve

• Mayor Karen Bass this week extended a pandemic-era outdoor dining program that was set to expire at the end of the year. Restaurant owners now have until the end of 2025 to make their outdoor spaces permanent.
• The extension comes as restaurants continue to face a tough time. Higher labor costs, increased food prices and pandemic fallout have forced many L.A.-area restaurants to shut their doors.

After losing reelection, San Francisco Mayor London Breed says she is leaving office as “a winner”

• After tackling a series of crises, including entrenched homelessness and the COVID-19 pandemic, Breed said she leaves office with her head held high.
• Her track record in the face of these challenges became a decisive factor in the mayor’s race. Breed lost to Daniel Lurie, a nonprofit executive and heir to the Levi Strauss family fortune who has never held elected office.

The powerful earthquake in Northern California last week prompted an endangered fish to get busy

• The magnitude 7.0 earthquake that rattled a large swath of Northern California likely increased spawning activity in the Devils Hole pupfish in an effort to to protect their population, scientists said.
• The pupfish were labeled an endangered species in 1967. The population hit an all-time low of 35 fish in 2013. But scientists found 191 pupfish in April — the highest spring count since 1999.

What else is going on

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• Trump-friendly billionaires are taking aim at the federal agencies that protect workers and consumers, business columnist Michael Hiltzik writes.
• Gov. Newsom’s failure to close Aliso Canyon is hurting us all, climate columnist Sammy Roth writes.
• Christopher Wray just broke a prime rule of dealing with Donald Trump, columnist Jackie Calmes writes.
• The U.S. should not yet trust Syria’s new regime, writes Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow and director of the program on counterterrorism and intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

This morning’s must reads

(Ayman Oghanna / For The Times)

Amid the joy after Assad’s ouster, Syrians search for their missing. Loved ones are now searching for the estimated 150,000 people who were detained and disappeared in Bashar Assad’s Syrian government gulags, reports Times foreign correspondent Nabih Bulos.

“It’s my second day searching. I’ve gone to all the hospitals here in Damascus. So far nothing,” said a 32-year-old man who was looking among the unidentified dead for a brother he last saw in 2011. “My parents don’t dare to come. They don’t want to go through this.”

Other must reads

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com.

For your downtime

Death & Co.’s freshly baked chocolate chip cookies give Santa’s regular milk-and-cookies combo a run for its money.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Going out

• 🍪 Looking for holiday-inspired cookies? Some of L.A.’s best bakeries may satisfy your craving for nostalgic sweets.
• 🛳️ Away from the cruise ship passengers and conventioneers, you’ll find people passionate about their own unique corners of Long Beach.
• 🌌 The micro amusement park Two Bit Circus returns as a pop-up in Santa Monica that includes a “space elevator.”

Staying in

And finally … your great photo of the day

People watch a sunset at Hilltop Park in Signal Hill in 2008.

(John Galloway)

Advertisement

Today’s great photo is from John Galloway of New Castle, Pa.: Hilltop Park in Signal Hill.

John writes: “Hilltop Park is one of my favorite places in Southern California. I spent many hours there over the 43 years I lived in Lakewood — from a place to take a date or just chill to watch a sunset.”

Show us your favorite place in California! Send us photos you have taken of spots in California that are special — natural or human-made — and tell us why they’re important to you.

Have a great day, from the Essential California team

Ryan Fonseca, reporter
Defne Karabatur, fellow
Andrew Campa, Sunday reporter
Hunter Clauss, multiplatform editor
Christian Orozco, assistant editor
Stephanie Chavez, deputy metro editor
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.

The ex-wife of a prominent Los Angeles doctor – gunned down in an ambush-style attack outside his clinic in August – was arrested and charged with his murder as police raided her home.

Ahang Mirshojae, née Kelk, was among five people arrested earlier this week for conspiracy to commit the murder of Dr. Hamid Mirshojae, the Los Angeles Police Department announced.

No motives were revealed in the suspected murder and police have not released details of the roles each allegedly played in Dr. Mirshojae’s death.

Dr. Mirshojae, 61, was fatally shot in the back of his head by a “masked man” in the parking lot of his family clinic on the 5900 block of Topanga Canyon Blvd. in the Woodland Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles on Aug. 23, 2024.

Mirshojae, whose patients included “celebrities, movie stars, athletes and many people of different walks of life,” had just finished his shift at around 5:34 p.m. when the gunman appeared from a hiding spot and ran towards the Iranian-born doctor.

After the fatal shooting, the gunman ran to the rear of the Woodland Hills Medical Clinic and Urgent Care as police responded 42 minutes later to an “Ambulance Shooting” call.

Mirshojae was pronounced dead at the scene.

After a nearly four-month-long investigation, police officials announced the arrest of Kelk and four others.

Kelk, 53, had mourned the death of her ex-husband in a since-deleted Facebook post.

“Hamid, the kids and I are in so much shock we miss you so bad,” she said. “August 23rd 5:30pm they took Hamid away from us right in front of his practice. He was always helping people seeing tens and thousands of patients for decades we fought HARD to make life happen starting from nothing in the apartment and still the world is so cold.”

The now-suspected murderer said her family had to be “strong in the face of evil” to remember Mirshojae.

The former couple shared three adult children.

Hours before her arrest, LAPD and federal investigators raided Kelk’s Calabasas home Thursday evening, according to KTTV.

It was not revealed if anything was discovered during the search.

In August, Kelk denied any involvement in her ex-husband’s death.

“It’s all lies,” she said according to the Los Angeles Times.

After separating from his ex-wife, Dr. Mirshojae remarried in 2023, and the newlywed couple shared a 6-month-old girl at the time of his death.

His new wife and daughter were visiting family in Turkey at the time of the shooting, but jetted back to the US after learning the heartbreaking news.

Suspects

Along with Ahang Mirshojae’s arrest Thursday, police also arrested and charged four others for the Aug. 23 suspected killing.

Evan Hardman, 41, was arrested on Dec. 10 in the greater Houston area of Texas and charged with Murder with Special Circumstances and will be transferred to LAPD custody.

Ashley Rose Sweeting, 40, was nabbed in the San Fernando Valley Tuesday for being an accessory to murder.

Sarallah Jawed, 26, was taken into custody Wednesday and charged with Murder with Special Circumstances.

Shawn Randolph, 46, was arrested and booked for Murder on Thursday.

Hardman and Jawed were also charged with attacking Dr. Mirshojae with a baseball bat in May, Fox 11 reported.

The two were each slapped with an assault with a deadly weapon charge for the May 3 attack that left Mirshojae fearing for his life.

“They came and they beat him with baseball bats,” an employee told the Los Angeles Times at the time. “They were some strangers that we didn’t know.”

Kelk and Randolph are being held without bail and their cases will be presented for filing consideration to the LA DA’s office on Dec. 16.

The investigation is ongoing, the LAPD said.