Hanford Insider: Weather Operations, City Council Highlights, and Community Buzz!

Transcript

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On this episode of the Hanford Insider, Rob talks to Felix Castro from the National Weather Service in Hanford about their operations as well as get a sneak peek of what may be ahead for our weather conditions.

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You'll get an update of Hanford news and the community calendar, and I'll be back later with your sports report.

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This is the Hanford Insider for Monday, January 20th.

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Welcome to this episode of the Hanford Insider.

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I'm your host, rob Bentley.

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For those of you who are new to the show, welcome.

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The Hanford Insider is a weekly podcast that releases every Monday.

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I cover a little bit of everything from Hanford news, a community calendar, and my son, eric, who works in sports, gives us a rundown of high school sports each week during the school year.

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I try to keep things light and positive in such a negative world.

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I hope you enjoyed the format.

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I'm always looking for more human interest stories.

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A little bit later in the show I'll let you know how you can get involved In community news.

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After a few weeks off, the Hanford City Council will meet again this Tuesday.

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During the afternoon study session they'll be looking into options for increasing council members' honorariums for serving on the council.

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During the general session at 7 pm there will be a public hearing regarding the annexation of four county islands within the city limits.

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There's a description of these areas covered in the council agenda available on their website at hanfordcity.

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On the consent agenda a request for approval for a shared health clinic for city workers and Hanford Joint Union High School district employees that will be located adjacent to the Amtrak station.

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It's a property the city already owns and will only need minor remodeling.

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Another request is for moving forward with additional law enforcement hires this year in anticipation of Measure H funds being received in the third quarter.

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By making this move now, it will ensure that the city will be able to hire the eight additional officers promised in Measure H.

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There are a lot of items on the agenda for this meeting and I won't pretend to know everything about each one, but I thought I'd highlight just a few to keep you informed On next week's show.

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I'll be sure to report out on items I find particularly interesting.

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I'd like to give a special shout out to those local businesses that recently donated supplies to the Bob Hill Athletic Complex on Greenfield and campus to help get the fields prepped for the upcoming baseball season.

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Donors included Miller's Rental Land, bobby Nestor Electric, champy Fencing and Golden Valley Ace Hardware.

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Thanks for showing your community spirit for the youth of Hanford.

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Here's some things coming up on our community calendar.

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The Sierra Pacific High School baseball team is holding a cornhole tournament at the Hanford Fraternal Hall on Saturday February 1st at noon.

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For more information, email info at cincalbaggerscom.

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On Saturday February 1st, the Kings County Art League will be holding a Sweetheart Artist Market in the Fast Plaza from 9 am to 1 pm.

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The Hanford Rotary Crab Feed is coming up on Saturday February 1st in the Hanford Civic Auditorium.

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Email rotaryclubhanford at gmailcom for tickets.

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Also that evening the Hanford Fox Theater kicks off their weekly movie series with the movie 10 Things I Hate About you.

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Tickets are available at the box office or on their website at foxhanfordcom.

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Spirits Lounge at 390 South 11th Avenue is holding a Valentine's Art Show on Sunday February 2nd from 12 pm to 4 pm.

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They have more information on the Spirits Lounge Facebook page.

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The Hanford Education Foundation is holding their annual Hall of Fame Gala on Saturday February 22nd at the Hanford Civic Auditorium from 5 pm to 8 pm.

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From 5 pm to 8 pm.

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Honorees this year include Shantanese Polk and the 2001 Hanford High basketball team Nancy Silva, harold Mackey, bob Dowd, leslie Steffen, leonard DeRuiter and Darlene Johnson.

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Tickets are available by calling 559-217-3112.

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If you have an event coming up and you'd like some help getting the word out, let's work together.

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Send your information to hanfordinsider at gmailcom.

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Be sure to subscribe to my weekly newsletter to get a complete calendar of events.

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You know the weather doesn't make much news here in Hanford on a usual basis, but the National Weather Service Hanford office has been here to provide forecasts and updates for the entire San Joaquin Valley, and today we have with us Felix Castro, who's been with the National Weather Service for 20 years and he is the Warning Coordination Meteorologist.

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Welcome to the show.

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Thank you so much, Rob, and thank you for your audience to have me.

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Felix, what is the mission of the National Weather Service and how did it come to Hanford?

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Well, first of all, I will say that our mission is very basic in terms of what we do.

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It's basically protect life and property and enhance the national economy.

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That's basically our main mission.

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Of course, this backstage right this means a lot because we have to make sure that, especially when we send our warnings and advisories, it reaches out as many people as possible in many areas and many ways as well.

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Social media has been huge within the last decade to promote our information and to make sure that everyone is safe out there, in the San Joaquin Valley, especially, home.

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So let's talk about your Hanford weather office there on Foggy Bottom Road.

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I'm sure we've probably all seen the we call it the giant soccer ball off of 198 there by the airport.

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Can you tell us a little bit about your office and the staff that works there?

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Yeah, definitely.

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The soccer ball that you mentioned is basically the Doppler weather radar and that was a key to eventually the office.

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As you know and our audience know that the Weather Bureau was back in the 1960s.

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It was in Bakersfield first and then eventually it was built in 1995, by the way, we are talking now in mid-January, it's almost 30 years when that happened.

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So it's already 30 years ago that we established our office here in Hanford and basically the main reason was basically the radar location.

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As we know, we have only the mountains.

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It's the Sequoia National Park but it's pretty far away compared to other areas.

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We don't have too much elevation in our area and that's very important for the radar.

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So that was mainly the main reason why our office is here in Hanford.

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We haven't had much change in the weather in the last few weeks, and we know that we need rain.

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We need rain and with your best meteorologist hat, what have you got for us?

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What do you see on the horizon for the San Joaquin Valley?

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That's a great question.

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Probably you have heard about El Niño, la Niña, all that, all the fluctuation in the atmosphere, all those fluctuations in the atmosphere and right now, although in our area it's not common to follow with the El Niño-La Niña event, like other areas in California, we are completely different, right, sometimes during El Niño we're supposed to have a lot of rain and during La Niña it should be dry, but sometimes it doesn't happen.

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But so far this year it's pretty well established that we have, right now, atmospheric conditions leading to La Niña and in La Niña normally we are drier than normal.

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So, as we can see, it looks like this is already affecting us in La Niña event, because we are completely dry and unfortunately we saw in LA right all the fires occurring and the drought is increasing across the area.

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So unfortunately we don't see rain in the near future, although one very key component of our office is the Climate Prediction Center.

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The Climate Prediction Center are the ones that make those seasonal forecasts every two to three months what we can expect, and there are more or less forecasting a change in the weather pattern, probably late in January, in early February we may get more wet, but as we know here what wet means, right?

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Probably going to be one thing of an inch more than average, right?

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So we need to take that very careful, those forecasts.

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But at least what we know is that at least during the next weeks it's going to be drier than normal and colder than normal.

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We have seen temperatures almost in the freezing levels 32 degrees, even below in some areas.

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So that's what we expect at least the next two weeks.

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Hopefully we get at least some rainfall late in January and early February, because we will need it eventually.

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Because then if we don't get the rainfall that we normally get, then that would mean that our fire season will be very active in the three seasons.

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For sure, For sure.

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And we need that precipitation to utilize the new experimental fog index that has been released and several of my listeners have commented on the new product that is available on your website.

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It's called the Experimental Fog Index and it can actually predict kind of where the fog is going to be.

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Can you tell us a little bit about that?

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Yeah, I'm glad that the public has a great protection, because that's exactly why we're doing it right With at least 12 hours in advance.

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You will know that there is a high possibility of foggy conditions across the San Joaquin Valley.

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We know that the fog condition across the valley is way underestimated, especially the hazards produced by it.

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We know that last month we were seeing a very long, prolonged moment of foggy conditions, extremely dense, for almost two weeks, so it required something like stronger wind just to mix the air a little bit.

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So that's one reason that we are okay right now, but if we get another rainfall event, we would be foggy again.

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So please, if you see something that we can improve with this experimental product, definitely give us feedback and we can make some changes to better serve you, because that's why we are here to make you feel safe out there so we can find that on the website.

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Can you give us information about your website and where we can find information about this fog index?

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Yeah, definitely.

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You can go to our National Weather Service page, which is weathergov, backslash A and X, which is our office, or you can Google also National Weather Service Forecast Office, amfor, and you will see in the page.

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You go down, you scroll down and you will see the experimental frog severating test to your left-hand side at the bottom and you click there and then you are going to look a map with at least 12 hours with forecasting the froggy conditions expected.

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Right now.

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If you go there, there is going to be nothing because we don't expect fog, but definitely it's something that is extremely useful even for us.

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So when we see that there is high chances or probability of getting fog in the area, then we reach a fog advisory way ahead of time.

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So you are all prepared and of course we have a contact communication with THP, with the California Highway Patrol, and they put the signs in the streets, in the roads and the highways to alert the public that we may see some phobic conditions during, you know, overnight to the morning hours.

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Yeah, so make sure you bookmark that website for sure, felix, before I let you go.

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We had a conversation a little bit earlier about the fires in Los Angeles and the Santa Ana winds and we know that locally we don't have that many weather events that compose that significant of an event here locally.

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But I got to thinking as I was driving home this afternoon we've got these power lines and I hearkened back to the big wind and rainstorm that we had on Veterans Day and I was thinking if the wind caught those power lines and it came down on a house in a big subdivision, that could spell disaster.

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Can you tell us maybe a little bit about some of the wind events and some of the dangers that we do face here in the Valley?

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Yeah, that's very important.

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Something that, again, we underestimate as a public and in terms of general information is the winds.

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Right, we talk about flooding, we talk about rain, about floods.

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The winds are very important because sometimes, especially when the soil is very dry, the trees sometimes are not that strong and a little bit of wind will knock down those trees so it will affect the power lines and definitely we could be dealing with something very bad.

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So every time that we show a wind advisory or a wind warning for the area, please take it seriously because, especially if you live around trees, that they are old or any structure that could be, you know, definitely could be a potential hazard for you.

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So keep that in mind.

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And something also is you are driving the highway, be mindful of the speed.

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You don thing also is you are driving in the highway, be mindful of the speed.

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You don't notice when you're driving, but sometimes you can get shaky as you're driving and you can feel it.

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You know that the wind could be very, very dangerous sometimes.

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So one thing that I can tell you is that one of the most important things that we do at the National War for Everything, and for this we keep constant communication with our emergency operational centers in the counties.

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So if there is a big event it could be wind, flood or fog we contact immediately for example, in this case Kings County and if we have to do a webinar, we make a webinar to them and we talk to them.

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You know this is going to happen and then they move the resources out there, the emergency manager, to keep everyone safe.

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Well, thank you for those tips, felix.

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And, once again, the website for the Hanford Weather Office is weathergov slash HNX and you can get all of the information there.

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They're also on Facebook and have a lot of ways to get the word out, and you even offer some tours there at your office by appointment.

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Yes, yes, absolutely, office by appointment, yes.

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Yes, absolutely Normally, when the weather is quiet right now, you can contact us through our email, hnahamfordgov, and you can ask for any tour you want, or even they can come here and we can give a tour and also give you some more information related to weather and anything that you would like to ask of.

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Well, that's awesome.

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Felix, thank you so much for joining us, and we want to thank all of you at the Weather Service for letting us know what's happening.

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No, absolutely Anytime letting us know what's happening.

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No, absolutely Anytime.

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We are glad that your podcast shows everyone the National War of American Handball.

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We are here for all of you.

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Thank you so much.

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And now it's time for Hanford Insider Sports with Eric Benley.

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High school basketball and soccer season are still in full swing, so let's get you caught up on all the action.

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We'll start with girls basketball, where Sierra Pacific continues to have an impressive season, picking up dominant victories over Reedley and Hanford West before falling short against one of the best max preps teams in California in St Mary's.

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The Golden Bears sit at 12-6 on the year.

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The Hanford West girls have also found some success this season, splitting their two games last week the loss to Sierra Pacific and the win, a 79-31 victory over Exeter to improve to 11-6 overall.

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And the Hanford High girls are looking to play their way out of some struggles after falling last week to Tulare Union and Tulare Western.

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On the boys' basketball side, hanford High dropped two of their three games this week, falling to Tulare Union and Tulare Western, but bouncing back with a 56-46 win over Liberty in the MLK Showcase.

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The Bullpups sit at 14-7 overall.

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The Sierra Pacific boys split their two games last week, taking down Kingsburg 72-64 before falling to CBC.

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The Golden Bears find themselves three games under .500 at 9-12.

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And the Hanford West boys were able to pick up their first win of the season, besting Washington Union 71-57 before falling to

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Exeter.

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And in soccer action, the Hanford High girls continued to find success this season after picking up wins over Tulare Union and Tulare Western, improving their record to an impressive 16-2 overall this year.

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The Hanford West girls remain one game above .500, despite falling to Washington Union and Selma last week, and Sierra Pacific picked up a win and a draw, taking down Reedley 2-1 before playing Emanuel to that 1-1 draw.

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The Golden Bears sit at 6-4-2

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this season.

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On the boys' soccer side, hanford High went 1-2 in their three games last week, taking down Porterville 3-1 and falling to Tulare Union and Tulare Western, moving their record to 6-2.

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On the season.

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The Sierra Pacific boys were able to pick up their third win of the year, a 1-0 victory against Emanuel, before playing Kingsburg to a 0-0 draw, and the Hanford West boys were unable to pick up a win last week, falling to Washington Union and CBC.

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As always, we'd like to cover as many local sports as possible, so if you have a score report or a story idea, make sure to email hanfordinsider at gmailcom.

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I'm Eric Bentley and this has been your Hanford Insider Sports Report.

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Well, that's all the time we have for this week's show.

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If you enjoyed this podcast and you'd like to show your support, you can go to buymeacoffeecom slash Hanford Insider to make a donation.

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For more information about the show.

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You can find this podcast on Facebook, instagram, threads X and YouTube at Hanford Insider.

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If you have a show idea, be sure to email me at hanfordinsider at gmailcom and I'll look into it.

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Thanks for listening.

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Have a great week.

Hanford Insider: Weather Operations, City Council Highlights, and Community Buzz!

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