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According to a new forecast from the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center, it’s likely that the La Niña weather pattern will show up this winter. The likelihood that it will show up this winter is the same as last month: a 55 to 60 percent probability. That’s a downgrade from June, when it was 75 percent. While El Niño is associated with warmer waters in the equatorial Pacific and warm, wet winters in Southern California, La Niña can be tied to cooling waters, and is better known for keeping things drier in the southern part of the state.

With students heading back to classes this month, we want to ask a little favor of teachers, principals and other educators at public and private elementary, middle and high schools alike: Please spend some time this school year teaching our children about water conservation, if you are not already. Because despite some mixed signals from water regulators lately, a severe drought continues in Southern California, and water education is more important than ever.

At first the biologists noticed something unusual about the dead fish washing up on the shore of the Salton Sea: All of them were fully grown, at least 7 inches long. There were no smaller fish among the carcasses pushed ashore by the lapping waves.

Then the biologists started seeing other clues in the birds. Western grebes, which normally arrive by the thousands to forage, were nowhere to be found. Thousands of Caspian terns would normally stop off to nest, but they were also missing.

The California drought is now in it’s fifth year, and a recent study says it won’t be over for years to come. The study analyzed California’s mountain snowpack and found that we’d need almost four and a half more years of winter storms to escape drought conditions.  But just few months ago, after a not-so-impressive El Niño winter season, California’s State Water Resources Control Board ended a year of mandatory water restrictions, that had required urban residents to cut their consumption by 25% statewide.

With conservation cutting into demand, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California used nearly 16 acres of land originally set aside for additional water production for a solar farm at its F.E. Weymouth Water Treatment Plant in La Verne. The $10.5 million solar installation produces 3 megawatts of electricity at capacity, or enough to supply one-half of the treatment plant’s power needs. MWD General Manager Jeff Kightlinger flipped the switch on the renewable energy project Tuesday, marking the ceremonial opening of the solar installation situated in two fields adjacent to the plant’s cleaned-water reservoir and only yards away from tract homes.