State surveyors will travel up the Sierra Nevada Tuesday to take their monthly measurements of the snowpack after a mainly dry and warm February.
The Department of Water Resources will conduct the survey in Echo Summit in the Central Sierra, which includes Lake Tahoe.
Last June, at the height of California’s drought, the Center for Investigative Reporting revealed that a homeowner in Bel-Air was using 1,300 gallons of water per hour. Annually, that works out to about 11.8 million gallons – enough water supply for 90 average households.
Reaction was immediate. Water agencies, other homeowners, and the public denounced the waste of water by the unidentified homeowner as careless and irresponsible.
Each year, 181 species of waterfowl, shorebirds and riparian birds flock to California’s Central Valley to nest between November and March. The space they roost in is already limited: There are just 19 wetlands, comprised of National Wildlife Refuges and State Wildlife Areas, spread across little more than 270 square miles in the valley’s 22,500-square-mile expanse.
But over the past five years during the state’s historic drought, those birds have returned, only to find once watery areas no longer suitable for nesting. If dry conditions persist, the little remaining space could disappear.
Californians who hoped that El Nino-driven storms would unleash a heavy dousing to the drought-parched state in February instead saw less rain than normal for the month, but forecasters said March could still deliver.
Predictions of an El Nino winter, bringing a series of heavy storms to the West Coast, had been greeted optimistically in California, which has grappled with a crippling, four-year drought that has killed millions of trees and cost the state’s agricultural economy an estimated $1.84 billion.
Given the odd weather of late, you may be aware that we are in the midst of what could be a record-setting El Niño. Rumors of a switch to La Niña later this year have also danced into the public’s ear, particularly those with an interest in commodity markets.
But comprehension of such a scenario, and what it may mean, is quite difficult without an understanding of what El Niño and La Niña are and why they exist.
There’s a ton of rain in the forecast for California. A fire hose of moisture from the tropical Pacific Ocean is expected to take aim at the West Coast, delivering a series of storms to the Golden State. But although the weather pattern appears to be changing, the drought is not, and even a wetter-than-average March may be too little, too late.
The precipitation outlook through mid-March looks great for the West, and California in particular. While much of February was dominated by high pressure and sunshine, forecast models are predicting a pattern change over the next week that will lead to more storms coming off the Pacific and more chances for rain and snow.
Assemblyman Marc Levine has introduced a bill that could put California on the road to developing a water trading market similar to one pioneered by Australia during its “millennium drought.”
“I looked at how Australia dealt with its 14-year drought and saw that water transfers had a good deal to do with them using their water more efficiently,” said Levine, a Democrat who lives in Marin. “I wanted to take the best lessons from how other countries have struggled with drought and apply them to California.”
San Francisco will quench its thirst for rain once again this week when a series of storms predicted to hit The City as early as Thursday roll in, according to the National Weather Service.
The storms come after a dry month for San Francisco, which pulled in a mere 0.09 inches of rainfall in February, said Steve Anderson, a forecaster for the weather service.
There’s a rule in California that may seem bizarre in a drought-stricken state: in the winter, reservoirs aren’t allowed to fill up completely.
In fact, even as this post goes up, a handful of reservoirs are releasing water to maintain empty space. The practice, which has long inflamed combatants in California’s water wars, is due to a decades-old rule designed to protect public safety. If a major winter storm comes in, reservoirs need space to catch the runoff and prevent floods.
After a dismally dry February, drought-weary Californians are hoping a series of storms predicted to roll through in early March blanket the Sierra Nevada with a much-needed additional layer of snow, building up the state’s vital snowpack that all but disappeared last year.
Starting Friday, forecasters are predicting a chance of rain or snow for 10 consecutive days. How much water those storms might eventually supply to the state’s reservoirs depends partly on where they come from — warmer, wetter storms sweeping across the Pacific generally bring more snow to the mountains than colder, dryer tempests barreling down from the Gulf of Alaska.
