You are now in California and the U.S. category.

Flames racing through dry brush Sunday destroyed at least 10 homes and forced 4,000 people to flee and firefighters to carry animals out of a northern California lake community that was evacuated in a devastating wildfire last year. Cal Fire officials say the fire about 90 miles north of San Francisco has grown to nearly 5 square miles since it erupted Saturday afternoon. They have confirmed 10 homes destroyed, but eyewitnesses could see many more. On Sunday afternoon, the flames jumped a road and marched into Main Street in Lower Lake, a town of about 1,200.

If there’s any hope of preventing California from shriveling into a parched wasteland, the state will have to figure out some simple things first. Namely, how much water it has and where it’s all going. Shockingly, California isn’t tracking much of its water. It’s like a business that’s opted to fire the accountants and operate under the honor system, using an abacus and semi-annual estimates from middle managers. A new report from the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, known as PPIC, says that the state’s five-year drought has exposed “serious gaps and fragmentation.”

Never before has San Joaquin County agreed to share its prized groundwater with outside interests.That could change in the coming months, as county leaders move closer to finally considering approval of a one-time experiment with the East Bay Municipal Utility District. It is very modest experiment, involving a very small amount of water. But, if successful, the experiment could demonstrate that it’s possible for competing interests to cooperate in an era of increasing regulations and intensifying droughts.

 

California still faces drought conditions, but the impact on agriculture this year is less severe than it was the previous two years, according to the annual report from UC Davis. The report, released Monday, said the wetter winter and spring helped the state partially replenish surface water storage and increased recharge to some aquifers. Still, statewide storage in reservoirs remains below historical average and groundwater is substantially overdrawn in many areas.The report estimates the 2016 drought will result in $247 million loss of farm­gate revenues as well as 1,815 full and part time jobs statewide.

First seabirds started falling out of the sky, washing up on beaches from California to Canada. Then emaciated and dehydrated sea lion pups began showing up, stranded and on the brink of death. A surge in dead whales was reported in the same region, and that was followed by the largest toxic algal bloom in history seen along the Californian coast. Mixed among all that there were population booms of several marine species that normally aren’t seen surging in the same year. Plague, famine, pestilence and death was sweeping the northern Pacific Ocean between 2014 and 2015.