Despite a recent blanket of 1 to 2 feet of snow, snow cover in the Sierra is at its lowest point in late January since the peak of the state’s multi-year drought in 2014 and 2015, according to an analysis from NOAA’s National Operational Hyrdologic Remote Sensing Center. Tahoe City, along the north shore of Lake Tahoe, had picked up only 23.5 inches of snow this season through Jan. 30, a season-to-date snowfall deficit of 70.5 inches, or just under 6 feet.

A critical hearing needed to approve Governor Jerry Brown’s controversial Delta Tunnels project has been delayed until February 8. The California Water Fix Hearing Team of the State Water Resources Control Board has delayed the hearing as it continues to review several motions to delay a key hearing by 90 days over alleged illegal exparte communications between the Board’s staff and California Department of Water Resources (DWR) personnel.

The Trump administration on Wednesday delayed implementation of an Obama-era clean water rule by another two years to give the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers more time to do away with it. The move follows a Supreme Court ruling last week that said legal challenges to the Waters of the U.S. rule should be decided in federal district courts. That will result in the lifting of a stay issued by an appeals court blocking the 2015 rule from going into effect.

A year after record rainfall swamped Northern California, filling our reservoirs and ending the state’s crippling yearslong drought, this winter is proving quite lackluster for storm activity. In Santa Rosa, just 5.98 inches of rain have fallen since the start of the year compared to 18.96 inches of rain last January, the wettest on record for the Santa Rosa Plain.

After extensive fieldwork, site observation and geologic mapping, a team of scientists hired by Cadiz Inc. concluded that a proposed water transfer project in a remote part of San Bernadino County desert won’t harm one of the largest wildlife water sources in the Mojave Desert. Cadiz commissioned a peer-reviewed geologic investigation “to address lingering questions as to whether the project could impact Bonanza Spring under any circumstance. That question has now been answered definitively no,”  Cadiz CEO Scott Slater said, in a statement.