Four months ago, the outlook for the Colorado River was so dire that federal projections showed imminent risks of reservoirs dropping to dangerously low levels.
But after this winter’s major storms, the river’s depleted reservoirs are set to rise substantially with runoff from the largest snowpack in the watershed since 1997.
Sixth Avenue used to cut through miles of farmland. Now, the road has disappeared under muddy water, its path marked by sodden telephone poles that protrude from the swelling lake. Water laps just below the windows of a lone farmhouse that sits alongside the submerged route.
Environmentalists slammed Gov. Gavin Newsom for slashing billions of dollars from initiatives that the governor has repeatedly called top priorities: efforts to combat climate change and transition to zero-emission vehicles.
Facing a projected $22.5 billion deficit, Newsom today proposed to eliminate $6 billion in climate spending in his 2023-24 budget. The governor helped push a five-year $54 billion climate package approved by the Legislature during last year’s session, but he now proposes to cut it to $48 billion.
The National Weather Service in Seattle posted a graphic this week that contains a startling fact. Since July 1, Seattle, a city synonymous with rain, has been drier than San Diego, a city synonymous with clear, dry skies.
From July 1 to Oct. 9, San Diego recorded 0.65 inches of rain. Seattle, 1,250 miles to the north, had only 0.48 inches.
When Stephanie Kampf visited one of her wildfire test plots near Colorado’s Joe Wright Reservoir in June of 2021, the charred remains of what had been a cool, shady spruce and fir forest before the Cameron Peak Fire incinerated it nearly took her breath away.
San Diego County is taking a hard and weird hit from Tropical Storm Kay, which generated winds that gusted from 93 mph to 109 mph early Friday in East County and lifted temperatures countywide into the 80s and 90s at the tail end of a long heat wave.
September marks the start of a new season for meteorologists. It’s the beginning of “climatological fall” in the Northern Hemisphere — and, ostensibly, a transition to milder weather.
But much of the U.S. is still baking, burning, withering or swimming.
A team led by Kristen Guirguis, a climate researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, found evidence that the risk of hazardous weather is increasing in the Southwest.
The researchers investigated the daily relationships among four major modes of weather affecting California. How they interact governs the formation of weather events such as atmospheric rivers capable of bringing torrential rains and Santa Ana winds that can spread devastating wildfires.
“This study suggests that weather patterns are changing in a way that enhances hot, dry Santa Ana winds, while reducing precipitation frequency in the Southwest,” said Guirguis. “These changes in atmospheric circulation are raising the risk of wildfires during California winters.”
The study, “Winter wet—dry weather patterns driving atmospheric rivers and Santa Ana winds provide evidence for increasing wildfire hazard in California,” was published in the journal Climate Dynamics July 17, 2022.
Dillard Road is flooded near the Hwy 99 off ramp, located south of Elk Grove, California. Photo credit: Florence Low / California Department of Water Resources.The basis of the research was an examination of the dominant atmospheric circulation patterns over the North Pacific Ocean, known as Baja-Pacific, Alaskan-Pacific, Canadian-Pacific, and Offshore-California modes. What distinguishes them from each other are the relative positions of ridges and troughs in the atmosphere.
The research team identified 16 recurring weather patterns that are created daily as these modes interact with each other. One product of the work was a summary of California weather patterns from 1949 to 2017. The patterns associated with the formation of dry gusty Santa Ana winds that often stoke Southern California fires are becoming more frequent. Patterns associated with what might be considered “normal” rainfall are decreasing in the Southwest thus promoting drought, but patterns associated with extreme precipitation and strong atmospheric river episodes have remained steady over the study period. The researchers noted that while the patterns associated with heavy precipitation and strong atmospheric rivers have not changed in frequency, a warmer atmosphere is capable of holding more water so these storms are becoming more damaging.
The results suggest an increasing probability of compounding environmental hazards during California winters, said the research team. Though winter atmospheric rivers are the antithesis of hot, dry Santa Ana wind conditions, sequences of wildfires followed by strong atmospheric rivers often compound the damage from fires when they trigger flash floods and destructive debris flows from burn scars.
Photo of the Thomas Fire taken from a Santa Barbara beach. Photo credit: Carsten Schertzer / iStock.“This spells challenges for wildfire and water resource management and provides observational support to our previous results projecting that California will increasingly have to depend on potentially hazardous atmospheric rivers and floodwater for water resource generation in a warming climate,” said study co-author Alexander Gershunov, a Scripps Oceanography climate scientist.
Study authors say this work is helping to inform an experimental subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) forecast product being developed at Scripps Oceanography’s Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes (CW3E) that predicts extreme weather in California including atmospheric river landfalls, Santa Ana winds, drought, and heat waves.
The U.S. Department of the Interior via the Bureau of Reclamation and the Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center, the California Department of Water Resources, and the Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) California—Nevada Climate Applications Program and the International Research Applications Program of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration funded the study. Additional funding was provided by the University of California Office of the President MRPI grant.
High water levels on the Tuolumne River close River Road in the city of Modesto, California, part of Stanislaus County. Photo credit: Dale Kolke / California Department of Water Resources.The San Diego County Water Authority has a partnership with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego to better predict atmospheric rivers and improve water management before, during and after seasonal storms.
(Editors Note: Study co-authors include Benjamin Hatchett of the Desert Research Institute in Nevada; Tamara Shulgina, Michael DeFlorio, Rosana Aguilera, achel Clemesha, Tom Corringham, Luca Delle Monache, and Marty Ralph of CW3E at Scripps Oceanography; Aneesh Subramanian and David Reynolds of the University of Colorado Boulder; Janin Guzman-Morales of the University of California Santa Barbara; and Alex Tardy and Ivory Small of the National Weather Service.)
California likely will have an energy shortfall equivalent to what it takes to power about 1.3 million homes when use is at its peak during the hot and dry summer months, state officials said Friday.
Threats from drought, extreme heat and wildfires, plus supply chain and regulatory issues hampering the solar industry will create challenges for energy reliability this summer, the officials said. They represented the California Public Utilities Commission, the California Energy Commission, and the California Independent System Operator, which manages the state’s energy grid.
Senators plan to roll out a draft water infrastructure bill today that will serve as a vehicle for bipartisan provisions that aim to protect the nation’s coasts against widespread, deadly flooding and storm surge tied to climate change. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is planning to release a draft 2022 Water Resources Development Act. Known as WRDA, the legislation has a long track record of passing both chambers and making its way to the president’s desk every two years. The bill provides a blueprint for how the Army Corps of Engineers conducts some of the nation’s largest and most ambitious flood control, navigation and ecosystem restoration initiatives.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
