More rain and snow is on the way. It’s expected to be dry today, Tuesday and through Wednesday night in the South County with the high hitting 70 degrees before cooling off again, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). But then Wednesday night another storm will move into the area bringing up to a quarter of an inch rain to Manteca through Friday. Yosemite Valley is expected to receive a half inch of rain.
After one year of torrential respite, drought may have returned to California, and with it, a renewal of the state’s perpetual conflict over water management. State and federal water systems have told farmers not to expect more than a fifth of their paper allocations, the state Water Resources Control Board is weighing a new regime of mandatory conservation, and supporters of more reservoirs are complaining about the glacial pace of spending $2.7 billion set aside in a water bond for more storage.
Heat waves, droughts and floods are climate trends that will force California farmers to change some practices — including what they grow — to continue producing yields that historically have fed people nationwide, a new study by the University of California says. Researchers reviewed 89 studies on California climate trends and impacts on the state’s diverse agriculture industry to predict how the industry must adjust through the end of the 21st century.
Scientists have found dramatically declining snowpack across the American West over the past six decades that will likely cause water shortages in the region that cannot be managed by building new reservoirs, according to a study published Friday. The study led by scientists from Oregon State University and the University of California, Los Angeles found drops in snow measurements at more than 90 percent of regional snow monitoring sites that have consistently tracked snow levels since 1955, said Philip Mote, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University.
Despite this week’s rain and snow, California is back to dry conditions again after a very wet 2017. With about four weeks left in the normal wet season, the Sacramento Valley is at about 65% of average precipitation (less than 1/3 of last year’s precipitation). The southern Central Valley has less than 50% of average precipitation and southern California is still drier. Snowpack is much less, at 37% statewide. Surface reservoirs, which almost all refilled and spilled in record-wet 2017, are now at 98% of average for this time of year, and will fall quickly as there is well-below-normal snowpack to melt.
Recent storms have dropped more than an inch of rain on San Francisco and blanketed the Sierra with snow, but water levels and snowpack around the state are still lagging far below normal. “It was a few drops in the bucket at least,” Scott Rowe, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Monterey, said Saturday. In San Francisco, slightly more than 1.2 inches of rain have fallen since Wednesday, with almost 1.4 inches at San Francisco International Airport. Numbers were similar in the East Bay and South Bay: Oakland got 1.13 inches and San Jose Airport just over an inch.
An avalanche at Mammoth Mountain early Saturday forced the closure of the popular ski area and triggered search and rescue efforts, officials said. There were no reports of serious injuries or missing people, but emergency crews were activated, officials said. The ski patrol was conducting avalanche hazard mitigation work when the avalanche occurred about 10:15 a.m. on the upper part of the mountain near the High Five Express chairlift area, Lauren Burke, public relations manager for Mammoth Mountain, said in a statement. Such work usually involves the use of explosive devices to demolish dangerous snow piles.
The winter’s most anticipated storm was little more than a second-place finisher in terms of Bay Area rainfall. Though light rain should continue into the weekend, the mountains got hit hardest. Thursday morning in San Francisco featured heavy rain to start, but by early afternoon sunshine was bursting through scattered clouds. Friday should be mostly overcast with scattered showers, forecasters said, but nothing close to predictions of the year’s biggest storm. “It was a little less than we expected,” said meteorologist Anna Schneider of the National Weather Service in Monterey
After enduring one of its driest winters on record, California was being hit Friday by a frigid storm moving in from the Gulf of Alaska that triggered blizzard and avalanche warnings in the Sierra Nevada and concerns about more mudslides and flash-flooding in the southern part of the state. “It’s the biggest storm of the season,” said Jim Mathews, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento. “Of course, February was a dud of a month, so March is coming in like a roaring lion.”
