Over the past 40 years, California has not completed a major water storage project of statewide significance despite the state’s population nearly doubling.
Without substantial new investments and commitments to capture, store and move water throughout the state, whole communities will be subject to water scarcity and farmers will be unable to produce adequate food supplies, threatening food and national security.
There’s the kind of Dry January that follows an overly indulgent holiday season, where you swear off alcohol for the first 31 days of the new year.
Then there’s the kind we just had, where, except for a few errant spits of rain, the skies remained clear for an entire month with no significant rain in sight.
It won’t be the first time January has been dry, from a strictly meteorological perspective. And it’s not the worst thing that can happen, assuming there’s been sufficient rain in advance or in the months ahead.
Rainfall totals were nearly double the average in Northern California in December 2021. That’s what made the following month such a stark contrast.
January 2022 will go down as one of the region’s driest Januarys on record. Just a few weeks without rainfall was enough to dry out the ground, warm up the air and increase the risk for wildfires.
The Colorado Fire, which began on Jan. 21, demonstrated just how quickly conditions can go from promising to perilous. The fire burned through 687 acres of wildlands in Big Sur within the first two days. As of Jan. 31, the fire was 98% contained.
Snow levels in California have fallen from their December glory after an extraordinarily dry January, stoking fears that the drought will not only continue but worsen in a third difficult year.
State officials, who will conduct the second snow survey of the season Tuesday, will find snowpack in California’s mountains measuring just shy of average for this time of year. While average is better than the modest accumulation seen the past two winters, it’s a disappointing drop from the 160% of average recorded a month ago.
The nice weather in January is setting the wrong record.
From a wet December to a dry January, this month saw such little precipitation it marks the second driest January on record.
“We need 20 to 21 inches more of precipitation over the Sierra to close the season out to finish at normal,” said Craig Shoemaker, a meteorologist and climate program manager for the National Weather Service.
The framework for how Upper Colorado River Basin states will respond to low water levels at Lake Powell is now out for public review.
It’s called the Drought Response Operations Plan, which is part of the larger Drought Contingency Plan signed in 2019. These policies were put in place because of the troubling hydrology in the region.
After facing critical water shortages last year, Marin County’s two largest water agencies are exploring new supply options.
Connecting to other water agencies, desalination, capturing more rainwater and raising existing dams are among the options being explored by Marin Municipal Water District, which serves 191,000 residents in central and southern Marin, and the North Marin Water District, which serves about 62,000 residents in Novato and West Marin.
The lack of winter cold snaps are now another issue piling on the the climate change situation. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), released it’s climate summary findings, and in California, the key messages involved a 3°F temperature increase over the 20th century.
The warming temperatures over time are causing big swings across the board. Warmer temperatures mean snow is prone to fall at higher altitudes. What would have fallen at lower altitudes is becoming rain. The lack of snow limits our use of snowpack, a natural reservoir in California.
President Biden and Congress may have passed the law pouring more than $1 trillion into the nation’s infrastructure — but it’s what state governments like California do next that really matters.
State coffers are poised to get nearly $14 billion over the next five years through automatic funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act alone, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget, not including potentially billions more through grant programs still being crafted. But what the Newsom administration does next with the money remains to be determined, and could make or break the efficacy of the bill.
Drought is exposing new layers of risk posed by PFAS contamination in drinking water nationwide, a public health hazard expected to cost billions of dollars and take years to solve, state and federal officials say.
As the historic drought hitting much of the country decreases the flow of rivers and streams, more municipalities are drawing water from underground aquifers and wells. And emerging data shows PFAS contamination could be prevalent in some of those groundwater sources.
