Yeah that's definitely a day-of-week/reporting dump effect making that spike. The 7 day rolling data for deaths shows CA is only 6% below the most recent peak:
15 days ago was a different universe of testing capacity. Oregon had done less than 500 tests then and was still using the initial (semi-flawed) CDC tests. We've done almost 13,000 tests since then (I live in Oregon). Not to say we're doing enough yet, but it is a totally different situation today in Oregon and elsewhere:
Kudos to NYT, but I think the COVID Tracking Project data is probably better because it attempts to measures total testing as well (positives and negatives). I've been using it to report state-level testing statistics and new case/death curves:
https://www.deptofnumbers.com/covid19/california/#deaths
nb: that's my site