A field that has long grown tomatoes, peppers and onions now looks like a wind-whipped ocean as farmer Don Cameron seeks to capture the runoff from a freakishly wet year in California to replenish the groundwater basin that is his only source to water his crops.
Taking some tomatoes out of production for a year is an easy choice if it means boosting future water supplies for his farm about 35 miles (56 kilometers) southwest of Fresno.
With record and near-record snowpack up and down California, much of its multiyear drought has abated — but it’s never time to break out the balloons and party favors when it comes to water in the West.
During a California-Nevada U.S. Drought Monitoring Group seminar Monday, water experts were upbeat when talking about the massive snowpack, reservoirs spilling and more storms on the horizon.
In California, the snowpack is at some of the highest levels in recorded history.
The state’s snowpack accumulates in the Sierra Nevada—a mountain range that stretches for 400 miles from Northern California southward to the Great Basin. The snowpack, which melts into the state’s reservoirs, provides about a third of California’s total water supply.
As the rain year continues to look promising, rice farmers are happy to expect most if not all of their water allocations will be delivered.
This week the Department of Water Resources announced a 75% water allocation to the irrigation districts served by the State Water Project.
Floods and droughts are not opposites and can occur simultaneously. This occurs often in California and is especially well-illustrated this year.
Floods, droughts, and water scarcity are different. Floods are too much water at a place and time, and we would often pay to reduce the water present at that location and moment. Droughts and water scarcity represent too little water at a place and time, meaning we would often pay to increase its availability. We highlight these differences because people tend to view such conditions through an unrealistic zero-sum lens. This essay uses this year’s experience to examine how floods, drought, and water scarcity differ, can occur in the same year, and how droughts might end, but leave legacies.
This California drought is largely over. Even though there is another month left in California’s wet season, the 2020-2022 California drought is largely over. Precipitation in all major basins of California exceeds averages for the entire water year. Snowpacks are well above April 1 averages (usually about the maximum for the year). Most reservoirs have more than average volumes stored for this time of year, and many are in flood operations. Only a few very large reservoirs (relative to their average inflows) remain below historical averages (such as Trinity at 50% and New Melones at 90% of their averages).
Gov. Gavin Newsom came close but couldn’t quite bring himself to say it: The drought’s over.
It’s disappointing when a governor won’t acknowledge what ordinary citizens already know because they can see things for themselves.
Another drought will emerge soon enough. It always does. That’s the California pattern — climate change or not.
Spring is arriving sooner and warming up faster than ever before, new research shows. And that means more than just early wildflower blooms across Arizona.
A longer, warmer spring can stress water supplies in the West. The longer spring season may also produce ripple effects on agriculture as water demand will likely increase, and growing seasons may shift.
At an appearance at a groundwater recharge project in Yolo County, Newsom announced the end of state regulations he put in place last March that required cities and water agencies to impose water restrictions such as limits on the number of days a week residents could water lawns and landscaping. The decision now will be up to each local area in the coming weeks and months about whether to drop those restrictions.
After years of extreme drought and dismal snowpack, California has had a remarkably wet winter and is now veering into record-setting territory for snowfall.
As of Friday, the snowpack in the southern Sierra Nevada was at 286% of normal — the highest figure ever, easily eclipsing the region’s benchmark of 263% set in 1969.
The Marin Municipal Water District’s directors are on a political hot seat.
They are considering a four-year plan of raising rates, possibly as much as 20% for most customers, to right MMWD’s fiscal ship and pay for expanding the district’s storage capacity and make needed repairs.
