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Map Shows Epic Amounts of Water Gushing Through California’s Rivers

/in , , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Jack Lee

This year’s historic snowpack has meant epic amounts of water flowing through California’s rivers, streams and creeks. … That’s more than the capacity of four standard 40-foot shipping containers rushing by each second. Around 40% of the roughly 500 stream gauges across the state are running above normal, provisional data from the U.S. Geological Survey shows. A few dozen are registering record highs for this time of year, especially along the central and southern Sierra. With peak melt season expected in the coming weeks, this means plentiful amounts of water running into reservoirs, but also dangerously fast flows and the risk for potential flooding.

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First Drought, Then Flood. Can the West Learn to Live Between Extremes?

/in , , /by /The New York Timesby Brook Jarvis

The shadows were long and the wind across the flatlands fierce as trucks and ATVs began pulling into Chepo Gonzales’s yard one afternoon this March. “Did you double up your socks today?” Gonzales teased one of the arrivals, a man who complained about cold feet during the previous night’s patrol. Another man leaned out the window of his truck and offered a more serious status report: “There’s a lot of water out there, but it’s flowing north.”

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6 Common Misconceptions About El Niño and Its Impact on California Weather

/in , , /by /KQEDby Ezra David Romero

After a four-year hiatus, El Niño is widely expected to make a grand reentrance this summer, ushering in the possibility of yet another wet, stormy winter.

“It looks like it’s full steam ahead,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said in a live YouTube interview last week, in which he placed the likelihood of a strong El Niño event at greater than 50% — even as projections still vary widely.

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State Asked to Stop Diverting Iconic Mono Lake’s Water to Los Angeles

/in , , /by /Cal Mattersby Alastair Bland

As trickling snowmelt in the Sierra Nevada slowly raises Mono Lake —  famed for its bird life and outlandish shoreline mineral spires — advocates are pressuring state water officials to halt diversions from the lake’s tributaries to Los Angeles, which has used this clean mountain water source for decades.

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A Wet Year Promises a Boost to Both Colorado River Basin Reservoirs and Ecosystems

/in , , /by /The Colorado Sunby Shannon Mullane

The network of pipes and massive bathtubs that is the Colorado River Basin’s reservoir storage system is going to see some recovery this year thanks to higher-than-average snowpack. That’s a promising sign for aquatic habitats in need of a health boost.

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Plan Underway to Raise Folsom Dam to Store More Water in the Lake

/in , , /by /CBS Newsby Marlee Ginter

Big crowds were out at Folsom Lake on Memorial Day, and with a record-breaking snowpack, the lake is now nearly full. But there’s also a large amount of water being released downstream

There’s now a plan underway to store more water in the lake, and that involves raising Folsom Dam.

 

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California Snowlines On Track To Be 1,600 Feet Higher by Century’s End

/in , , /by /Water News Networkby Robert Monroe Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

This winter produced record snowfall in California, but a new study suggests the state should expect gradually declining snowpacks, even if punctuated with occasional epic snowfalls, in the future.

An analysis by Tamara Shulgina, Alexander Gershunov, and other climate scientists at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography suggest that in the face of unabated global warming, the snowlines marking where rainfall turns to snow have been rising significantly over the past 70 years. Projections by the researchers suggest the trend will continue with snowlines rising hundreds of meters higher by the second half of this century.

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Western States Finally Strike Colorado River Deal. But The Hard Work Has Only Just Begun

/in , , /by /TIME by Alejandro De La Garza

At one of Los Angeles’s main water treatment plants a few miles north of the Port of Los Angeles, a small-scale facility is demonstrating what might be part of the solution to the region’s water woes. The Pure Water Southern California Demonstration Plant facility uses membrane bioreactors, reverse osmosis, and ultraviolet radiation to process about 500,000 gallons of treated wastewater a day, further purifying it into something clean enough to use in industry, replenish the region’s groundwater, and potentially put back into the city’s drinking water system.

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Opinion: El Niño is Back. What Does That Mean for an Already Overheated California?

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Justin S. Mankin and Christopher W. Callahan

During the El Niño of 1983, Californians counted their blessings. The warm Pacific waters sloshing eastward certainly brought heavy spring rains and record snow. But the state largely escaped the flood risks being frantically managed farther east.

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EPA Authority to Regulate Wetlands Clobbered by Supreme Court

/in , /by /Courthouse News Service by Kelsey Reichmann

Limiting the government’s authority to regulate wetlands under the Clean Water Act, the Supreme Court ended a nearly two-decade-old dispute Thursday.

The ruling from the court was unanimous, with the justices affirming summary judgment in the suit by Chantell and Michael Sackett against the Environmental Protection Agency.

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