This week I testified at a legislative hearing on implementing the $7.5 billion water bond passed by voters in November 2014. One legislator asked me if the state was positioned to capture extra rainwater if El Niño brings a strong rainy season.
I pointed out that many California reservoirs are empty enough to capture much of the runoff from this year’s rainstorms, but that isn’t the full story.
Even in the midst of the recent El Niño storm systems, environmentalists and vineyardists are still concerned with the impacts of four years of continued drought on crops.
Yet a recent analysis of the effectiveness of water penetration — using soil moisture-monitoring instrumentation — has shown that using a deep root irrigation system can save as much as 50 percent of water usage, according to a recent report by Angwin company Deep Root Irrigation.
In the wake of drought and environmental concerns, more water agencies in California and across the West are finding a new water source for human consumption in an unexpected place: the sewer.
The treated sewer water isn’t going directly to your tap after treatment. In most cases, it’s put into an aquifer and withdrawn later — years later.
The recent El Niño storms soaking Northern California are recharging Marin County reservoirs, and on Tuesday, six were spilling over and funneling water into creeks and streams.
This is all good news for Marin residents and local salmon as this year’s coho run is the largest in almost a decade.
The Marin Municipal Water District has recorded 28.7 inches of rain at its Lake Lagunitas gauge since July 1, and this season’s rainfall is 103 percent of average.
The snow keeps piling up, but the rules requiring water conservation aren’t going away.
California’s drought regulators agreed Tuesday to extend water conservation mandates through the end of October. The decision came in spite of increasing evidence that El Niño is delivering better-than-average precipitation, including an encouraging measurement of the Sierra Nevada snowpack recorded just hours earlier.
The new regulations adopted by the State Water Resources Control Board mean urban Californians will have to reduce their water usage between March and October by about 23.4 percent compared with the baseline year of 2013.
A thousand miles south of Hawaii, the air at 45,000 feet above the equatorial Pacific was a shimmering gumbo of thick storm clouds and icy cirrus haze, all cooked up by the overheated waters below.
In a Gulfstream jet more accustomed to hunting hurricanes in the Atlantic, researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were cruising this desolate stretch of tropical ocean where the northern and southern trade winds meet.
Following a welcomed parade of El Niño storms drenching drought-stricken California, state officials on Tuesday will decide whether to extend emergency conservation orders, and reveal how much water Californians saved in December.
The figures are expected to show that for a third straight month, Californians missed a mandate to use 25 percent less water. State regulators, however, say they are confident residents will meet the long-term goal that requires the savings over a nine-month period ending in February, a more important target.
It didn’t rain too heavily during January but it sure rained often, resulting in rainfall far above average for the month.
In Chico, 8.61 inches fell during the month at the Enterprise-Record weather station, nearly double the 4.86 inches normal for the month. The National Weather Service put the rain in Oroville for January at 7.18 inches, with 20.2 inches in Paradise. Red Bluff saw 13.69 inches and Redding, 12.68 inches. The Weather Service said rainfall amounts of 100 percent to 250 percent of normal were common across the area
The U.S. Forest Service today released a new report, Effects of Drought on Forests and Rangelands in the United States: A Comprehensive Science Synthesis, that provides a national assessment of peer-reviewed scientific research on the impacts of drought on U.S. forests and rangelands. This report will help the Forest Service better manage forests and grasslands impacted by climate change.
California’s unprecedented dry spell has tested the limits of drought-tolerant ferns, which carpet the forest floor underneath the West Coast’s iconic redwoods, according to a new study by UC Santa Cruz scientists.
“We’ve never seen a drought of this magnitude,” said co-author Jarmila Pittermann, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. “You’re used to seeing a green understory, but in the last four years without rain, they’re white or brown. They dried up.”
