OPINION: California Needs Better Weather Prediction Tools for Water Management

Current weather forecasting tools are less than adequate for managing California’s most vital natural resource, state water officials said Tuesday. People at the state Department of Water Resources are now working with researchers at NASA and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography to develop new technology to better forecast moisture-laden atmospheric river storms, like the ones that hammered the Mother Lode and the rest of the Central Sierra in January and February.