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California Wildfires Roar Into ‘Uncharted Territory’

/in , /by /USA Today (McLean, Va.)by Jim Schultz, Chelcey Adami and John Bacon

The surging wildfires raging across Northern California represent a “new normal” and the state must be prepared to spend billions of dollars dousing, containing and trying to curb them in the future, Gov. Jerry Brown said. Brown, speaking at a news conference Wednesday, said the state’s exploding population combined with climate change has conspired to create ripe conditions for the prodigious blazes. “Nature is very powerful and we are not on the side of nature,” Brown said. “Every year is teaching the fire authorities new lessons. We are in uncharted territory.”

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California’s Gov. Brown: Wildfires Are Evidence Of Changing Climate ‘In Real Time’

/in , /by /National Public Radioby Scott Neuman

California Gov. Jerry Brown says his state is in “uncharted territory” with the current slew of intense wildfires and he warns that climate change has made the situation “part of our ordinary experience.” “[The] predictions that I see, the more serious predictions of warming and fires to occur later in the century, 2040 or 2050, they’re now occurring in real time,” Brown said at a news conference on Wednesday in Sacramento.

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Deeply Talks: Water Conservation And Efficiency Challenges

/in , /by /Water Deeply (New York)by Lindsay Abrams

In this month’s episode of Deeply Talks, Water Deeply managing editor Tara Lohan discussed California’s statewide and local conservation and efficiency efforts with Cynthia Koehler, cofounder and executive director at WaterNow Alliance, and Erik Porse, a research engineer in the Office of Water Programs at California State University, Sacramento.

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Oroville Dam independent Review Board Releases First Report

/in , /by /Chico Enterprise-Recordby Risa Johnson

The independent review board hired by the state Department of Water Resources to put outside eyes on an assessment which will play a large role in the future operations of the Oroville Dam has released its first report. Suggestions for infrastructure changes like the construction of a second gated spillway are expected to be considered through what DWR is calling a comprehensive needs assessment. The department has selected four independent industry experts to be part of a board which will review the assessment and make recommendations.

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What’s Different About California’s Fires This Year?

/in , /by /The New York Timesby Henry Fountain

California is burning, with at least 16 big wildfires statewide. The largest, in and around the northern city of Redding, has killed at least six people and burned more than a thousand homes and other structures. Fires are nothing new in the state this time of year. It’s fire season, after all, as it is elsewhere in the West. But something feels different this time, perhaps because, following the Santa Rosa fire last October, this is the second year in a row in which fire has destroyed large parts of a city.

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Proposal To Increase Delta Water Flows Causes Contention Between Farmers, Fisheries

/in , /by /Capital Public Radio (Sacramento)by Nadine Sebai

Following nine years of research, a California agency has proposed to increase water flows in the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary. But the decision is causing contention between farmers and fisheries. The California State Water Resources Control Board says the proposal will prevent an ecological crisis, including the total collapse of fisheries. About 70,000 fall-run Chinook salmon adults returned to the San Joaquin Basin in 1984, but that number fell to just 8,000 in 2014.

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OPINION: Water Tunnels Approval Is Pure Government Arrogance

/in , /by /Ventura County Starby Tom Elias

The way environmental activists in California’s Delta region tell it, there is no part of government in this state more arrogant than the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. The huge MWD, supplier of water to the majority of the state’s populace, is certainly acting the part as it pushes for a project Gov. Jerry Brown is trying to make an irreversible fait accompli before he leaves office at the end of this year.

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Hot July Is Fueling California’s Summer Wildfires

/in , /by /The Mercury News (San Jose)by Lisa M. Krieger

The calendar says it’s the first of August. But an unforgiving early wave of heat means that California’s landscape feels as dry as September, igniting a deadly wildfire season up and down the state. Hot and dry as a powder keg, recent weather has accelerated the normal drying of western landscapes, turning vegetation into kindling, say weather experts. Even nights are warm. “Fuels are really really dry. It’s closer to what we should get by late summer or early fall,” said professor Craig Clements, director of the Fire Weather Research Lab at San Jose State University.

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How Climate Change Is Making Disasters Like The Carr Fire More Likely

/in , /by /The Washington Postby Angela Fritz

Firefighters are waging war against 17 wildfires that cover 200,000 acres in California this week. Front-line dispatches suggest that, at least at times, they’ve lost the battle. The bodies of two children were found under a wet blanket with the remains of their great-grandmother hovering over them. Three firefighters and one bulldozer operator are dead. More than 700 homes have burned to the ground. Crews have struggled, at least in part, because they have never seen fires behave like this before.

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Simulating The Weather Created By Fire In New Study

/in , /by /KUER 90.1 (Utah)by Erik Newman

A recent study is helping researchers understand the role of wind in the largest forest fires. Megafires are large, hard-to-manage burns with big economic costs. “These big fires are really hard to deal with,” said Natasha Stavros with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.

 

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