You are now in California and the U.S. category.

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.

 

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.

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.