Two “Pineapple Express” atmospheric river storms hit California within a week, delivering significant precipitation across the West Coast. New satellite photos show the impact these storms had on California’s flagging snowpack.
Crisp morning temperatures will make way for sunny skies across Southern California this week, but don’t stash those umbrellas and rain boots away quite yet. More wet weather is on the horizon.
Atmospheric rivers recently soaked California. NPR’s Steve Inskeep talks to Karla Nemeth of the state’s Department of Water Resources, about protecting residents from floods and future water needs.
You really have to hand it to Arizona: Even as its population has doubled and it has suffered through a decades long megadrought, the state uses less water today than it did 40 years ago.
The historic and destructive storms that ravaged California this week have significantly boosted the state’s snowpack and water year outlook after a relatively dry start to the season, state water managers say.
Climate change is upping the odds that a disastrous flood with up to 10 feet of water might actually happen in California. The ARkStorm may not be real yet, but it’s scientifically plausible.
All the rain that has led to swollen rivers and flooding in parts of San Diego and large portions of Southern California has coincided with multiple snowstorms that blew across the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the northern half of the state.
Experts say coming weeks will be critical in seeing if we’ll stay drought-free or experience climate-fueled whiplash back to dry conditions. The record-setting rain that’s pummeled Southern California over the past few days, coupled with solid water storage from last year’s wet winter, has Harvey De La Torre, head of the Municipal Water District of Orange County, offering this reassuring prediction:
For as long as weather records have been kept, California has been defined by its highly variable climate, with dramatic and sometimes volatile swings between droughts and floods. As human-caused climate change heats up the planet, the state faces even more intense extremes, with increasingly frequent and severe droughts punctuated by stronger and wetter storms.
A plan to extract lithium — the lustrous, white metal used in electric vehicle batteries — in southeast Utah is adding to an anxiety familiar in the arid American West: how the project could affect water from the Colorado River.
