Despite heavy rain in Northern California, state officials aren’t ready to declare an end to the drought.Tuesday, officials said the Sierra snowpack is at 72 percent of normal.The mountain snow contributes about one third of California’s water when it melts and fills the reservoirs. Northern California had its wettest October in 30 years, although the snowpack is typically deepest in April.
In San Diego County, there’s still time to buy water-conserving rain barrels without getting soaked. A $75 rebate on rain barrels, offered by the San Diego County Water Authority and Solana Center for Environmental Innovation, drops to $35 on Jan.1. The barrels are made of heavy duty recycled plastic, hold 50 gallons, have a lid with a screen at the top, and a spigot at the bottom. They sell for $90 each before the rebate, discounted from $149.
A series of moderate earthquakes rocked the California-Nevada border Wednesday, shaking residents in both states but producing no reports of major damage or injury. The first temblor, with a magnitude of 5.7, occurred at 12:22 a.m. near Hawthorne, Nev. It was followed by a second 5.7 quake and then more than 100 aftershocks. Light shaking was felt as far away as South Lake Tahoe, Fresno, Visalia and Merced.
The State Water Resources Control Board recently announced that urban Californians’ monthly water conservation was 19.5 percent in October, up from 18.3 percent in September and a bit below the 22.3 percent savings in October 2015, when state-mandated conservation targets were in place. The State Water Board stressed the need for continued conservation despite early rains in Northern California. The cumulative statewide savings from June 2015 through October 2016 was 22.8 percent, compared with the same months in 2013. Since June 2015, 2.26 million acre-feet of water has been saved — enough water to supply more than 11 million people, or more than one-quarter the state’s 38 million population, for a year.
It’s gone. The so-called Ridiculously Resilient Ridge, also known as The Blob, once perched off the Northwest coast blocking all storms like a football team’s defensive line, has dissipated, said Bill Patzert, climatologist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. Many climatologists believed this was the main reason for the lack of rainfall in Southern California, making the past five years the driest in Southern California history as measured from downtown Los Angeles.
Pesident-elect Donald Trump has made job creation and retention a heavy priority. He doesn’t feel constrained either by establishment criticism or by what past presidents have done. Given this history, Gov. Jerry Brown’s push for his $16 billion twin tunnels project may not be the only big water headline next year; 2017 could see a host of historic — and risky — changes in how California divvies up its water.
It could be a wet, wet New Year’s Day in Southern California. But Pasadena’s enviable record of dry Rose Parades should stand, thanks to a “Never on Sunday” rule dating back to the 19th century, officials said Tuesday. A cold front from the north should bring rain to Los Angeles on Saturday, stretching into Sunday, Jan. 1, the National Weather Service forecast. But for only the 15th time in its 128-year history, the Rose Parade will be moved to Monday, Jan. 2, sparing thousands of spectators a soggy vigil.
For the first time in a half-dozen years, water flowed over Canyon Lake’s dam in the last few days, rushing downstream into Lake Elsinore. “Watching the water come over the dam on Christmas Day and flow into the lake was quite the Christmas miracle for us,” Mayor Bob Magee said. Observers hope the influx — coupled with more potential storms such as one forecast for later this week — will rescue Southern California’s largest natural freshwater body from a severe decline brought on by the region’s prolonged drought.
In the November 2016 general election, voters selected two new board members for Rainbow Municipal Water District. Hayden Hamilton was elected to serve the constituents of the district’s Division 2, which is in the western portion of the district. Michael Mack was elected to serve the constituents of the district’s Division 5, which serves the northern portion of the district in the Rainbow area.
First, KPBS exposed the big weakness of the San Diego transit system’s Compass Card system: You can’t put money on the cards for single rides, even though other systems understand that “stored value as a way to make riding transit as convenient as possible.” The glitch makes the cards costly for those who don’t ride very often because they have to put money on the card that they may never use.
