Any sign of precipitation in the forecast is a welcome sight for Californians these days. But with temperatures expected to be above normal this winter, California’s snowpack may not reach the heights it could.
Getting snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains is crucial to the state’s water supply. But scientists say as the climate continues to warm, more precipitation will fall as rain instead of snow.
The water wars in California are getting uglier.
If you doubt that consider the plight of the Bryon-Bethany Irrigation District. They were slapped — along with other water districts — with a curtailment order on June 12 by the State Water Resources Control Board for water diversions based on pre-1914 appropriative water rights. The targeted districts including Byron-Bethany had the audacity to sue the state on June 26.
Two weeks later, Sacramento Superior County Court Judge Shelleycane Chang ruled the state orders constituted an invalid taking of property.
With several Bay Area reservoirs nearly full, at capacity or overflowing, you might think we’re in good water shape. But, when it comes to the state’s really big reservoirs, which we depend on most— think again.
Majestic Mount Shasta’s huge crown of snow gleams in the sun. Fifty miles south, Lake Shasta, California’s largest reservoir by far, is only just over half full; but better than it was in the fall.
It’s official: the southwestern United States will likely never be the same again. A new analysis of the past 35 years of weather patterns concluded that what is now considered a normal year of rain and snow in the Southwest is one-quarter drier than it was before the 1970s.
And the climate conditions that bring the region most of its rain and snow will become even more rare in the future, according to a federally funded study posted online Thursday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Go ahead and turn up those Jock Jams, Obama, because your administration is doing something unprecedented before you become un-presidented: submitting a budget proposal with $267 million specifically devoted to water innovation.
OK, it’s more exciting than it sounds. The water tech section of the budget focuses on making desalination affordable, monitoring water use in real time, helping farmers grow food with less water, and forecasting floods and droughts with more precision, Fast Company reports.
While the Atlantic coast of America was preparing for last month’s massive snowstorm, California was enjoying a welcome, albeit temporary, reprieve from its four-year drought. The prolonged downpour—a harbinger of the imminent El Niño storms — raised pool levels in Los Angeles by almost three inches, providing your correspondent with an extra 500 gallons of water free of the city’s Tier 1 tariff.
Lawns, parks and hillsides that had been left to go brown during the drought (state-wide emergency measures have required cities to cut water usage by 25%) have turned green again. The one dismay has been seeing millions of gallons of precious rainwater pour down hillside gutters and storm drains, as it flowed unhindered into Santa Monica Bay.
As San Diego County spends tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to prevent coastal erosion, concerns have ramped up about how best to slow the potential loss of beaches, homes and highways.
Long before people built along the California coast, ocean waves slowly chewed away at shorelines. As sea levels rise with climate change, powerful storms such as those driven by this year’s El Niño weather system threaten to speed up this erosion.
A new study suggests that dry conditions in the southwestern United States, including the ongoing California drought, may become standard.
The study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, analyzes weather types to demonstrate how the American Southwest has already shifted to a much drier climate system than it once had, along with showing a downward trend in overall precipitation. The research, which uses data from 1979 to 2014 collected from across the contiguous United States, could show that the dry pattern will continue into the future.
Despite a wet winter, California’s historic drought continues to spark fierce – even bitter – debate over how the state’s water needs should be met in the future.
The core issue is whether we should primarily rely on conservation of what may be a permanently diminished water supply, or make more energetic efforts to increase the supply with new dams and reservoirs, desalination plants, etc.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
