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As California Lifts Drought Restrictions, Rural Areas Still Lack Running Water

/in /by /NPRby Kirk Siegler

While the deep snowpack in California’s mountains is easing drought concerns, there are still people in the state’s rural Central Valley who don’t have water running from their taps. California Governor Jerry Brown has declared an end to his state’s five-year-long drought. Emergency water restrictions have been lifted for most Californians, but not all. In some of the hardest hit areas in the rural Central Valley, there are still thousands of people living without any running water.

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Wintry Spring Storm Slams California With Snow, Heavy Winds

/in /by /CBS Sacramento

A storm that delivered a body blow to Northern California, endangering homes and leaving 40,000 customers without electricity, rolled through the Central Coast Friday toward Los Angeles. The weather system dumped fractions of an inch of rain in San Luis Obispo County but Rocky Butte, a summit near San Simeon, received nearly 5 inches over 24 hours. Rain was expected to continue shifting slowly southward before the system finally tapers off late Saturday.

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To Save Water, Some Arizona Farms Temporarily Cut Production

/in /by /Arizona Daily Starby Tony Davis Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

For four Indian tribes that grow melons, wheat, cotton, onions and alfalfa near the Colorado River, fallowing cropland will bring extra money. It will also get the Colorado River Indian Tribes’ name out as a water player, part of the solution to the Southwest’s water shortages. And, says Tribal Councilwoman Amelia Flores, it’s a way to get other cropland into production and to upgrade their irrigation equipment.

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California’s Drought Is Finally Over, But Its Legacy Will Live On

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Joseph Serna and Shelby Grad

It wasn’t that long ago that many wondered whether California’s drought would ever end. For five years, the state endured significantly less rain than normal, cutting into the water supply and forcing the state to impose strict limits on water use. That officially ended Friday when Gov. Jerry Brown declared the drought over. So how did the drought end? That seemed pretty quick. The turning point began last winter, when Northern California began to see a significant uptick in rain. Then, this winter, the north had one of the wettest seasons on record.

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Gov. Brown Declares California Drought Emergency Is Over

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Bettina Boxall

Startlingly green hills, surging rivers and the snow-wrapped Sierra Nevada had already signaled what Gov. Jerry Brown made official Friday: The long California drought is over. Brown issued an executive order that lifts the drought emergency in all but a handful of San Joaquin Valley counties where some communities are still coping with dried-up wells. He also made it clear that the need for conservation is not going away. “This drought emergency is over, but the next drought could be around the corner,” Brown said in a statement. “Conservation must remain a way of life.”

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California Storms: This Rainy Season Now Ranks 2nd All Time In 122 Years Of Records

/in /by /The Mercury Newsby Mark Gomez

California’s current rainy season can no longer lay claim to being No. 1. After relatively modest rainfall in March, this season now ranks as the second wettest in 122 years of record-keeping, according to data released Thursday by federal scientists. Between October 2016 and March 2017, California averaged 30.75 inches of precipitation, the second-highest average since such records began being kept in 1895, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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Oroville Disaster May Have Been Caused By Weak Soil Under Spillway

/in /by /News Deeplyby Matt Weiser

The destruction of Oroville Dam’s main spillway in February likely occurred because it was built on highly erodible rock, according to several experts interviewed by Water Deeply. If confirmed by a forensic investigation now underway, rebuilding the spillway will require a much more expensive and time-consuming effort. The Oroville spillway was ripped apart in February as California Department of Water Resources (DWR) released water from the dam to make room for heavy storm runoff into the reservoir. It’s an important reminder that no matter how carefully built and maintained a dam might be, it will always remain vulnerable to unknowns.

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Scientists Link California Droughts And Floods To Distinctive Atmospheric Waves

/in /by /Phys Org

The crippling wintertime droughts that struck California from 2013 to 2015, as well as this year’s unusually wet California winter, appear to be associated with the same phenomenon: a distinctive wave pattern that emerges in the upper atmosphere and circles the globe. Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) found in a recent study that the persistent high-pressure ridge off the west coast of North America that blocked storms from coming onshore during the winters of 2013-14 and 2014-15 was associated with the wave pattern, which they call wavenumber-5.

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Scientists Link California Droughts And Floods To Distinctive Atmospheric Waves

/in /by /Phys.org
The crippling wintertime droughts that struck California from 2013 to 2015, as well as this year’s unusually wet California winter, appear to be associated with the same phenomenon: a distinctive wave pattern that emerges in the upper atmosphere and circles the globe.

Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) found in a recent study that the persistent high-pressure ridge off the west coast of North America that blocked storms from coming onshore during the winters of 2013-14 and 2014-15 was associated with the wave pattern, which they call wavenumber-5.
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We Depend On Lakes We Can’t Fill To The Brim

/in /by /Chico Enterprise-Record

April 1 is a telling date in California water policy each year. All the measurements — snowpack, water in reservoirs — are compared to that date. And this April 1, there was something very interesting to note. We all know it’s been a wet winter, but on April 1, most of California’s reservoirs were not full. We know there are some other issues in play with Lake Oroville — just 76 percent full at the end of the day April 1 — but most of the other lakes were down too. Shasta was 89 percent full, Trinity 90 percent, Folsom just 60 percent.

 

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