Survey Finds Nearly Average California Snowpack, Setting Stage for Tough Decision on Water Conservation
Survey finds nearly average California snowpack, setting stage for tough decision on water conservation.
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Dianne Feinstein Says Water Wars Tougher Than Assault-Weapons Ban
Moments before release of a crucial snowpack survey Wednesday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein warned against loosening the mandatory water restrictions imposed last year by Gov. Jerry Brown. “I think it’s premature right now,” the California Democrat said Wednesday afternoon. “I think we need to see what happens in April … an important month for water.”
Feinstein met with The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board to build support for her latest big piece of water legislation. Feinstein, who wants to spend up to $1.3 billion for desalination, recycling, storage and grants, said in long run the objective is to be prepared as the state population grows and the climate changes.
Sierra Snowpack Shows El Niño Not as Beastly as Billed
The blame for California’s below-average snowpack was placed Wednesday at the feet of a largely impotent El Niño, which failed to deliver the powerful storms forecasters expected.
Snow surveyors for the California Department of Water Resources found that the water content of the Sierra snow is only 87 percent of the historical average for this time of year. That’s a bug drop from January when the “frozen water supply,” as it is called by hydrologists, was well above normal.
Critical Sierra Survey Finds Healthy Snowpack – But No ‘Drought Buster’
After years of drought and months of speculation about how much precipitation a strong El Niño weather pattern would bring, the results are in:
We’ve had a roughly average year. On about this date last year, Gov. Jerry Brown stood in a dry field near Lake Tahoe and announced that he would require California’s urban water districts to cut use by 25 percent. Snowpack on that day was roughly 5 percent of normal.
Improved California Spring Snowpack Won’t End Drought
State drought surveyors will trudge through deep snow Wednesday to manually measure what could be close to a normal Sierra Nevada snowpack for this time of year.
A year ago, Gov. Jerry Brown stood on the same spot — then a dusty patch of ground with no snow — to announce that the dire drought required residents to cut back water use by 25 percent.
California Drought Rules Likely to be Relaxed
With the wettest winter in five years having taken the hard edges off the historic drought and a key Sierra snowpack reading Wednesday expected to show big gains, Californians can look forward to substantial relief from mandatory statewide water restrictions.
“We are likely to ease the rules or lift the rules,” said Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of the State Water Resources Control Board. “We are in better shape.”
California Drought Rules Likely to be Relaxed
With the wettest winter in five years having taken the hard edges off the historic drought and a key Sierra snowpack reading Wednesday expected to show big gains, Californians can look forward to substantial relief from mandatory statewide water restrictions.
“We are likely to ease the rules or lift the rules,” said Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of the State Water Resources Control Board. “We are in better shape.”
March Bids Farewell to Sierra with Flurry of Snow
A month that’s been called miraculous for California’s water supply is marching toward the finale of the rainy season, but as it was heading out the door, storms in Tahoe dumped half a foot of snow on ski resorts Monday night into Tuesday.
Without other definitive wet systems on the horizon, the powder — which continued to lightly fall into Tuesday evening — is likely March’s last hurrah, forecasters said.
Unimpressive El Niño Leaves California in Water Limbo
The rain storms and blizzards that were supposed to come with El Niño were conspicuously non-biblical in California this winter, leaving the state in an ecological limbo that has regulators thinking about easing water-use restrictions in some places but not in others.
While the weather cheered ski resorts hit hard by the historic drought and brought some reservoirs to their highest points in years, in the end it dropped less snow than average in the Sierra, where more than a third of the state’s water comes from.
How Unusual Was the California Nevada Drought of 2012-2015?
In this timely study, as they describe it, Hatchett et al. (2015) strove to determine whether the hydro-climatic conditions that occurred during the 2012-2015 (hereafter current) California-Nevada drought were “within the range of natural variability documented by paleo-proxy indicators,” which they hoped could lead to the “disentanglement of the relative roles of natural versus anthropogenic forcing factors as causative agents.” So what did they do? And what did they learn?
