If the weather so far this week is any indicator of what El Niño can bring to San Diego County and the rest of California, then people should be ready for a prolonged mix of relief and misery.
Relief because the extra rainfall and snow would go a long way toward ending the state’s drought, which has lasted four consecutive years.
Residents of drought-weary California in November fell short of hitting a 25 percent water conservation mandate for a second month running, state officials say.
The monthly tally comes as a series of much-anticipated El Nino storms line up, expecting to drench the state for several days and boost the snowpack.
Felicia Marcus, chair of the State Water Resources Control Board, said California remains on course to beat its long-term goal through February. Marcus wouldn’t reveal ahead of Tuesday’s formal announcement exactly how much the state fell short of its target.
To understand the power and potential dangers of El Niño, look at satellite images of the Pacific Ocean on Sunday.
At least four storms were brewing — the farthest still getting going in Asia — and all aimed at California.
It’s this pattern, a series of back-to-back-to-back storms seemingly arriving on a conveyor belt, that concerns officials bracing for potential damage from the predicted winter of heavy rains.
“El Niño storms: it’s steady, not spectacular. But it’s relentless,” said Bill Patzert, climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. “It’s not 10 inches in 24 hours and nothing afterward.
Amid California’s worst drought in recent memory, the city of Shasta Lake is eyeing looking into studying whether to raise water utility rates.
“The loss of revenue due to decreased water sales coupled with the rapidly increasing cost of water supply cannot be sustained for a prolonged period of time,” said John Duckett, city manager.
He will ask the City Council to approve a $66,030 contract with the Los Angeles-based Raftelis Financial Consultants, Inc., for a water rate study at the council’s meeting Tuesday night.
Paul G. Peschel has been named the Kings River Conservation District’s new general manager, agency officials announced Monday.
Peschel, the planning and engineering manager for the Imperial Irrigation District Energy Department in El Centro, will begin his new job for the Fresno-based agency on Jan. 25. He replaces David Orth.
A registered civil engineer, Peschel has a background in water resources, engineering and management. He was employed by the Imperial Irrigation District for nearly 30 years, starting as an assistant engineer for the district located in southeast California.
Up to an inch of rain or more could fall on the central San Joaquin Valley on Tuesday, the National Weather Service said, as the first in a series of El Niño-fueled storms arrives in California.
Around the Valley, workers were preparing by making sandbags available to residents and pumping water through the basin systems, but the storms are expected to drop large amounts of rain over a long period instead of brief, strong showers that frequently cause flooding.
“It will pretty much be a steady rain,” said David Spector, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Hanford.
The kind of rainy weather pattern shaping up for Central California this week has not occurred since 2010, the National Weather Service said Saturday.
A series of storms is expected to roll into Central California and will make for the most days with rain since before the drought began.
Three separate storms are on track to hit the central San Joaquin Valley Valley, meteorologist Brian Ochs said. The total expected rainfall for the three systems in the Valley is around 1 to 1.5 inches.
California is about to be hit by the first El Niño storm of the year. It’s the beginning of what could be a week of rain in the drought-battered state.
In Southern California, the heaviest storm is expected Tuesday, when up to two inches of rain is forecast to drop on the coast and valleys and up to four inches could pour onto the mountains and foothills. Forecasters expect four storms to hit the Southland by Friday, but caution that rain is only a part of the story.
The North Pacific storm that blew ashore early Tuesday will last until mid-evening and will drop at least an inch of rain at San Diego’s Lindbergh Field, says the National Weather Service.
“The system will taper off into scattered showers tonight, but there will be a second wave of rain starting Wednesday night, and it will be even heavier,” said James Thomas, a weather service forecaster. “Lindbergh could get 1.4 inches of rain by early Thursday.
The precipitation from the two storms could easily surpass Lindbergh’s average January rainfall of 1.98 inches.
While San Diego could soon lose its NFL franchise, the county can at least boast the nation’s largest desalination plant in marketing literature.
San Diego’s popularity as a destination location is obvious to those of us who’ve been there and witnessed near-perfect weather, regardless of the date on the calendar. I suspect losing its NFL franchise may make some waves, but at least it happened in a year where the football team went 4-12 and arguably has some rebuilding of its own to do.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
