Some California reservoirs are releasing vast amounts of water even though the drought continues. This wouldn’t be necessary if water managers used new weather and streamflow forecasting tools, says Rob Hartman, hydrologist-in-charge of the California/Nevada River Forecast Center
Thanks in part to El Niño, snowpack in the Sierra Nevada is greater than it has been in years. With the winter snowfall season winding down, California officials said that the pack peaked two weeks ago at 87 percent of the long-term average.
That’s far better than last year, when it was just 5 percent of normal and Gov. Jerry Brown announced restrictions on water use after four years of severe drought. But the drought is still far from over, especially in Southern California, where El Niño did not bring many major storms.
A simple and relatively inexpensive way to expand California’s available water is to modify spillways on reservoirs. Congressman Jeff Denham noted experts have estimated it would allow access to a million acre feet of water annually. That’s enough to meet the typical water needs of almost 11 million people a year based on per capital consumption figures supplied by the United States Geological Survey.
But it requires more than the proverbial act of Congress. Denham noted the big roadblock is the federal bureaucracy — the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to be more precise — that only relicenses hydroelectric operations every 40 to 50 years.
San Francisco intellectuals are noted for attacking Central Valley farmers, Sierra lumbermen and Los Angeles for environmental crimes.The most enduring symbol of hatred for the San Francisco environmental crowd is dams. They represent everything supposedly evil about modern-day California. They contend the huge concrete structures destroy wild rivers, flood pristine canyons and spur urban growth where it shouldn’t occur.
The San Francisco crowd’s favorite whipping boy is Los Angeles. They detest what Los Angeles has done in the name of water development, specifically with the Owens Valley and Mono Lake.
People have long predicted that California could eventually collapse into the ocean following a mega earthquake. Now, an eerily similar true-life scenario is playing out — but it’s thanks to the weather.
The Gold Rush State has sunk more than 45 feet since 1935 – something the U.S. government calls the “largest human alteration of the earth’s surface.” But earthquakes aren’t the cause. It’s happening because of excessive groundwater mining brought on by drought, and geologists say all the rain in the world won’t reverse cave-ins of dirt and rock in underground aquifers.
Last December, any swimmer attempting to blindly jump into Lake Shasta—the biggest reservoir in California—would tumble, Homer Simpson cliff-jump style, down a barren, bruising drop. Water levels in the lake had fallen to more than 100 feet below their historic averages but, thanks to recent rains, they’re doing remarkably better today.
Evidence comes from a series of NASA images made with USGS Landsat data, documenting a year in Shasta’s journey from dusty decrepitude to water-plump health. They begin on April 13, 2015, when the lake surface was at a low 995 feet, exposing hundreds of miles of new, tan-colored beach:
A year ago this month, Gov. Jerry Brown called for mandatory water conservation efforts throughout California’s 400-plus urban water agencies. This emergency measure calling for a 25 percent reduction statewide compared with usage in 2013 came during the fourth consecutive year of drought.
This week, the state announced that water users had slacked off, missing that target for the past five months and ending the nine-month cumulative savings at 23.9 percent—1 percent short of the target.
Lake Shasta is nearly full, gasoline prices are under $3 a gallon, significantly down from a year ago, and the overall economy continues to improve.
So there was a good bit of optimism in the room at Thursday’s Shasta Cascade Wonderland Association Tourism Summit in Redding. The event at the Red Lion Hotel drew tourism officials from across the state as they gear up for what they hope is a busier 2016 summer season.
There has been a nice improvement for the Sacramento valley region regarding the serious 4-year drought.
El Niño rain has helped to fill the reservoirs in far Northern California and has helped reduce the drought by one category in the area. It’s worth mentioning that at the beginning of this water year, 46% of the state was in top-level drought and two years ago it was 58%. With the latest update we are down to 32% of the state, which is massive, but it’s a slow and steady march to improving our water situation.
A newly released international study debunks climate models on global warming that forecast extreme rainfall and drought tied to temperature swings, casting doubt on disaster scenarios promoted by the climate-change movement.
The study in the journal Nature published Thursday examining Northern Hemisphere rainfall data going back 1,200 years found that today’s climate models were frequently wrong on predicting extreme rain and drought.
