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California Snowpack Won’t Recover From Drought For Years

/in /by /Capital Public Radio (Sacramento)by Amy Quinton

The winter of 2015 capped four years of drought that resulted in an unprecedented water deficit in Sierra Nevada snowpack. Much of California’s water comes from snowmelt.

Researchers at UCLA say in a new study, that this winter’s strong El Niño didn’t make up for that deficit. They found that even if the state gets above-average precipitation, it will take until 2019 to recover. Scientists used NASA satellite and snow survey data to assess snowpack. This gave them a better and more accurate picture of snow in higher elevations.

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Water-Wasting Leaks Plague Many Cities

/in /by /The Wall Street Journalby Cameron McWhirter

Cash-strapped cities are contending with aging, leak-prone water systems that waste trillions of gallons a year and result in damaging breaks.

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Raging Fires in Azusa and Duarte Now 4,900 Acres

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Ruben Vives, Hailey Branson-Potts and Nina Agrawal

Firefighters on Tuesday continued to battle twin blazes burning dangerously close to each other in the mountains above Duarte and Azusa, as hundreds of residents were forced to flee and dozens of horses were evacuated.

More than 1,000 firefighters deployed to tame the Reservoir and Fish fires, burning about 1.5 miles apart in Angeles National Forest. The fires are now being managed as a single conflagration called the San Gabriel Complex fire, authorities said. They could connect if winds become gusty. Late Tuesday, fire officials said the blazes had burned 4,900 acres, downgrading earlier estimates on the fires’ size. The blazes are 10% contained.

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It Will Take Years of Wet Weather Before California Recovers From Drought, Study Finds

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Matt Stevens

When forecasters last year warned of a massive El Niño, some Californians held out hope that a single extremely wet year could bust the state’s severe drought.

But a study published Tuesday in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, offered support for the argument that state hydrologists have been making for months: It will take several years to recover from the four-year water shortage. Specifically, researchers studied the Sierra Nevada and found that the lackluster snowpack there, year after year, created a sizable water deficit that the state may not recoup until 2019.

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