Recent storms bearing some of the heaviest snow and rain to hit Northern California in decades have helped bring a dramatic turnaround after more than five years of drought, which covered the state just a year ago.
Floodwaters from a storm-swollen Russian River finally started receding Thursday evening, allowing residents forced from their homes to begin the painstaking and messy task of cleaning up and repairing damages. “The water’s going down,” Monte Rio Fire Chief Steve Baxman said. “Now comes the work.” Amid scattered showers, the Russian River finally began dropping below flood stage of 32 feet at 5 p.m. It is expected to continue dropping over coming days, draining low-lying areas around Guerneville and elsewhere that had been swamped with floodwaters.
Water, water everywhere! As three raging storms pummeled Northern California in early January, the lakes rose, the floodgates opened, the rivers swelled, and the waterfalls roared. The landscape that became dry and parched during five years of drought turned into a wet, soggy mess. Trickles of water became surging flows, and floodplains transformed into massive seas of water. The gallery below of before-and-after images shows the dramatic impact the heavy rains have had on water levels at lakes, reservoirs, dams and rivers across the top half of the state.
The San Diego County Water Authority and the City of San Diego announced Wednesday that they haven taken steps towards developing a new 500MW pumped energy storage project at the the San Vicente Reservoir. If developed, the installation will offer electric grid stability to the region during both peak times and on days where demand is high and other renewable-energy outlets are scarce.
At the final public hearing on a disputed plan to benefit fish in the lower San Joaquin River system, government fishery agencies said the plan doesn’t go far enough, water agencies said alternative plans would help fish more without requiring as much water, and a member of the State Water Resources Control Board requested more information about the plan’s potential impacts.
Flooding concerns intensified in the the Delta on Wednesday as huge volumes of water surged down creeks and streams into the low-lying river estuary. Higher than expected water levels had crews patrolling levees and watching carefully for any sign of trouble. An estimated 245,098 cubic feet of water per second was pouring into the Delta, the equivalent of nearly three Olympic-sized swimming pools every second.
The rain-soaked California community of Morgan Hill may face more flooding on Wednesday, January 11. The National Weather Service issued a flash-flood warning, though officials said the flooding was not expected to be the same as what happened on Sunday, according to a report. Heavy rain on Sunday pushed the Little Llagas Creek over its banks, flooding the downtown area and some residential neighborhoods.
As a result of the nearly weeklong deluge, water is flowing into California lakes and reservoirs, prompting dam operators to release supplies in advance of a storm expected next week. But it’s too early to say if the series of storms is a drought-buster. “Very generally, the storms are very beneficial to reservoir storage,” said Ted Thomas, spokesman for the California Department of Water Resources. But dam operators are watching the skies, he said.
As we wait to see if President-elect Donald Trump upholds his campaign pledge to tear up the Paris climate change agreement, one of his close to home constituencies is already struggling on the frontline of the climate struggle. CEO’s who may publicly doubt climate change can readily see what is happening to their bottom line as pressure mounts on our most precious resource – water.
Californians may be getting all the precipitation they wished for, and then some. A wet October followed by a series of big rain- and snowstorms kicking off the new year has made for one of the wettest rainy seasons so far in California’s record-keeping. “It’s undoubtedly in the top five,” said Doug Carlson, an information officer with the state’s Department of Water Resources. As of Tuesday, the rainfall for Northern California was just over 200 percent of average, according to the Department of Water Resources. And the water content of the snowpack statewide was 135 percent of average.
