Some 22 billion gallons of raw sewage have flowed from Mexico into San Diego County since the end of December, the International Boundary and Water Commission reported on Wednesday.
“Transboundary flows continue down the Tijuana River from recent rains,” the IBWC, a binational entity responsible for shared water resources, said in a statement on Twitter.
A powerful storm barreling toward California from the tropical Pacific threatens to trigger widespread river flooding throughout the state as warm rain melts a record accumulation of snowpack and sends runoff surging down mountains and into streams and reservoirs.
Although state officials insist they are prepared to manage runoff from what is now the 10th atmospheric river of a deadly rainy season, at least one expert described the combination of warm rain, epic snowpack and moist soils as “bad news.”
An atmospheric river is set to descend on California in coming days, following a spate of wet weather across the state.
An atmospheric river is a corridor of concentrated, tropical moisture traveling through the atmosphere. The river has raised an alert for significant flooding throughout California, and experts have warned of severe disruption.
Another atmospheric river system has set its sights on California, raising considerable concern about flooding and structural damage as warm rain is expected to fall atop the state’s near-record snowpack this week, forecasters say.
“It now appears increasingly likely that a potentially significant and very likely warm atmospheric river event will probably affect some portion of Northern or Central California sometime between about late Thursday and Saturday,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said during a briefing Monday.
Snow scientists identify April 6 as the typical date to best evaluate the snowpack levels for the runoff to the Colorado River each year.
This year, with a month to go, things are looking good. And it’s about a lot more than just how deep the snow is right now.
New snow blankets the landscape of Shasta Lake, California’s largest reservoir. Last week, California water officials announced that the statewide Sierra Nevada snowpack was recorded at 190% of seasonal average on March 3. Meanwhile, at a water conference, state officials warned they expect warming conditions to persist and called for partnering on water supply solutions.
Starting Tuesday, the US Bureau of Reclamation will suspend extra water releases from Utah’s Flaming Gorge reservoir — emergency measures that had served to help stabilize the plummeting water levels downstream at Lake Powell, the nation’s second largest reservoir.
Federal officials began releasing extra water from Flaming Gorge in 2021 to boost Lake Powell’s level and buy its surrounding communities more time to plan for the likelihood the reservoir will eventually drop too low for the Glen Canyon Dam to generate hydropower.
Few homes in Phoenix and its surrounding communities have the thick grass and carefully manicured shrubs and trees of lawns found in other parts of the US.
Desert residents are uniquely poised to recognize the environmental harms associated with conventional lawns and lean into more climate-friendly landscaping. Within the past decade, Phoenicians have become a catalyst for the growing anti-lawn movement.
A 1,000-mile-wide atmospheric river that’s forming in the subtropics will brush San Diego County with light rain Friday and Saturday and bring heavy precipitation to the rest of Southern and Central California, further aiding reservoirs and muting the risk of wildfires, the National Weather Service said on Monday.
The storm is part of a major pattern change that also is expected to produce a second warm, moist atmospheric river that will flow through roughly the same areas on March 14, possibly bringing heavier rain to San Diego, which is experiencing its first wet year in three years.
The stubborn La Niña climate pattern that gripped the tropical Pacific for a rare three years in a row is waning, and the odds of an El Niño system forming later this year are getting stronger, according to recent meteorological reports.
The El Niño-La Niña Southern Oscillation, sometimes referred to as ENSO, has a major influence on temperature and rainfall patterns in different parts of the world, with La Niña often associated with drier-than-normal conditions in California, especially the southern part of the state.
