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Snow is piling up in the Rockies and Sierra Nevada, but this year’s first official water forecast for the Colorado River still predicts Lake Mead will shrink enough to trigger a federal shortage declaration in 2018. Federal forecasters expect the lake’s surface to drop by about 9 feet by the end of 2017, which would put it inches below the all-important shortage line of 1,075 feet above sea level. That would force Nevada and Arizona to cut their use of Colorado River water under rules adopted a decade ago.

 

Donald Trump made some big campaign promises about water during his election campaign. Now that he has been elected president, those promises could dramatically shake up how water is managed in the arid West. In one of his few direct statements about water, Trump has said he wants to invest in treatment systems to prevent problems caused by aging distribution lines, citing as an example the drinking-water contamination in the Michigan city of Flint. To do this, he proposes to triple funding for a federal loan program, called the state revolving fund, from the current $2 billion to $6 billion.

The Bay Area is in the midst of one of its wettest Januarys in the past 15 years, including record rainfall in Santa Rosa, and more is on the way. After the first in a series of storms soaked the Bay Area on Wednesday into Thursday morning, drenching Santa Rosa with more than 3 inches of rain, two more systems are taking aim at the region. The next soaking was expected to begin late Thursday night and deliver rainfall totals ranging from a half-inch to 1 inch to most Bay Area cities, said Bob Benjamin, a forecaster with the National Weather Service.