As other California cities lift themselves out of the recession, San Bernardino, once an unassuming town where working-class people could reasonably aspire to comfortable middle-class lives, has become the poorest city of its size in the state and a distillation of the challenges facing many American urban areas. More at http://latimes.com/sanbernardino. | Los Angeles Times

LIVE update from Banning, California near the southern slope of the San Bernardino Mountains with stratiform rains and winds gusting to 30 mph. Catastrophic flash flooding and tornado potential will be the main issues this afternoon and evening interior southern CA with TS Hilary | Reed Timmer Extreme Meteorologist