California’s prolonged drought has visible consequences such as depleted reservoirs and mandatory water conservation rules. But one of the more expensive effects could be buried deep in your electric bill.
The Pacific Institute updated its study on the hidden costs of drought and estimated that Californians have paid an additional $2 billion dollars in electrical bills over the last four years.
With Lake Oroville nearly half full, California State Parks has announced more boat ramps are open.
The agency stated Bidwell Canyon stage 1 ramps are now open for launching, along with Spillway stage 2 and Lime Saddle, according to a press release.
Wild weather swings across the globe are caused, in part, by the phenomenon known as El Niño. That’s the warming of the Pacific Ocean that leads to drought in much of Africa, and soaking rain and floods on America’s West Coast.
But in Southern California, it appears that El Niño is temporarily on hold.
California’s soggy start to winter had many predicting the end of the state’s record drought.
Myths and overstatements popped up like weeds after winter rain.
Some said El Niño’s powerful storms could wash away the drought by spring. Others said the state couldn’t officially declare an end to the drought until reservoirs filled up. And then there were questions about whether an official drought-ending declaration could only come from California Gov. Jerry Brown.
As a wet and windy storm blows in off the Pacific, a new San Jose-based radar system is watching it with the greatest precision ever, estimating rainfall in individual communities rather than providing a more general Bay Area forecast.
Discrete patches of incoming moisture are detected by a humming “X-band” radar unit on the rooftop of a treatment plant owned by the Santa Clara Valley Water District, predicting precipitation and flood risk with much greater accuracy than current technology. Four more units will be phased in over the next five years for the Peninsula, East Bay and North Bay.
The weather, up to its usual surprises, brought summer sunshine to the Bay Area this week in the dead of winter at the same time that Sierra snowpack figures for Northern California were measured and found to be practically normal.
The snowpack in the northern reaches of the Sierra, which stretches from near the Oregon border to Lake Tahoe, was 99 percent of normal for mid-February, the California Department of Water Resources said. Statewide, the snowpack was 91 percent of normal.
Recently, some legislators have been demanding that state and federal agencies – or Congress – overrule the decisions of agency biologists and scientists in order to increase the amount of water pumped out of the Delta, complaining that the state and federal water projects are not capturing most of the water from recent storms. Yet recent analysis by The Bay Institute shows that approximately 66% of the runoff in January 2016 was captured or diverted, with only one third of the unimpaired runoff actually making it through the Bay-Delta estuary. For the period of October 1st to January 31st, 60% of the storm runoff has been diverted or stored. Compare this level of diversions to the prevailing science, which shows that, to maintain a healthy river system, no more than 20% of its flows, on average, should be diverted.
America’s two leading climate science agencies are conducting an unprecedented survey via land, sea and air to investigate the current El Niño event and better understand its impact on weather systems that have brought both parched and soaking conditions to North America.
The project, which will conclude in March, will deploy resources from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA to analyze one of the strongest El Niños on record. El Niño is a periodic phenomenon in which parts of the eastern Pacific warm, causing a ripple effect for weather around the world.
Ninety percent of California’s annual precipitation usually falls between Oct. 1 and April 30, half of it from December through February. That means the next few weeks may be make-or-break for the state’s hopes of emerging from its four-year drought.
Where do things stand now?
The rain totals are looking neither terrible nor great — mostly above-normal readings for the “water year” (measured starting Oct. 1) in the northern two- thirds of the state, mostly below-normal in Southern California.
A new revised drought relief bill introduced by Senator Dianne Feinstein puts California one step closer to comprehensive water policy reform, according to California Citrus Mutual (CCM) President Joel Nelsen.
In a release, Nelsen said the California Long-Term Provisions for Water Supply and Short-Term Provisions for Emergency Drought Relief Act identified several paths by which the state could improve its water infrastructure and create a more reliable water system for all users.
