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Is The Great California Drought Finally Ending?

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Bettina Boxall

The state’s biggest reservoirs are swelling. The Sierra Nevada have seen as much snow, sleet, hail and rain as during the wettest years on record. Rainy Los Angeles feels more like London than Southern California. So is the great California drought finally calling it quits? Yes. Or at least maybe. If the storm systems keep coming, state and regional water managers say, 2017 could be the end of a dry spell that has, for more than five years, caused crops to wither, reservoirs to run dry and homeowners to rip out their lawns and plant cactus.

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Life Without Water Or … Why The Delta Tunnel Is So Critical To LA

/in /by /City Watch (Los Angeles, Calif.)by Tony Butka

After the recent defeat of Proposition 53, a Howard Jarvis backed initiative aimed squarely at Jerry Brown’s Delta Tunnel project (aka WaterFix), matters are moving forward with the project. The CEQA challenges are now finished, and the resulting a 100,000 page document (I kid you not) is on the Governor’s desk. As General Manager of the Metropolitan Water District, Jeffrey Knightlinger quipped at our DWP meeting that the stack of paper is about 40 feet high, roughly the same as the diameter of the Delta tunnels (irony intended).

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After Week Of Storms, Mammoth Mountain Has More Snow Than Any Other Ski Resort In The Country

/in /by /KTLA5 (Los Angeles, Calif.)by Melissa Pamer and Rick Chambers

After more than a week of snow storms in the Sierra Nevada, Mammoth Mountain has more snow than another ski resort in the country.The popular mountain about five hours north of Los Angeles announced Wednesday that it had the deepest base of snow in North America after receiving 10 to 15 feet of snow since the previous Wednesday. Another foot of snow fell by Thursday morning.

 

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Call It The Southern California Drought. Rain And Snow End Northern California Water Woes

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Joseph Serna, Matt Stevens

What was once a statewide drought this week became a Southern California drought. A week of powerful storms has significantly eased the state’s water shortage, pulling nearly all of Northern California out of drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The  report underscores what experts have been saying for several months. As a series of storms have hit Northern California this winter, the drought picture there is improving, but water supply remains a concern in Southern California and the Central Valley.

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California Snowpack Makes A Huge Recovery

/in /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Rob Krier

How much has the California snowpack grown this month? On Jan. 3, the statewide “snow water equivalent,” a measure of the water content of the snow provided the California Cooperative Snow Surveys, stood at 70 percent of normal. By Wednesday morning, the number had more than doubled, to 158 percent of normal. The number could top 170 percent of normal today after Wednesday’s Sierra storm.

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Weeks Of Rain Are Rapidly Reviving California’s Drought-Ravaged Lakes

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Louis Sahagun, Matt Stevens and Paige St. John

Leaning against a wooden rail, environmental activist Geoffrey McQuilkin took stock of a parched geological wonderland that had been altered by a weekend deluge. The air was still thick with moisture, and this lake’s tributaries were cascading down from surrounding mountains, swollen by cargoes of fresh snowmelt and rain. Frothy whitecaps and wavelets lapped over grass meadows that had been dry ground only a week ago. The lake’s famous tufa formations — for so long a symbol of California’s lack of water — were capped with snow.

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Another Round Of Rain Moving Into San Diego County

/in /by /KPBS

Dense fog, rain and wind are expected in San Diego County starting Tuesday night as the second of three bouts of inclement weather this week hits the region. Only a slight chance of showers in the forecast for the beaches, valleys and mountains during the day, but rain will become more likely overnight into Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service. Rain may start falling in the deserts Wednesday.

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Storms Are Making A Dent In California’s Drought; 7 Feet Of Snow Expected In Some Areas

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Paige St. John, Louis Sahagun, Joseph Serna and Corina Knoll

A lull in a series of powerful winter storms gave Northern California a chance Monday to clean up from widespread flooding while also assessing how all that moisture is altering the state’s once-grim drought picture. A few big storms alone won’t end the six-year drought, but there were growing signs that the so-called atmospheric river was making a major dent. Officials released water from the Folsom Lake reservoir and several others as a flood control measure.

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Scientists Predict ‘Beneficial’ Rain From Atmospheric River

/in /by /The Sun (San Bernardino)by Michel Nolan

Well, we asked for it — sort of. We’ve gone from drought to deluge. It seems we are being tossed around in an atmospheric river in what is considered one of the worst West Coast flooding events in a decade. Yes, we needed the snow pack, full reservoirs, water for rivers, crops and forests. But I guess we need to be more specific — we didn’t want a fire hose trained on our state. We did not want flood alerts, evacuations, landslides and road closures, along with all sorts of advisories. We definitely did not want loss of life.

 

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OPINION: When LA Area Gets Rain, We Can’t Afford To Waste It

/in /by /Los Angeles Daily Newsby Cindy Montañez and Becky Hayat

Over the past couple of days, drought-stricken Los Angeles received about an inch of rain. But because so much of the Los Angeles area is paved, more than 3.8 billion gallons of that fresh rainwater was flushed into the L.A. River and out to the Pacific Ocean, carrying pollution and toxins along the way. As Southern California faces a sixth year of severe drought, we can’t afford to waste this precious resource. The new climate reality demands that Los Angeles get water-smart — and fast.

 

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