The curling of the jet stream — an atmospheric stream of fast-moving air with speeds over 100 mph that travels thousands of miles — over the Pacific Ocean has triggered recent shifts in California’s spring weather patterns. Californians have seen leaps from snowmelt-inducing heat waves in the Sierra Nevada to marine layer clouds that stretch from the Bay Area to Sacramento.
Arizona has determined that there is not enough groundwater for all of the housing construction that has already been approved in the Phoenix area, and will stop developers from building some new subdivisions, a sign of looming trouble in the West and other places where overuse, drought and climate change are straining water supplies.
A new underground mapping technology that reveals the best spots for storing surplus water in California’s Central Valley is providing a big boost to the state’s most groundwater-dependent communities.
The maps provided by the California Department of Water Resources for the first time pinpoint paleo valleys and similar prime underground storage zones traditionally found with some guesswork by drilling exploratory wells and other more time-consuming manual methods.
The snow line report is based on 70 years of records that show progressively less snow accumulation and rising snow lines in California. The snow line is an elevation, where you get snow above it and rain below.
Senior water rights holders have arguably the sweetest deal in California water. They often have ironclad deals and some even get access to substantial water during the worst of drought.
But three new bills in the state legislature are taking aim at senior water rights in an attempt to level the playing field.
California water officials are urging a $3.2-billion investment in flood prevention projects over the next half decade to safeguard the Central Valley; particularly communities on the San Joaquin River that are considered among the most vulnerable in the nation.
My fellow Californians often remark that the weather in this state feels like it has been reduced to two seasons, both defined by natural disasters: In summer and fall, huge, intense wildfires rip their way across dry land, while winter and early spring bring intense atmospheric rivers with heavy rainfall, floods and landslides along with winds that take down trees.
This year’s historic snowpack has meant epic amounts of water flowing through California’s rivers, streams and creeks. … That’s more than the capacity of four standard 40-foot shipping containers rushing by each second. Around 40% of the roughly 500 stream gauges across the state are running above normal, provisional data from the U.S. Geological Survey shows. A few dozen are registering record highs for this time of year, especially along the central and southern Sierra. With peak melt season expected in the coming weeks, this means plentiful amounts of water running into reservoirs, but also dangerously fast flows and the risk for potential flooding.
The shadows were long and the wind across the flatlands fierce as trucks and ATVs began pulling into Chepo Gonzales’s yard one afternoon this March. “Did you double up your socks today?” Gonzales teased one of the arrivals, a man who complained about cold feet during the previous night’s patrol. Another man leaned out the window of his truck and offered a more serious status report: “There’s a lot of water out there, but it’s flowing north.”
After a four-year hiatus, El Niño is widely expected to make a grand reentrance this summer, ushering in the possibility of yet another wet, stormy winter.
“It looks like it’s full steam ahead,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said in a live YouTube interview last week, in which he placed the likelihood of a strong El Niño event at greater than 50% — even as projections still vary widely.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
