Tag Archive for: Drought

Season’s Last Snowpack Survey Confirms Dry Winter. California Inching Toward Statewide Drought

/in , , /by /The Sacramento Beeby Dale Kasler

The last Sierra Nevada snowpack measurement of the season on Thursday confirmed what California officials have feared for months: The state has suffered through a dry winter.

The state Department of Water Resources announced that the snow was just 1.5 inches deep at its traditional measuring spot at Phillips Station, a vast field off Highway 50 near Echo Summit. The “snow water equivalent” was just a half an inch, or just 3 percent of average for this time of year.

The Phillips measurement was an outlier. A broader measurement taken by 130 electronic sensors throughout the Sierra revealed an average snow water equivalent of 8.4 inches, or 37 percent of average for this time of year.

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Montecito Water District Poised to be Drought Proof

/in , , /by /Santa Barbara News-Pressby Christian Whittle

The Montecito Water District is set to be drought-proof by the summer, the district announced Monday.

The progress is due to desalination and new rates, which the district’s board of directors received a status report on as well as a water supply agreement with the city of Santa Barbara during its regular monthly meeting Tuesday.

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‘Borrowing From the Future’: What an Emerging Megadrought Means for the Southwest

/in , , /by /Cronkite News (Arizona PBS, Phoenix)by Madison Staten

It’s the early 1990s, and Park Williams stands in the middle of Folsom Lake, at the base of the Sierra Nevada foothills in Northern California. He’s not walking on water; severe drought has exposed the lakebed.

“I remember being very impressed by the incredible variability of water in the West and how it’s very rare that we actually have just enough water,” said Williams, who went on to become a climate scientist at Columbia University. “It’s often the case there’s either too much or too little.”

Williams is the lead author on a report out this month in the journal Science detailing the extent of drought conditions in the American West.

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Facing a Drier Future, Water Managers Turn to Science

/in , , /by /The Herald Times

A growing body of research shows that the Upper Colorado River Basin is growing warmer on average. In fact, the national hot spot centers on Western Colorado and much of the Southwest.

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Trump Opens Floodgates, and Acrimony Swamps California

/in , , /by /E&E Newsby Jeremy Jacobs

On the campaign trail in 2016, President Trump swung into California’s agricultural hub and vowed to deliver more water to the drought-ridden state’s farmers.

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Southern California Swelters as Drought Intensifies in Northern California

/in , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Paul Duginski

Temperatures will remain above seasonal norms in Southern California on Saturday as offshore gradients relax. A return of onshore flow will result in slight cooling at the coast and in coastal valleys, but interior areas will be slightly warmer.

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Farmers Face New Challenges in Their Ongoing Quest for Water

/in , , /by /Sacramento Business Journalby Emily Hamann

Not a drop of rain fell in February in Sacramento until the end of the month, making it the driest February on record for much of Northern California. For many farmers it was a painful harkening back to the drought that reached its peak and 2015, and marked the driest period in recorded California history.

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California Ranks Small Water Agencies in the County, State for Drought Vulnerability

/in , /by /Record Searchlightby Damon Arthur

Roy Vincent has no problem ticking off the problems he says face the little community water district that serves him in Jones Valley near Redding. The system leaks, the filtration system is old and prone to breaking down, many individual meters are antiquated and the water pumps have inadequate wiring, he said.

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This Year is on Track to be Earth’s Warmest on Record, Beating 2016, NOAA says

/in , , /by /The Washington Postby Andrew Freedman

There is a 75 percent chance 2020 will set a record for the warmest year since instrument records began in 1880, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is projecting, beating out 2016 for the distinction.

This is somewhat unexpected, since there is no declared El Niño event in the tropical Pacific Ocean, which tends to provide a natural boost to global temperatures that are already elevated due to the human-caused buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The NOAA projection, made late last week, is based on statistical modeling now that the first quarter of 2020 is off to a near-record warm start, coming in as the second-warmest January through March period since instrument records began in 1880.

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Changes in Snowmelt Threaten Farmers in Western U.S.

/in , , /by /Colorado State Universityby Mary Guiden

For decades, scientists have thought that changes in snowmelt due to climate change could negatively impact agriculture. Now, a new study reveals the risks to agriculture around the world from changes in snowmelt, finding that farmers in parts of the western United States who rely on snowmelt to help irrigate crops will be among the hardest hit in the world by climate change.

In a study published April 20 in Nature Climate Change, an interdisciplinary team of researchers analyzed monthly irrigation water demand with snowmelt runoff across global basins from 1985 to 2015. The goal was to determine where irrigated agriculture has depended on snowmelt runoff in the past and how that might change with a warming climate.

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