Three more rainstorms took aim at the Sacramento area Monday, as the region’s dry spell continued to gradually give way to more normalized winter conditions. The National Weather Service said Monday’s foggy conditions were expected to turn rainy as the day wore on, with most of the rain not forecast until late in the evening. The rainy weather was expected to let up shortly after the Tuesday morning commute.
The Department of Water Resources has released a fly-over video of the State Water Project, the water storage and delivery system of reservoirs, aqueducts, power plants and pumping plants serving 25 million Californians and 750,000 acres of irrigated farmland. The video begins in Northern California.
Three more rainstorms took aim at the Sacramento area Monday, as the region’s dry spell continued to gradually give way to more normalized winter conditions. The National Weather Service said Monday’s foggy conditions were expected to turn rainy as the day wore on, with most of the rain not forecast until late in the evening. The rainy weather was expected to let up shortly after the Tuesday morning commute.
When a rainstorm slammed California’s Russian River watershed in December 2012, water rushed into Lake Mendocino, a reservoir north of San Francisco. The cause? An atmospheric river, a ribbon of moisture-laden air that can ferry water thousands of miles across the sky. When the tempest hit, the state was on the brink of an exceptional drought. But instead of storing the surge the storm brought for the dry days to come, the reservoir’s owner, the US Army Corps of Engineers, let it run downstream.
Faced with a shortage of money and political support after seven years of work, Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration is working on a plan to scale back one of his key legacy projects — a $17 billion proposal to build two massive tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to make it easier to move water from Northern California to the south.
Despite the fierce rains and deadly mudslides that have struck California, water officials are concerned about the possibility of a renewed drought. But they caution that is too early to tell. Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program, measured snowpack levels with a team last week in the bare Phillips Station area of the Sierra Nevadas, about 90 miles east of Sacramento. He didn’t find much
When a rainstorm slammed California’s Russian River watershed in December 2012, water rushed into Lake Mendocino, a reservoir north of San Francisco. The cause? An atmospheric river, a ribbon of moisture-laden air that can ferry water thousands of miles across the sky. When the tempest hit, the state was on the brink of an exceptional drought. But instead of storing the surge the storm brought for the dry days to come, the reservoir’s owner, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, let it run downstream.
The recent fires and rains in Southern California have led to mudslides, debris flows and rock falls along the Santa Barbara County coast. At least 17 people have died, dozens of homes have been destroyed and, in the coastal village of Montecito, the water system was severely damaged. With extreme weather becoming the norm in California, Take Two reached out to Stanford University earth science professor, Noah Diffenbaugh, to learn more about the state’s infrastructure and its level of preparedness for natural disasters.
The six engineers and geologists who studied the debacle at Oroville Dam are at the pinnacle of their professions. They were responsible for reviewing the work of others who also were at the top of their fields. Having spent decades analyzing obscure aspects of hydrology and geology, Independent Forensic Team members produced an impressive 584-page report focused on esoteric aspects of the science of dams, written for others versed in such science.
With word of new snow on the mountains, Laura Kless woke up at dawn Wednesday, Jan. 10, dusted off her snowboarding gear and hit the winding road up to Big Bear from Huntington Beach — she wanted to be one of the first to get a taste of the slopes. Kless, a skier in high school who used to ditch class after fresh storms and picked up snowboarding over the past 20 years, knows the best day to hit the mountain is right after a snowfall.
