While California’s 2016 El Niño season has been drier than expected, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works is working to extra moisture from recent storms through a process called “cloud seeding.”
What in the world is cloud seeding? It’s a process where chemicals are sent into the clouds either by plane, generators on the ground or rockets that then make clouds release their moisture as rain.
There has never been another March 8 quite like the one Folsom Lake is experiencing this year.The day will carry extra resonance for the lake as it marks a day in history where water levels reached historic highs compared with any level recorded on the same day.
Dating back to 1976 when the California Department of Water Resources began tracking the water storage levels at Folsom Lake, the 697,938 acre-feet of water beat out the previous high of approximately 650,000 acre-feet recorded for March in 1982, according to the DWR.
Despite recent rainstorms, San Diego’s drought continues and landscape architects worry that families and businesses are fighting back by replacing lawns with fake grass.
Instead, there’s a different plant-based path, a “San Diego Style” that favors succulents, native grasses and other materials appropriate to the Southern California climate, say the experts. Designers, contractors, planners and regulators will gather at the eighth annual seminar on sustainable turf and landscape open to the public Thursday at Cuyamaca College in Rancho San Diego and sponsored by the Ornamental Horticulture Department.
Going into the weekend, rain and snow is predicted from San Diego up through Northern California, promising to fluff ski conditions, feed crops and continue filling reservoirs. While California’s historic drought is far from over, El Niño-fueled storms reemerged last weekend after a record hot February.
From farmers to water officials to urban dwellers, Californians now hold out renewed hope March will deliver a miracle for the long-parched state — or at least enough water to somewhat ease drought restrictions.
The powerful Metropolitan Water District of Southern California agreed Tuesday to buy four islands and a portion of a fifth in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, a bid that some conservationists believe is a blatant water grab by California’s largest water agency.
The district’s 37-member board of directors, representing 26 agencies in Southern California, authorized Metropolitan’s general manager to enter into a purchase agreement to buy 20,369 acres of land encompassing Webb Tract, Bacon Island, Bouldin Island, most of Holland Tract and a portion of Chipps Island, in Contra Costa, San Joaquin and Solano counties.
The board of Southern California’s water importer voted Tuesday to buy 20,000 acres of farm islands in the heart of the state’s north-south plumbing system.
The land is owned by a private company that for years has tried to develop a water storage project on the property. But the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California says it has other plans for the four islands in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, which is east of San Francisco.
A wet weekend flooded roads and reactivated slides that temporarily closed State Route 299, and even more precipitation is ahead for across Humboldt County this week. “Our crews have been out there working throughout the night responding to literally dozens of incidents,” Caltrans public information officer Phil Frisbie said on Sunday.
The landslide that closed State Route 299 at Big French Creek near Big Bar in Trinity County for multiple days in January reactivated due to rains and both lanes were closed Saturday evening.
Populations of the threatened Delta smelt have plummeted to the lowest in history. The three-inch fish is often the focus of California’s water wars. Every fall and spring, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife conducts trawls to determine populations of the threatened Delta Smelt. This year the department hasn’t netted more than seven fish in each trawl.
“Delta smelt have suffered significantly because of the drought and the extended period of low inflow and outflow from the Delta,” says Carl Wilcox with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
After three years of an unprecedented drought, a “Godzilla” El Niño formed in the western Pacific. Previous years with strong El Niños had been unusually wet, with the warm patch sending one wet system after another rolling into the region. California had essentially missed two years’ worth of precipitation. Surveying the wet season to come last fall, meteorologists said that El Niño was how it might restore the balance.
Now, six weeks remain in the state’s annual rainy season, and results are mixed.
The weekend storm bolstered Lake Oroville’s water level to its highest level in nearly three years. As of 4 p.m. Monday, the lake elevation was at 792.32 feet, 107.68 feet from the dam’s crest of 900 feet above sea level. Since Thursday, the lake has risen 20.5 feet.
The last time Lake Oroville was this full was Aug. 3, 2013, when the lake was measured at 792.48 feet, according to data from the state Department of Water Resources. State Parks Superintendent Aaron Wright anticipated a busy year for the lake.
