When weather patterns and conditions develop that fuel extreme fire behavior, the National Weather Service issues what it calls a “Red Flag Warning.” In response, firefighters rapidly shift resources, beef up staffing and alert nearby communities. It’s an all-hands-on-deck moment to prepare for the worst – one we’ve become increasingly familiar with, even in winter months.
You probably noticed a lot of weird weather in 2021.
From record-breaking deluges and tropical storms to drought-stricken landscapes that erupted in wildfire, the nation seemed to lurch from one weather-related disaster to the next.
You’re forgiven if you dismiss these events as unrelated, albeit unfortunate, phenomena. But they actually share a common bond – they’re all part of a new climate reality where supersized rainfalls and lengthening droughts have become the norm.
After recent reservoir-boosting rainfall, Marin County’s largest water district decided Tuesday to repeal recently established financial penalties for excessive water use.
In September, the Marin Municipal Water District board adopted an ordinance that established financial penalties for exceeding certain water use limits it set in April as drought conditions worsened across the Bay Area and California.
In the September ordinance, the district set penalties for going over “tier 1” water usage, which, for single family households, is 65 gallons of water per person, per day. Penalties would range from $5 to $15, depending on how much customers went over that limit.
Almost 10% of the 8 billion people on earth are already undernourished with 3 billion lacking healthy diets, and the land and water resources farmers rely on stressed to “a breaking point.” And by 2050 there will be 2 billion more mouths to feed, warns a new report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
For now, farmers have been able to boost agricultural productivity by irrigating more land and applying heavier doses of fertilizer and pesticides. But the report says these practices are not sustainable: They have eroded and degraded soil while polluting and depleting water supplies and shrinking the world’s forests.
The State Water Resources Control Board on Wednesday withdrew an emergency drought regulation for the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta.
Despite a dry January, board staff said the regulation, known as a temporary urgency change petition (TUCP), would not improve conditions if implemented as planned in February. They found no potential benefits to Shasta and Trinity reservoirs, which have the greatest need for water.
The controversial Poseidon Water seawater desalination plant in Huntington Beach could be in line to receive millions in state funds from the California Debt Limit Allocation Committee.
The committee met Wednesday, a three-hour meeting during which it partially decided how to divide up more than $4.3 billion in tax exempt Private Activity Bonds that are available for distribution in 2022.
Sunny skies. Balmy temperatures. Walks on the beach. Umbrellas back in the closet.
After a soaking wet December that ended fire season, delivered more 15 feet of snow to the Sierra Nevada, and boosted hopes that California’s severe drought might be coming to and end, dry weather is back, in a big way.
Like a baseball player stuck in a hitting slump, it hasn’t rained significantly in the Bay Area for 14 days, since Jan. 4. Although reservoirs received a nice boost from big storms in December and late October, they still remain well below normal levels in most parts of the state.
Silicon Valley is known for its startup culture where so-called angel investors provide financing to launch companies that aspire to change the world.
Innovations spawned in Silicon Valley have indeed changed the world, and in the process, made the San Francisco Bay Area home to thousands of near-billionaires and billionaires.
With wealth like that comes social responsibility and political power, and many of the individuals wielding this wealth have stepped up. Powerful individuals from Silicon Valley are changing the destiny of the world.
The heavy rains that soaked California late last year were welcomed by farmers, urban planners – and endangered coho salmon.
“We’ve seen fish in places that they haven’t been for almost 25 years,” said Preston Brown, director of watershed conservation for Salmon Protection And Watershed Network (SPAWN).
California received more precipitation from October to December than in the previous 12 months, according to the National Weather Service.
Sweeping cutbacks in water allocations to farms are leading to widespread underemployment in some of California’s most vulnerable communities. Lawmakers are scrambling for policy solutions.
The impact to paychecks has been raising food insecurity and malnutrition issues as food prices soar, while the reduced spending is reverberating through local businesses and economies. And the situation is exacerbating a mental health epidemic already made worse by the pandemic.
“Too often, these human impacts are overlooked,” said state Senator Melissa Hurtado of Sanger, in opening a recent hearing for the new Select Committee on Human Security. “We sometimes miss the impacts that drought has on food security, health, labor and the communities themselves.”
