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Merced County Farms Looking at Drastic Water Shortages With Coming Dry Season

/in , , /by /Merced Sun-Starby Madeline Shannon

Local irrigation district officials and Merced County farmers are worried the current wet season isn’t wet enough to yield more than one acre-foot of surface water for many local farmers in the coming dry season.

During a Merced Irrigation District board meeting this week, officials discussed how to grapple with the expected water supply shortages this year due to the drought and water allocations from Lake McClure, which the MID board decides every year.

 

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La Niña Forecast: NOAA Gives Update Amid Dry California Winter

/in , /by /KTLAby Tracy Bloom

La Niña is expected to stick around for at least a little while longer, with the transition back to neutral conditions most likely not taking place until at least later in spring.

That’s according to the latest forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center forecast, which was released late last week.

NOAA says there’s an approximately 77% chance that La Niña conditions will linger between March and May. Forecasters also favor the transition back to neutral occurring from June to August, giving that a 57% chance.

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West Megadrought Worsens to Driest in at Least 1,200 Years

/in , , /by /AP Newsby Seth Borenstein

The American West’s megadrought deepened so much last year that it is now the driest in at least 1,200 years and is a worst-case climate change scenario playing out live, a new study finds.

A dramatic drying in 2021 — about as dry as 2002 and one of the driest years ever recorded for the region — pushed the 22-year drought past the previous record-holder for megadroughts in the late 1500s and shows no signs of easing in the near future, according to a study Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

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Atmospheric River Reconnaissance Flights Lays Groundwork for Improved Forecasts

/in , , /by /Action News Nowby Patrick Wright

Atmospheric Rivers are a fact of life in California and the West Coast. They carry large enough amounts of water to end a drought, but at the same time cause significant destruction to life and property.

A relatively new partnership between the Scripps Institution for Oceanography, NOAA, and the Air Force is using the Hurricane Hunters to fly into the storms with aims to improve forecasts and our understanding of Atmospheric River events.

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Finding Use for Fog: California Farmers Could Benefit From Using Fog Nets to Buffer Water Supplies

/in , , /by /KCRAby Heather Waldman

For most of us, fog is a nuisance. It makes driving difficult and it tends to dampen the mood of the day.

But Dr. Daniel Fernandez at Cal State Monterey Bay has been working with fog for nearly 20 years, using nets to collect tiny fog water droplets on murky, breezy days.

The fog nets are one-square meter of mesh-mounted vertically on poles in regions that are prime for fog. Places like the central and southern California coast are perfect, but the Central Valley is another spot with more foggy days than rainy days.

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Program to Replace Nitrate-Laden Drinking Water Moving Too Slowly, Advocates Say

/in , /by /SJV Waterby Jesse Vad

Free water deliveries have started for some San Joaquin Valley residents with nitrate contaminated wells.

But advocates worry that nine months into the state’s nitrate control program, outreach has been lacking and not enough wells have been tested.

The nitrate control program launched in May of 2021. It offers free water deliveries for residents whose wells test over the limit for nitrates. The program is mandated by the State Water Resources Control Board and funded by nitrate polluters throughout the valley.

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State Groundwater Management May Require Metered Wells, Additional Fees

/in , /by /Kenwood Pressby Christian Kallen

The lengthy, multifaceted work of the Sonoma Valley Groundwater Sustainability Agency reached a benchmark in December 2021 when its board approved a Groundwater Sustainability Plan (GSP) and sent it off to the state for review and potential approval. The plan, including references and appendices, came in at a hefty 1,285 pages, though attentive readers can get the gist in the 28-page executive summary. The final plan is online at sonomavalleygroundwater.org, or available in hard copy at the Sonoma Valley Regional Library, 755 W. Napa St., Sonoma.

Probably the most notable part of the plan is the section dealing with potential groundwater user fees and permits — necessary steps to assure the plan is viable and effective.

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Opinion: California’s Variable Water Supply Needs More Than Rainfall

/in , , /by /Bloomberg Lawby Allison Schutte and Nathan Metcalf

Downpours in October and December, along with record snowfall in the Sierra Nevada, alleviated dry conditions statewide and moved California out of the U.S. Drought Monitor’s “exceptional” drought category. The state is still mandating conservation and curtailing water diversions, however, and water agencies have declared water shortage emergencies and called for mandated water use restrictions.

Why is most of California still in an “extreme” or “severe” drought?

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A Vision for More Sustainable Farmlands

/in , /by /High Country Newsby Theo Whitcomb

From above, California’s San Joaquin Valley spills out of the Sierra Nevada in a checkerboard of earth-toned farmland. It’s some of the most valuable land in the world; every year, the agribusiness industry here produces billions of dollars’ worth of milk, vegetables and nuts. But the scale, and the industrial intensity, of agriculture require an enormous amount of groundwater to be pulled out of aquifers deep belowground — more than the industry can afford to pump, according to hydrologic modeling.

According to projections from the Public Policy Institute of California, between 535,000 and 750,000 acres — around 15% of the valley’s irrigated farmland — will need to be taken out of irrigated production in order to meet the requirements of the state’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.

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The Drought in the Western U.S. Could Last Until 2030

/in , , /by /National Geographicby Alejandra Borunda

There have been brief moments of reprieve in the drought that has stretched on since 2000 in the western United States—a water-rich 2011, a snow-laden 2019—but those breaks have only highlighted the more dramatic feature of the last few decades: unrelenting dryness.

Without human-driven climate change forcing Earth’s temperatures up, the ongoing drought would still be painful and parched. But it would be unexceptional in the grand scheme of the past 1,200 years. A new study in Nature Climate Change shows that Earth’s warming climate has made the western drought about 40 percent more severe, making it the region’s driest stretch since A.D. 800. And there’s a very strong chance the drought will continue through 2030.

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