California’s first snow survey of the 2020-21 season is happening Dec. 30 at the Phillips snow course in the Sierra Nevada.
The Department of Water Resources will conduct five of these surveys through May by plunging a long steel tube into the snow. This will measure the snow’s depth and give an estimate of its water content.
This year brought one of the biggest marine heat waves on record in the Pacific Ocean, and it’s one of several record-setting spikes in ocean water temperatures over the last six years.
The string of warm water events has scientists wondering if this is actually the new normal for the Pacific Ocean.
A series of heat waves started in 2013 with what was nicknamed “the blob,” which brought water temperatures up to nearly 7 degrees Fahrenheit higher than normal across a 1,000-mile stretch of the West Coast.
Water bills would help fix subsidence damage: A package of water bills passed Congress this week that could offer hundreds of millions to improve San Joaquin Valley water deliveries. Folded into the same bill that will be offering COVID relief was the government’s annual spending bill that included funding approval for key local canals and dams. Significantly it includes $206 million to rebuild 33 miles of the Friant Kern Canal and monies for the repair of the westside’s California Aqueduct and Delta Mendota Canal — all facing reduced capacity due to subsidence- the sinking of land caused by vigorous water pumping nearby over the years.
The California Department of Water Resources is calling for increased climate change collaboration. DWR is encouraging more cooperation between federal, state, and local governments in their efforts to address climate change. As part of the underlying effort to mitigate the impact of climate change, DWR released the “Moving to Action” plan last month. The move aligns with Governor Gavin Newsom’s goals of addressing natural resource concerns through his executive order to establish a Water Resilience Portfolio.
For the first time in three decades, the federal government on Tuesday overhauled a rule aimed at reducing lead in drinking water across the country — a long-standing scourge made worse by the nation’s weathered and crumbling infrastructure.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s lead and copper rule, widely criticized as complicated, poorly enforced and too weak to protect the health of many Americans, has not been revised since 1991, when George H.W. Bush was president.
On the Arizona-California border, where the Colorado River pushes against Headgate Rock Dam, churning water pours into a wide canal and runs across the desert, flowing toward the farmlands of the Colorado River Indian Tribes.
This tribal nation is the largest single user of Colorado River water in Arizona, with rights to divert about 662,000 acre-feet per year, more than double the amount of water diverted for the state of Nevada.
The final feasibility report for the long-awaited Sites Reservoir water storage project was sent Tuesday to Congress by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
The Sites Reservoir Project is a joint investigation between the Bureau of Reclamation and Sites Project Authority, authorized by Congress in 2003.
Congress presented an early Christmas present that will go a long ways to providing much needed repairs for the Friant-Kern Canal.
Congress signed off on funding for the repair work to be done locally on the 33-mile stretch of the canal. The stretch is from Avenue 208 between Strathmore and Lindsay to north Kern County.
Earlier this year, the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes launched a new sub-seasonal to seasonal forecast product to better predict the influence atmospheric rivers will have on the Western United States. Better and more accurate forecasting tools for atmospheric rivers are critical for a number of community uses, including water management, agriculture, insurance and commodities trading, to name a few.
The demand for better atmospheric forecasting tools has facilitated the development of the new S2S forecasting products launched by CW3E this year.
The waves along the Central Coast can tell you a lot about our changing climate, and here’s why.
The Diablo Canyon Power Plant’s Waverider Buoy has measured wave heights and periods since June 1983 and directions since June 1996 and is one of the longest continuous-wave monitoring stations along the West Coast.
Scripps Institute of Oceanography’s Coastal Data Information Program maintains an extensive network of buoys that monitor waves along the coastlines of the United States. You can view the historical wave data archive from Diablo Canyon and other stations at the CDIP database at cdip.ucsd.edu.
