You are now in California and the U.S. category.

The Truckee River Operating Agreement is a done deal.

Parties to the landmark water compact, which went into effect Dec. 1 after nearly three decades of negotiations and work, took time out Tuesday to celebrate.

 

“From a drought perspective, this is a game changer,” Leo Drozdoff, director of the Nevada Department of Conservation & Natural Resource, said Jan. 5. “It provides certainty in uncertain times.”

 

 

Water-starved Folsom Lake is beginning to slowly fill up and recover from its lowest water levels ever.

 

The state’s ninth-largest reservoir, the main water source for the sprawling Sacramento suburbs, shrank to a mere 135,561 acre feet on Dec. 4, 2015. The previous lowest level at Folsom was 140,600 acre feet, recorded during the 1976–77 drought. An acre foot is enough water to flood an acre of land under a foot of water, and roughly the amount required by a family of four over a year.

Godzilla El Niño stormed ashore in Southern California today, offering up a good drenching that has caused flooding, closed roads, and transformed the usually trickling Los Angeles River into a raging torrent.

 

Today’s fast-moving tempest will be just the first in a parade of storms this week. An El-Niño-energized subtropical jet stream promises to help deliver at least two more rounds of copious rainfall to the drought-plagued region between now and Sunday.

El Niño gave Sacramento its biggest rainstorm in more than a year Tuesday, overwhelming gutters and snarling traffic but putting another small dent in the drought.

 

The second straight day of El Niño storms meant snow chain controls for much of the Sierra Nevada and occasional traffic accidents throughout the Sacramento region. A pre-dawn big-rig crash on southbound Highway 99 near Dillard Road forced lane closures, while a car crash later in the morning on northbound Interstate 5 near Pocket Road caused headaches for commuters. Vehicles encountered significant flooding early in the day on the Capital City Freeway, near the E Street exit. Caltrans said a jackknifed big rig near the Nevada border brought eastbound traffic on Interstate 80 to a halt for about an hour.