Imperial Beach’s new mayor, Paloma Aguirre, is dealing with an old problem in her city: beach closures forced by raw sewage from Mexico.
A recent string of powerful storms in the region has forced lots of raw sewage, trash, tires and other debris across the southern border into California.
Forecasts of a hotter, drier climate for the Southwest U.S. make every effort to save water critical. A new program now available intends to do just that for residents in parts of Southern California. The San Diego County Water Authority, in collaboration with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, are offering free indoor and outdoor residential water efficiency use surveys.
A 1,000-mile-wide atmospheric river that’s forming in the subtropics will brush San Diego County with light rain Friday and Saturday and bring heavy precipitation to the rest of Southern and Central California, further aiding reservoirs and muting the risk of wildfires, the National Weather Service said on Monday.
The storm is part of a major pattern change that also is expected to produce a second warm, moist atmospheric river that will flow through roughly the same areas on March 14, possibly bringing heavier rain to San Diego, which is experiencing its first wet year in three years.
The stubborn La Niña climate pattern that gripped the tropical Pacific for a rare three years in a row is waning, and the odds of an El Niño system forming later this year are getting stronger, according to recent meteorological reports.
The El Niño-La Niña Southern Oscillation, sometimes referred to as ENSO, has a major influence on temperature and rainfall patterns in different parts of the world, with La Niña often associated with drier-than-normal conditions in California, especially the southern part of the state.
The winter of 2023 isn’t finished yet. Not by a long shot.
An atmospheric river storm is likely to hit Northern California late Thursday into Friday, meteorologists and climate scientists said Monday, bringing high chances of heavy rain in the Bay Area, 1 to 3 feet of new snow at higher elevations in the Sierra, and an increased risk of flooding as the warm rain hits the state’s massive snowpack.
Though recent snow and rainfall have certainly improved drought conditions, California water officials still want to make every drop of water count.
That means cutting out the watering of decorative grass — also known as non-functional turf — frequently landscaped at traffic medians or office parking lots.
Decorative grass is becoming a bigger problem for Western water agencies to address as policymakers look to cut back its water usage in statewide bans, proposed legislation and local ordinances.
Standing on a concrete pad that will support a major new water supply for the Monterey Peninsula, state and federal officials on Monday struck celebratory tones in describing government partnerships that will help usher in an expansion of the Pure Water Monterey project.
As 5-year-old Stella Penn and her sister, Maxine, 3, enthusiastically play hide-and-seek in the backyard of their Eagle Rock home, the girls are accompanied by a merry band of lizards, butterflies and birds drawn to the yard’s low-water California natives, abundant fruit trees and the fragrance of Cleveland sage and Champaca trees.
The National Weather Service office in San Diego is monitoring the potential development of another atmospheric river, which could bring rain to the region on Friday and Saturday.
“Southern California will be on the southern edge of the atmospheric river bringing periods of precipitation Friday and Saturday,” the weather service said.
The winter of 2022-23 will go into the meteorological record books for one of the heaviest – if not, the heaviest – precipitation ever experienced in California.
California has been buffeted for more than two months by a seemingly nonstop series of storms rolling in from the Pacific, soaking virtually every corner of the state. Their most unusual aspect has been the huge snowfall in Southern California mountains, where hundreds of people remain trapped in resort communities.
