The atmospheric rivers that pummeled California are a far cry from what a series of extreme storms could potentially bring, climate scientist Daniel Swain said at a legislative hearing on Wednesday that explored the impacts of the recent storm sequence.
“We’re nowhere near the kinds of events that we think are possible in a warming climate,” said Swain, a researcher at UCLA and The Nature Conservancy.
California may celebrate having double the expected snowpack after a string of atmospheric river storms, but state water experts warn that more needs to come to offset years of record-breaking drought.
At the season’s second monthly snowpack survey conducted Wednesday at Phillips Station — at the intersection of Highway 50 and Sierra-at-Tahoe Road — the California Department of Water Resources measured current snow depths and water content.
If you thought San Diego County was off to a particularly wet start to the new year, you’re absolutely right. The National Weather Service said with January, the region experienced its wettest month since February 2005.
Winter storms brought measurable rain to the county last month, bringing a rain total of 5.14 inches, according to the agency. The average January rainfall in San Diego is 1.98 inches, to give you a better idea of how wet conditions have been.
The mountain snowpack that supplies a significant amount of California’s water got an incredible boost from recent powerful storms and is outpacing the state’s wettest season on record, state water officials said Wednesday.
But its too soon to know if the winter will be a drought-buster, they said.
The Department of Water Resources said Wednesday the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada has reached 205% of normal thanks to a series of storms, though dry weather between now and April could still threaten water supplies.
The snowpack received a significant boost from one of the wettest three-week periods on record in California, following the driest three-year period on record.
The New Year’s Atmospheric River storms of 2023 have abated and catchments across the State are draining as exemplified by continuing baseflows through their hydrograph recession limbs. River flows are still elevated, but releases have been incrementally curtailed and stage levels continue to drop.
Despite early positive signs, however, the reality of what this storm (or series of storms) brought in terms of drought relief is made eminently clear by reviewing various data sources.
California water agencies that rely on the Colorado River today proposed a modeling framework for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to evaluate as it considers actions to help stabilize reservoir elevations and protect critical infrastructure to ensure the Colorado River system can continue to support 40 million people, nearly 6 million acres of agriculture, and Tribes across seven states and portions of Mexico.
Responding to an Associated Press (AP) article titled “California lone holdout in consensus for Colorado River cuts,” Imperial Irrigation District Division 2 Director and Chairman of the Colorado River Board of Directors J.B. Hamby said the six-state consensus is inconsistent with the “Law of the River.”
The AP article appeared in the Tuesday, January 31 edition of the Imperial Valley Press, where the article accused California of not joining a plan created by the other six Colorado Basin States to see more than 2-million-acre feet of water cut from most the lower basin.
Dueling plans for how to save the fast-drying Colorado River have been submitted by California and six other states to federal authorities, who have made clear they may impose draconian cuts if consensus is not reached regionally on deep reductions. That agreement could be hard to come by.
California swung hard at six other Western states late Tuesday, submitting its own proposal for more than 3 million acre feet in reductions — both from current and future agreements — if necessary from the river’s dwindling reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
California released a plan Tuesday detailing how Western states reliant on the Colorado River should save more water. It came a day after the six other states in the river basin made a competing proposal.
In a letter to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, California described how states could conserve between 1 million and nearly 2 million acre feet of water through new cuts based on the elevation of Lake Mead, a key reservoir.
