Lake Shasta waters lapped higher after a series of atmospheric rivers dumped up to a foot of rain in the region.
Not counting runoff, storms added 12-14 inches of rain to all areas of the lake between Dec. 19 — when the series of wet winter storms started — and Dec. 26, said Nathan Rick with the National Weather Service Sacramento branch. Another 1.5 inch was expected to fall before the Dec. 27-28 weekend.
Lush green fields of alfalfa spread across thousands of acres in a desert valley in western Arizona, where a dairy company from Saudi Arabia grows the thirsty crop by pulling up groundwater from dozens of wells.
The company, Fondomonte, is the largest water user in the Ranegras Plain groundwater basin, shipping hay overseas to feed its cows in the Middle East. Like other landowners in the area, it has been allowed to pump unlimited amounts from the aquifer, even as water levels have declined.
A year ago, officials were sounding alarms about a bone-dry winter that days later would combine with hurricane-strength winds to bring about the worst fires in Los Angeles history. Now, Southern California just experienced its wettest Christmas in modern history.
This Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were the rainiest in the modern record for Southern California, according to the National Weather Service office in Oxnard. And more rain is on the way. A flood watch was forecast to remain in effect for much of the state through at least Friday afternoon, with rain expected throughout the day. Skies should clear up by the weekend.
The president of the Utah State Senate has an idea he thinks could help states along the Colorado River. “What we do in Utah is we solve problems and that’s what we’re in the middle of,” Senate President J. Stuart Adams, R-Layton, said in a recent interview with FOX 13 News.
His idea is to pay California to build more desalination plants along the Pacific Ocean for their water needs. In exchange, they’d give up some shares of water along the Colorado River for Utah and other upstream states to use.
California’s biggest water districts presented their own framework Tuesday for how to share the Colorado River’s dwindling water supply, including a commitment to conserve 440,000 acre-feet of water per year – enough to meet the needs of 1.5 million households annually.
Last month, the seven western states that rely on the Colorado River missed a federally-imposed deadline to submit a preliminary agreement for a plan to replace the river’s operating guidelines set to expire at the end of 2026.
The sign outside Tom Hermes’s farmyard in Perkins Township in Ohio, a short drive south of the shores of Lake Erie, proudly claims that his family have farmed the land here since 1900. Today, he raises 130 head of cattle and grows corn, wheat, grass and soybeans on 1,200 acres of land.
For his family, his animals and wider business, water is life.
Lake Mead may be facing historic shortages, but officials from the Colorado River state that uses the most water are celebrating unprecedented water savings.
At a briefing for reporters at Tuesday’s Colorado River Water Users Association conference at Caesars Palace, leaders from California’s biggest water districts said the state is on track to use 3.76 million acre-feet this year. That’s about 1.2 trillion gallons — the smallest amount of water from the river since 1949, despite explosive population growth.
The only thing the users of the dwindling Colorado River agreed upon Tuesday was that the situation is dire.
Representatives from the seven U.S. states and Mexico that drink from or whose industries run on Colorado River water are negotiating in Las Vegas this week – as they have every year since 1945. There is pressure to come to an agreement on how to use less of the climate change-stricken river by the end of the conference on Thursday, but all indications point to that not happening.
Big rain and snow could hit California around Christmastime, ending a long dry spell for the state.
There’s a high risk for heavy rainfall along the entire California coast between Dec. 23 through Christmas Day, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center said. There’s also a high risk of heavy snow along the Sierra Nevada.
In a year of profound shifts at the federal level, uncertainty has been the name of the game across the United States. Nowhere is that truer than in the California water world.
Over many decades, the state has forged a symbiotic relationship with federal agencies to manage its notoriously complex—and aging—water system. The state has worked with an alphabet soup of federal agencies to manage some of the worst floods and droughts the state has ever seen.
