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Living with Extreme Floods in California

/in , , /by /California Water Blogby Peter Moyle, Jay Lund, Andrew L. Rypel, Carson Jeffres and Nicholas Pinter

Floods and their consequences are a reality for many worldwide, including those living in California. This reality is evidenced by pictures of people stranded on roofs surrounded by water, people paddling down water-filled streets in makeshift boats, and farm fields and orchards covered in standing water. However, there is also growing acceptance that floods are natural, recurring events that have positive aspects, especially where they support migratory waterfowl, enhance fisheries, and sustain wetlands and their high diversity of organisms (Mount et al 2023).

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Extreme Heat Moves East Where Many Will See Their Hottest Days of the Year

/in , , /by /AP Newsby Drew Costley

Nearly 200 million people in the United States, or 60% of the U.S. population, are under a heat advisory or flood warning or watch and have been since Thursday, according to the National Weather Service.

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California Has New Weapons to Battle Summer Blackouts: Battery Storage, Power From Record Rain

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Grace Toohey

It’s a summertime sequence that’s become all too familiar in California: Extreme heat forces air conditioners into overdrive, which pushes the state’s power grid to the brink.

In August 2020, a major heat event fueled by the climate crisis forced some of the state’s first rotating power outages in decades, as the ongoing transition to green energy lagged behind demand. Last September, Californians narrowly avoided blackouts as a record-breaking heat wave broiled almost every corner of the state for days.

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How Wildfires Are Threatening Colorado Water Supplies — and Costing Lots of Money

/in , , /by /Denver Post by Elise Schmelzer

The Colorado River this spring ran high, fast and so full of sediment pushed downstream from wildfire burn scars that the water treatment plant in Hot Sulphur Springs couldn’t keep up.

The sediment repeatedly clogged the town’s intake valves, forcing town leaders to issue and emergency order in April and call for residents to voluntarily cut back on water use.

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Water Wasted | The History of the Delta Water Tunnel Project and Why People Are Against It

/in , , /by /ABC 10by Brenden Mincheff

A battle remains underway in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Delta.

For decades, Delta residents and the state have been unable to agree on a plan to transport water from the rainy but rural northern part of the state down to the heavily populated, dry southern half.

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How Cloud Seeding is Giving a Boost to Nevada’s Water Supply

/in , /by /Las Vegas Review-Journal by Colton Lochhead

In mountain peaks across the West, it’s their job to make it snow.

No, they’re not wizards, even if the work they do seems like magic.

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A Relentless Heat Wave That Refuses to Let Up Brings Danger to California, Southwest

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Hayley Smith

For nearly a month, millions of people across the American Southwest have sizzled, sweated and sweltered under a heat wave that refuses to let up.

Day after day, residents from Fresno to Phoenix have endured triple-digit temperatures and hot, restless nights that have offered little relief.

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July Has Been So Blistering Hot, Scientists Already Calculate That it’s the Warmest Month on Record

/in , , /by /AP Newsby Seth Borenstein

July has been so hot thus far that scientists calculate that this month will be the hottest globally on record and likely the warmest human civilization has seen, even though there are several days left to sweat through.

The World Meteorological Organization and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service on Thursday proclaimed July’s heat is beyond record-smashing.

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Everything, Everywhere, All at Once: The Great Floods of 2023

/in , , /by /Bulletin of the Atomic Scientistsby Jessica McKenzie

Another week, another catastrophic, record-setting, history-making flood, this time in Kentucky.

Preliminary assessments indicate rainfall in Graves County last week likely set a new record for most precipitation in a 24-hour period, with 11.28 inches of rain. This would make it yet another “1,000-year” flood event, which had, according to historical projections, less than a 0.1 percent chance of occurring in any given year. One of the towns that experienced flash flooding was Mayfield, a community still rebuilding from a 2021 tornado that killed 57 people.

This was just one of the 11 flash flood emergencies in as many days in the United States, according to Weather Channel meteorologist Heather Zons. These events have claimed multiple lives: 2-year-old Mattie Shiels, 9-month-old brother, Conrad, and their mother, Katie Seley drowned after getting swept away by flash flooding in Pennsylvania, during an event that killed at least four others. In New York earlier this month, 43-year-old Pamela Nugent was swept away trying to evacuate a flooded area; 63-year-old Stephen Davoll drowned in his home in Vermont.

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How Much Snow Still Covers California’s Mountains This July?

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Abhinanda Bhattacharyya

In a typical year, California mountains are largely snow-free at this stage in the summer, with some exceptions at higher elevations. This, however, has not been a typical year. In the last couple of weeks of July, large swaths of the Sierra continued to be covered in snow, making for tricky and in some cases treacherous hiking conditions.

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