As state water regulators consider extending drought restrictions though the fall, officials reported Tuesday that urban Californians had reduced their water use by 18.3% during December.
The savings, which are compared with December 2013 water usage levels, were the smallest in seven months of reporting and put California’s cumulative savings at 25.5%, down from 26.3% in November.
Most of the water agencies in San Diego County fell short of their state-mandated conservation targets in December, according to data released Tuesday by the state Water Resources Control Board.
The lagging savings totals reflected the state as a whole, which cut back by 18.3 percent in December, missing Gov. Jerry Brown’s order to reduce water use by 25 percent statewide.
San Diego’s overabundance of water during one of California’s worst droughts has reached a new, absurd level. The San Diego County Water Authority has dumped a half billion gallons of costly drinking water into a lake near Chula Vista.
Now that drinking water has been poured into a lake, the water must be treated a second time before humans can consume it. And here’s another kick in the gut. The drinking water that’s now been dumped into the lake includes desalinated water, some of the most expensive treated water in the world. Water officials will now have to spend even more money to make the once-drinkable desalinated water drinkable once again.
A thousand miles south of Hawaii, the air at 45,000 feet above the equatorial Pacific was a shimmering gumbo of thick storm clouds and icy cirrus haze, all cooked up by the overheated waters below.
In a Gulfstream jet more accustomed to hunting hurricanes in the Atlantic, researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were cruising this desolate stretch of tropical ocean where the northern and southern trade winds meet.
Following a welcomed parade of El Niño storms drenching drought-stricken California, state officials on Tuesday will decide whether to extend emergency conservation orders, and reveal how much water Californians saved in December.
The figures are expected to show that for a third straight month, Californians missed a mandate to use 25 percent less water. State regulators, however, say they are confident residents will meet the long-term goal that requires the savings over a nine-month period ending in February, a more important target.
It didn’t rain too heavily during January but it sure rained often, resulting in rainfall far above average for the month.
In Chico, 8.61 inches fell during the month at the Enterprise-Record weather station, nearly double the 4.86 inches normal for the month. The National Weather Service put the rain in Oroville for January at 7.18 inches, with 20.2 inches in Paradise. Red Bluff saw 13.69 inches and Redding, 12.68 inches. The Weather Service said rainfall amounts of 100 percent to 250 percent of normal were common across the area
The U.S. Forest Service today released a new report, Effects of Drought on Forests and Rangelands in the United States: A Comprehensive Science Synthesis, that provides a national assessment of peer-reviewed scientific research on the impacts of drought on U.S. forests and rangelands. This report will help the Forest Service better manage forests and grasslands impacted by climate change.
California’s unprecedented dry spell has tested the limits of drought-tolerant ferns, which carpet the forest floor underneath the West Coast’s iconic redwoods, according to a new study by UC Santa Cruz scientists.
“We’ve never seen a drought of this magnitude,” said co-author Jarmila Pittermann, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. “You’re used to seeing a green understory, but in the last four years without rain, they’re white or brown. They dried up.”
The prodigious storm that brought nearly an inch of rain to Fresno on Sunday left another gift overnight – snow along ridges on the west side of the central San Joaquin Valley.
The snow level dropped to below 2,000 feet overnight as the cold storm moved through the area, said Modesto Vasquez, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Hanford.
Vasquez said snow would be topping the highest peaks of the Diablo Range on the Valley’s west side, including Santa Rita Ridge, which stands at 5,000 feet near Coalinga.
What a difference a month of rain makes.
Two months ago, Folsom Lake stood at its lowest depth in history, and federal officials were engineering a special pumping system to ensure drinking water would keep flowing to Sacramento suburbs.
Following a month of persistent rain and snow in Northern California, lake levels are triple what they were in early December, and the reservoir contains more water than average for early February.
