An avalanche near Alpine Meadows ski resort struck a bus Thursday morning and pushed it 30 feet into a house after a storm passing through the Sierra brought nearly two feet of snow to resorts across the region, officials said Thursday.
The avalanche hit the bus traveling on Alpine Meadows Road in North Lake Tahoe, said Ron Carson, a spokesman with the North Tahoe Fire Protection District. No one was injured in the incident.
It isn’t a secret that California has recently experienced one of the worst droughts in over 100 years.
However, that changed this past month: Bay Area streets flooded, coastal properties were destroyed and traffic increased, as the region saw above-average levels of rain and snow in the region.
Record high temperatures and a dry spell in California the past week has “renewed concerns of early snowmelt” in the Sierra and “considerable long-term” drought impacts remain.
“In the core western drought areas of California and western Nevada, dry, warm weather during the period resulted in no change to this week’s drought depiction,” reports the U.S. Drought Monitor in its update released Feb. 18. “While much of the region has experienced favorable precipitation during the 2015-16 Water Year – and subsequent removal of the “S” (short-term) drought Impact Type – considerable long-term (L) impacts remain.”
Snow fell almost non-stop until late afternoon Thursday in the Sierra, luring people to its beauty and helping lead to highway backups.
But there was still not enough snow to satisfy thirsty Californians who want to hear that the drought is over.
Dozens of federal agents led by the FBI executed search warrants in Boulder City and in the Las Vegas Valley on Thursday in an investigation of corruption in the award of a $1 million government contract for a financial audit of Hoover Dam.
The auditors were to determine if capital improvements at the dam were being incorporated into the new contracts and proper accounting standards were in place. LL Bradford & Company was chosen by the California power authority, with other entities involved in brokering the dam’s electricity — Boulder City, the Colorado River Commission of Nevada, California Edison, Arizona Power and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
Keker & Van Nest LLP litigator John W. Keker acted as a rainmaker despite California’s historic drought when he brought in nearly $235 million for client San Diego County Water Authority.
The sum, representing the largest plaintiff’s award in 2015, included $188.3 million in damages plus $44.6 million in prejudgment interest against defendant Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. The big win was a key installment in California’s ongoing water wars, made increasingly urgent by four dry years. A San Diego water manager, Dennis Cushman, termed Metropolitan the 800-pound gorilla of the state’s water supply and said it would no longer be able to treat San Diego like a “cash cow.”
Manteca currently allows the watering of lawns three times a week.
And while the city shut off almost all of their irrigation at the start of December, they didn’t reduce watering days for everyone else assuming people would use common sense with the return of rain, the dormant cycle for everything from trees and shrubs to grass, and the fact morning dew is prevalent through the end of February.
Most people in Manteca displayed common sense but a good number didn’t even going as far as watering lawns in the middle of January storms.
In meeting rooms more than 2,200 miles from the slopes of the Sierra Nevada, the California drought dominated discussions as the California Farm Bureau Federation Board of Directors met with congressional representatives and agency officials in Washington, D.C.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., announced her introduction of California drought legislation as she met with the CFBF board last week, and both she and members of the House of Representatives lamented the loss of water that has been allowed to flow out to sea during this winter’s El Niño storms.
The giant patch of warm water in the northern Pacific – nicknamed The Blob – has finally broken up. Compare images from this year and last.
These maps show sea surface temperature anomalies in the Pacific in July 2015 (above) and January 2016 (below). The maps do not depict absolute temperatures; instead, they show how much above (red) or below (blue) water temperatures were compared to the average from 2003 to 2012.
Researchers launched weather balloons Tuesday off the coast of Hawaii in an unprecedented effort to discover how El Nino affects weather forecasts thousands of miles away.
Craig McLean, assistant NOAA administrator for NOAA Research, explained how the project hopes to collect data from the Pacific Ocean using a research plane, a NOAA ship and drones.
