There was a time when Lois and Jeff Scott’s El Cajon front yard was awash in lawn, from the street to just a few feet from the house itself, where a bed grew roses and a large rosemary bush.
Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed an ultra-sensitive sensor made with graphene that can detect extraordinarily low concentrations of lead ions in water. The device achieves a record limit of detection of lead down to the femtomolar range, which is one million times more sensitive than previous sensing technologies.
Another powerful storm arrived in Southern California with at least three straight days of rain in the forecast for San Diego County, and authorities warning of potentially dangerous flooding Monday.
Additional swift-water rescue teams and assistance from the U.S. National Guard will be on tap when the next big storm arrives Thursday, officials said Tuesday, even as many worked to recover from the flash flood that upended so many lives just eight days ago.
Ahead of another severe storm warning, Mayor Todd Gloria issued an evacuation warning Wednesday to low-lying areas of the city, devastated by flooding last week. The evacuation is currently voluntary, said the mayor, and designed to keep the public ready should an evacuation become mandatory.
The San Diego River is prone to flooding, especially during conditions like Thursday’s expected storm. Hundreds of unhoused people living along the riverbed are especially vulnerable to rising waters. It was a race against time on Wednesday to ensure everybody knows it.
A cold Pacific storm will drop 2 to 2.5 inches of rain across much of San Diego County from Thursday morning to Friday afternoon, possibly causing heavy runoff in a region still recovering from last week’s damaging, storm-induced flooding, the National Weather Service said.
The atmospheric river that deluged San Diego last week followed close on the heels of enormous waves that punished the California coast at the beginning of the year, with both weather events setting off alarms in more ways than one.
For the second time in a month, torrential flooding returned to Southern California this week with El Niño-fueled rains rolling in off the Pacific Ocean. This time San Diego felt the punch. The city, known for weather “the closest thing to perfect in America,” experienced one of its wettest days on record.
Weather officials had been warning Californians about the wrath of El Niño for months — even as some residents had begun to think the typically soaking climate pattern had gone AWOL.
