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Extreme Heat Watch for the San Bernardino Mountains through 8 p.m. tomorrow

as of 9:50 p.m. PT · National Weather Service

Heat Advisory for the San Bernardino Mountains through 8 p.m. tomorrow

as of 9:10 p.m. PT · National Weather Service

Air Quality Alert for the San Bernardino Mountains through 8 p.m. tomorrow

as of 1:50 p.m. PT · National Weather Service

About Big Bear News

Consolidated valley news — what happened in town today, in one place.

What is Big Bear News?

Big Bear News gathers what happened in the valley today from more than 40 scattered public sources — government agendas, dispatch logs, weather and road feeds, event calendars, and local newsrooms — and writes it up plainly, with every claim linked to where it came from. The goal is simple: one calm morning read instead of checking six websites and a Facebook group.

Why does this exist?

It was started by Andrew Sauer, who lives in the valley. He built it to solve his own problem: he could never find — or even know about — all the events going on here, let alone what was happening at city hall and the special districts. Concerts and town nights lived on a dozen calendars and Facebook pages, if they were posted at all. Council, the fire district, the water boards, and the rest of the local agencies posted agendas in PDFs almost nobody opened.

He wanted one place that said what is happening this week, and what local government is about to decide — sourced, current, and quiet. No rumor, no clickbait.

How do you write these stories?

We are honest about how these stories are made, because trust is the whole point.

  • Stories are written by AI from cited public sources. Nothing is invented — every factual claim traces back to a document, feed, or page we monitor.
  • An AI editor reviews every story before it publishes, checking that each claim is supported by its source.
  • Some stories are additionally reviewed by a named person. When that happens, the story says so and names the reviewer.
  • Every claim links its source. You can open the original document and check it yourself.
  • When we get something wrong, we correct it promptly and publish the correction at /corrections.

Sources we monitor

We watch 52 public sources across the valley. Here is the current list, with links to the feeds and pages we poll. Paused feeds are left off until they are working again.

Recreation

Trail, campground, and forest status for the San Bernardino National Forest.

Beyond these fixed feeds, we use the Brave Search API to surface Big Bear stories from outlets we don't monitor directly. Web discovery is powered by Brave Search.

Valley meeting agendas and minutes are powered by CivicCatch.

Know a public local source we miss? Suggest it below.

Suggest a source

If you run a public Big Bear Valley site — or know one we should monitor — send the URL. We review suggestions by hand and only add sources that fit our consent and adapter rules. We do not automatically start crawling.

We review by hand. We do not automatically crawl new URLs.

What won't you cover?

Some things are not ours to publish, and we hold that line on purpose. From public-safety dispatch feeds we follow a strict policy:

  • No medical calls. Health and welfare calls are private and stay unpublished.
  • No names of suspects or people involved. We never carry a person's name from a dispatch log.
  • Block-level locations only. We say the block and town, never a house number or exact address.
  • An explicit allowlist. Only traffic collisions and fires are eligible to appear. Any call type we don't recognize stays private by default.

Corrections

We publish corrections promptly and in the open. When a story is wrong or incomplete, we fix it, note what changed and why, and keep a permanent record at /corrections. If you spot something that needs correcting, email us — we want to know.

The newsletter

Big Bear Todayis the weekday morning page in your inbox — what's going on in the valley that day: conditions, today's stories (when there are any), happening today, a short look ahead, and a link you can share. Saturdays bring the weekly recap. Signup starts you on weekday mornings; you can switch to Saturday-only any time.

Privacy

We keep tracking to the minimum and turn nothing on unless you opt in: anonymous analytics run only after you accept them in the consent banner (and never when your browser sends Global Privacy Control), your newsletter email is used only to send the newsletter, and we never sell your data.

The full details — what we collect, the vendors we use, and your California privacy rights — are in our privacy policy.

Sponsorships

Local businesses may support Big Bear News through labeled sponsorships. Sponsored slots on the home page carry an “Ad” label; newsletter sends say “Supported by.” Government meetings, public-safety dispatch, and all civic coverage are never sponsored — that firewall is how we keep the reporting trustworthy. You can read the full terms at /advertise.

Contact

The full list — advertising, outages, tips, corrections, and site feedback — is on Contact. Questions or news we missed? Share a story, or email hello@bigbear.news. We read everything. The daily briefing is also on Facebook.

Curious about our crawler? See our crawler.