Mount Shasta, the widely recognizable face of California’s far north, has lost almost all its defining snow cover for a second straight year.
Another summer of scorching temperatures, punctuated by the recent heat wave, has melted most of the mountain’s lofty white crown, typically a year-round symbol of the north state’s enduring wilds.
California is at a transformational moment when it comes to managing water. As aridification of the western United States intensifies, we have an opportunity to advance a better approach to flow management in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and our rivers through a process of voluntary agreements to update the Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan.
The agreements, signed by parties from Red Bluff to San Diego, propose a new structure for managing water resources in the Delta and beyond in a way that is collaborative, innovative and foundational for adapting to climate realities while benefiting communities, farms, fish and wildlife.
As soon as the U.S. Department of the Interior last month announced that Nevada would lose 8% of its water allotment from the Colorado River next year amid the continuing drought, officials with the Southern Nevada Water Authority started fielding questions from concerned residents.
Southwest of Sacramento, the branching arms of waterways reach into a patchwork of farm fields and pastures. Canals and wetlands fringed with reeds meet a sunbaked expanse of dry meadows.
These lands on the northwestern edge of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta have now been targeted for restoration following the widespread destruction of estuary marsh habitats that began over a century ago.
San Diego County got minimal rain Saturday as the last of Tropical Storm Kay passed over the region.
The storm already brought record rainfall to the county on Friday, with around a half-inch near the coast and nearly 2 inches in some mountain areas. Rainfall totals were much lower as the storm dissipated over the Pacific Ocean on Saturday — around 0.01 to 0.03 inch on the coast and around 0.06 inch in the mountains as of 4:30 p.m., said the National Weather Service.
Water is a mirage in California. We tend to see what we want to see. In my case, the biggest illusion was Auburn Dam.
If you were a resident of Placer County in the 1960s to 1980s you viewed it as almost as a birthright that the American River be dammed in the canyon below Auburn.
A new study by San Diego State University scientists finds that the bacterial outbreaks in the San Diego River that force frequent local beach closures are caused primarily by leaks in aging sewer pipes, not by homeless encampments or failing septic tanks.
Ocean and atmospheric conditions tell us that La Niña—the cool phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate pattern—currently reigns in the tropical Pacific. It’s looking very likely that the long-predicted third consecutive La Niña winter will happen, with a 91% chance of La Niña through September–November and an 80% chance through the early winter (November–January).
San Diego County is taking a hard and weird hit from Tropical Storm Kay, which generated winds that gusted from 93 mph to 109 mph early Friday in East County and lifted temperatures countywide into the 80s and 90s at the tail end of a long heat wave.
Californians sweated it out amid a record-breaking heat wave entering its 10th day Friday that has helped fuel deadly wildfires and pushed energy supplies to the brink of daily power outages.
