You are now in San Diego County category.

During California’s five-year drought, the row of ponds in the desert north of the Palm Springs often lay empty and dry. But this year, the ponds have been filled to the brim with a record amount of water from the Colorado River.  The Coachella Valley’s water utilities are using the influx of imported water to chip away at the long-term problem of groundwater overdraft. For months, water has been flowing into the ponds at the Whitewater River Groundwater Replenishment Facility and seeping into the sandy soil to replenish the desert aquifer.

You’ll want to hold onto your hat if you’re headed to the Sierra this week. A storm system moving over the mountain range shared by California and Nevada will bring a light dusting of snow, and more conspicuously high winds on ridge tops Wednesday through Thursday, with isolated gusts up to 100 miles per hour possible.  “The wind is the most dramatic part of this storm system,” says Chris Johnston, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Reno. “In the case of this storm, we are talking about what we call strong downslope winds.”

Snowpacks in Oregon, Idaho, Washington and California and are expected be much smaller by mid-century if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, according to federal projections released Friday. The Fourth National Climate Assessment, completed once every four years, asserts that the mild winter of 2014-15 may have foreshadowed the future. “As a harbinger, the unusually low Western U.S. snowpack of 2015 may become the norm,” according to the report.