You are now in San Diego County category.

California Shivers Amid Record Freezing Temperatures

Freeze watches and warnings are in place throughout much of California as cold, dry air moves through, toppling temperature records. In Orange County, it was cold but no records were broken over the weekend, though temperatures dipped into the mid-30s around the county. The National Weather Service reported a low of 33 degrees in Laguna Beach. In 1935, Santa Ana hit a low of 29 degrees for the same date, said NWS forecaster Brett Albright. Meteorologists say a warming trend should be apparent by Tuesday, with lows in the 40s and highs in the low 70s.

 

Atmospheric Rivers Fueled By Climate Change Could Decimate Wild Oysters In San Francisco Bay

Climate change could supercharge the powerful storms often hailed for bringing drought-busting rains to California.The storms, called atmospheric rivers, are long stretches of water vapor that travel from the tropics up to the West Coast of the U.S.. In California, they can deliver up to half of the state’s annual precipitation in just a couple of weeks. But too much water at once can be a bad thing. The phenomena are capable of causing destructive floods and landslides — and now, according to a new study, ecological damage.

 

BLOG: A Quick Recap On Last Week’s Rain And Snow Across California

The weather has quieted down across California after last week’s soaking storm across the state. The setup involved several different factors that led to the significant rainfall event across the state, especially along the coast of northern and central California. For starters, a plume of moisture was observed extending from the tropics near Hawaii to northern California. This transport of high moisture content is referred to as a atmospheric river as I noted in the last blog and can be seen below. The persistent plume of moisture provided the fuel for the heavy rain.

California To Commission New Delta Research Vessel

The California Department of Water Resources will commission a new research vessel next week. The department will hold a ceremony and display the vessel Sentinel to news media on Monday in Sacramento. The department says the floating laboratory is critical to maintaining water quality in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay. The Sentinel is a 60-foot aluminum catamaran. Its predecessor, the San Carlos, dates to 1976.

Poseidon Water Happy Over New Federal Water Law

Today, Poseidon Water commended Congress and President Barack Obama on the approval of the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act (WIIN Act). The WIIN Act includes 98-pages of California specific regulations that, for the first time in nearly twenty-five years, invests more than $500 million into California water projects. “Not only is this a critical water bill for the nation, but it also recognizes desalination as a way to address California’s current drought and long-term water shortages,” said Carlos Riva, Chief Executive Officer of Poseidon Water.

Scientists Confirm That Warm Ocean Water Is Melting The Biggest Glacier in East Antarctica

Scientists at institutions in the United States and Australia on Friday published a set of unprecedented ocean observations near the largest glacier of the largest ice sheet in the world: Totten glacier, East Antarctica. And the result was a troubling confirmation of what scientists already feared – Totten is melting from below. The measurements, sampling ocean temperatures in seas over a kilometer (0.62 miles) deep in some places right at the edge of Totten glacier’s floating ice shelf, affirmed that warm ocean water is flowing in towards the glacier at the rate of 220,000 cubic meters per second.

 

Recent Rains Beg The Question: Can The Wet Weather Continue Into The New Year?

This fall has seen a ridiculously persistent ridge of high pressure — which has driven the majority of the Gulf of Alaska storms north of the Central Coast over the past six years — give way to a trough of low pressure along the West Coast. This condition has allowed a plume of subtropical moisture, or an atmospheric river, that stretched past the Hawaiian Islands to bring abundant rainfall to San Luis Obispo County during the first half of December. In fact, above-average rainfall has fallen throughout the Central Coast since October.

OPINION: Our View: If The State Carries Out Its Plan, Our Region Will Suffer

Is the state coming to tear down the arch, or just extinguish some of its lights? For more than 100 years, Modesto’s downtown arch has proclaimed “Water Wealth Contentment Health.” The reasons are obvious – much of what we value is derived from the water flowing through our communities. Without the water, our wealth, health and contentment could disappear. That’s no less true in Turlock, Oakdale and Ceres; or in Merced, Manteca, Ripon, Escalon and even, to some extent, San Francisco.

 

Stormier Times for California’s Water Expected Under New Law

The first winter storm of 2017 to drop welcome rain over the rivers, pumps, pipes and canals that move California’s water north to south likely will open a new era of tension over how much water goes to fish or farms under a new U.S law. Legislation signed Friday by President Barack Obama dictates that the federal portion of California’s heavily engineered water systems gives agricultural districts and other human users the biggest possible share of the most fought-over resource in a state with a six-year drought.

In California’s Forests, Removing Small Trees Leaves Water For Bigger Ones And For Dwindling Reservoirs

In the early 1900s, an average forested acre in California supported fewer than 50 or so trees. After a century of efforts to fight wildfires, the average has risen to more than 300 (albeit mostly smaller) trees. Some might reckon such growth wonderful, but it is a problem far more serious than, say, the fact that horses can no longer trot through areas where they once could. The extra fuel turns today’s wildfires into infernos hot enough to devastate the landscape, torching even the big older trees that typically survived fires in the old days.