California’s rain and snow season is getting off to a fast start as Thanksgiving week brought more storms, launched the ski season early and raised cautious hope for a wet year after five years of drought. Two damp months in a row have boosted seasonal rainfall totals in Woodland to 3.25 inches. That compares with 2.57 for the same time in 2015. The 10-year seasonal average for Woodland, according to the UC Cooperative Extension Service, is 2.90 inches.
New satellite data released by the European Space Agency confirms that San Francisco’s 58-story Millennium Tower is sinking. “The Sentinel-1 satellites have shown that the Millennium Tower skyscraper in the center of San Francisco is sinking by a few centimeters a year,” a study by ESA says. “Studying the city is helping scientists to improve the monitoring of urban ground movements, particularly for subsidence hot spots in Europe.”
It started with a 2011 study that indicated by the turn of the century there would be no more Joshua trees in the national park named after the iconic desert plant. And likely none in California. “I was shocked when the study came out. I wanted to look at the details and change the scale,” said Cameron Barrows, a research ecologist for the UC Riverside Center for Conservation Biology in Palm Desert.
The first couple months of the new water year has yielded better-than-average rain and snow for parts of California. Water years begin Oct. 1 and run through the end of the following September. For California, the new water year got off to a rather wet start. While it’s being called the wettest start in 30 years, some almost seem to be egging on the drought by reminding us that we could end up in our fifth year of it on short notice.
Some 102 million trees have died in California since 2010, and that number will likely grow. Dead trees in a forest are natural, but the extraordinary numbers we see in parts of the Sierra Nevada threaten many benefits of our forests. Some places that had 20 trees per acre a century ago now have 260 trees. Too many trees, dead or alive, produce too much fuel. Once a fire gets started, a continuous expanse of fuel makes it more likely the fire will become extreme. California’s wildfires affect the whole nation.
California’s northern Sierra Nevada mountain range, home to some of the state’s largest reservoirs, had the wettest first two months of the water year since 1984, the National Weather Service said Tuesday. Between October and November, the eight measuring stations along the northern range received an average of 18 inches of precipitation, or about 200% above average for the first two months of the state’s water year, said meteorologist Eric Kurth of the National Weather Service in Sacramento.
Farmers and rural residents told California regulators they’re concerned about a proposal to increase water flows in the San Joaquin River and its tributaries to protect threatened fish. Native fish populations in the system have been declining for decades.The river system is part of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which provides water to Central Valley farms and millions of Californians. Regulators say currently up to 70 percent of the water is diverted. J.D. Richey, a Delta fishing guide, says his industry is collapsing.
In Palm Springs, one of the hottest regions in California, precious groundwater has been depleted for decades to build lush golf courses, swimming pools and tract homes. Now the local American Indian tribe is pressing for a right to help manage that water.The Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, which owns two casinos in the popular desert tourism region, has been buying water for decades from the two government water agencies that manage local groundwater, the Desert Water Agency and the Coachella Valley Water District.
Marin Country reservoirs are rising with multiple storms arriving early in the rainy season. Two are already spilling over and funneling water into creeks and streams. “So far this year we have received more than 17 inches of rainfall at Lake Lagunitas – we’re off to a great start with 78 percent of capacity at our seven reservoirs,” Lon Peterson, a spokesperson for the Marin Municipal Water District said. At this time last year, the reservoirs were at 65 percent, the average storage for late November.
Dozens of water agencies in drought-weary California may receive only 20% of their requested deliveries in 2017, state officials said Monday. But the Department of Water Resources’ initial allocation forecast is double what was announced a year ago. Officials said winter storms in coming months may boost the first 2017 allocation, but they point out that California’s deep drought lingers. Initial allocations almost always change. This year’s 10% allocation ultimately gave way to a 60% allotment.
