Currently in San Francisco — June 22, 2023: Partly cloudy and gusty

Plus, Tropical Storm Bret approaches the Caribbean.

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Eric Holthaus & Priya Shukla
June 21, 2023

The weather, currently.

Partly cloudy and gusty

Santa Cruz surfers were joined by a sea otter earlier this week. At Cowell Beach, a sea otter appeared as surfers sat in the line-up waiting to catch a wave. It examined a few boards before climbing aboard a blue one and taking it for a short ride. A strikingly similar event happened last fall, where a female sea otter who was raised in captivity also climbed aboard a blue surfboard.

While this is all well and adorable, it’s worth remembering that these are wild animals - so if you encounter a sea otter, give it a wide berth.

What you can do, currently.

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What you need to know, currently.

Tropical Storm Bret, the first named storm of the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season to threaten land, is expected to pass through the Leeward Islands on Thursday, very close to Barbados.

Initially forecast to grow into the season’s first hurricane, Bret has struggled and should remain a mid-range tropical storm until it dissipates in a day or two in the Caribbean Sea. It should pose no severe threat to the islands besides the potential for some heavy rainfall.

This year’s list of storm names is a modified version of the same list used in 2005, 2011 and 2017. It’s one of the most notorious lists of the six lists in regular rotation with the names Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Stan, Wilma, Irene, Harvey, Irma, Maria, and Nate removed due to their outsized impact to protect the mental health of survivors.