Forget about selfies. In California, residents are using smartphones and drones to document the coastline’s changing face.
Starting this month, The Nature Conservancy is asking tech junkies to capture the flooding and coastal erosion that come with El Nino, a weather pattern that’s bringing California its wettest winter in years — and all in the name of science.
If you think El Nino is done, you should think again.
Meteorologist Kurt Kaplan from the National Weather Service says that “We can see storm tracks all the way through April.”
Kaplan added that the storms are certainly brewing, they’re just in Northern California at the moment.
Experts say it’s only a matter of time until El Nino comes down South, with February expected to be the wettest month of the year.
Forecasters say El Niño hasn’t yet stood us up on a date and that the much-hyped set of storms — characterized by unusually warm temperatures in the equatorial Pacific that bring above-average rainfall — will hit Southern California hard soon, after teasing us with a few days of rain in early January.
“It’s not really gone away,” said Brett Albright, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego. “It’s still out there. It’s a temperature phenomenon, and it has a progressive effect on the atmosphere.”
Halfway through the winter, more water is stored in California’s snowpack than is usual for this time of year – signaling that maybe, just maybe, this could be the year the drought eases.
With a strong El Niño, it’s not really surprising that winter rain has arrived in California. What’s notable is the location.
Normally, El Niño drives storms to California’s Central Coast, with tailing fronts drenching Southern California. So far this winter, storms have for the most part hit farther north, dumping snow and some rain in the northern Sierra mountains that are the linchpin in California’s water system.
We are all hoping the current El Niño will bring an end to the drought. Whether or not we’ll continue to receive normal or above-normal precipitation is still a question, though an end to the drought may be unlikely this year. Whatever the outcome this year, future droughts are certain.
In 2014, California’s voters passed Proposition 1, a $7.12 billion water bond. While the bond contained $2.7 billion earmarked for water storage projects including dams and reservoirs, few if any such projects are currently under way.
Six Northern California Democrats are breaking from Gov. Jerry Brown to demand a vote on his proposed tunnels to send water to Southern California. Democratic Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman of Stockton said Friday that she’ll introduce a bill to ask voters about the $15.5 billion project.
The Democratic governor has proposed building two massive tunnels in the San Joaquin Delta to supply residents and farmland further south.
Farmers in California’s fertile San Joaquin Valley are bracing to receive no irrigation water from a federal system of reservoirs and canals for a third consecutive year and looking to El Nino to produce the very wet winter they need.
The year kicked off with heavy rains and an above-average snowpack in the Sierra Nevada. The El Nino — a global weather system associated with wet winters in California — may play out nationwide through late spring or beyond, officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say.
The recent onslaught of El Nino storms only slightly increased the levels of California reservoirs that now stand at half of historic depths for this time of year, federal officials said Friday while releasing an initial water outlook for 2016.
The federally operated reservoirs that supply farms and cities throughout the agriculture-rich Central Valley are now 49 percent full, compared with 47 percent on Oct. 1, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said.
Q: Why are we asked to limit showers? Are the water savings significant or is it more to conserve energy in heating the water? Dennis C., Solana Beach
A: Changing showering habits can absolutely reduce water and energy consumption. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that showering accounts for 17 percent of total indoor water use at the average home — and that’s a lot of water when multiplied by hundreds of thousands of families countywide. Because the energy used to transport, treat and heat water is also significant, shorter showers conserve that resource as well.
Jennifer Jones held out a plastic cup of water to a visitor.
The water was crystal clear and tasted fresh and pure, as if it had been poured from a bottle of spring water. There was nothing to suggest that as recently as one hour earlier, that water had been pulled from the ocean by powerful pumps.
Jones, a spokeswoman for Poseidon Water, was taking a reporter on a tour of the new seawater desalination plant on the Carlsbad coast, which officially went online Dec. 23 after a 15-year planning, permitting, design and construction process. The $800 million plant is expected to provide between 7 and 10 percent of San Diego County’s drinking water for at least the next 30 years.
