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Federal climatologists predict that dry conditions will generally recede over the winter in Oregon, Idaho, Washington and parts of Northern California, providing an early and upbeat outlook on next year’s water supply. The Climate Prediction Center forecast a 70 percent chance of a weak La Nina, a cooling of the ocean around the equator. La Nina generally tilts the odds in favor of wetter and cooler winters in the northern U.S., according to the center. It’s not a sure bet, though. La Nina’s influence will vary by region. The odds it stays through the winter are 55 percent.

New research may have found a solution to address California’s prolonged period of drought. A study conducted by researchers at Stanford University suggests that California’s aquifers, underground areas where water collects, may have up to three times the amount of useable groundwater as previously estimated. The research estimates that the previously untapped deep groundwater source could hold up to 2,700 billion tons of freshwater under the state’s Central Valley.  Historically, deep groundwater aquifers have been developed for gas and oil extraction, rather than used as a viable water source.

Last week, folks who are in the inner circle of the plans for Sites Reservoir held a get-together in Maxwell to show off the group’s new office and new logo. Also new is a website, that talks about all things Sites Reservoir — a construction schedule, facts sheets and a list of interested participants (see sidebar). The next big step is money, particularly through a proposal to get a chunk of the $2.7 billion of bond funds available from California’s Proposition 1. The Sites Reservoir committee won’t be able to apply for that funding until around the middle of next year.

The state’s Bay-Delta water quality and species protection efforts added another piece Friday with the release of the draft report on water flow in and out of the Sacramento River Basin. California’s Water Quality Control Board is seeking comment on the Scientific Basis Report, from which it will determine the necessary flows to “protect fish and wildlife beneficial uses.” “The report also acknowledges that non-flow measures should be integrated with flows to protect fish and wildlife,” the board staff said in a statement released with the report.

Water users in San Francisco and its suburbs face a day of reckoning as state regulators move to leave more water in California’s two biggest rivers in an effort to halt a collapse in the native ecosystem of the San Francisco Bay and its estuary, the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Even as water allocations to California farmers have been severely reduced, San Francisco water authorities have freely tapped the Tuolumne River, which the city dammed early in the last century at its headwaters in Yosemite National Park.