The allure of California has long been its almost unbelievably good weather: predictably dry summers and pleasant, if occasionally rainy, winters. Who wouldn’t want to escape swampy heat for this temperate paradise? Our typically agreeable weather (current heat wave notwithstanding) is officially called a Mediterranean-type climate, defined as having cool, wet winters and dry, warm summers.
San Diego water managers exude an understated confidence when they talk about the regional drought that is drying up California and the Colorado River Basin.
(Editor’s Note: Under the conserved water transfer agreement with the Imperial Irrigation District (IID), the San Diego County Water Authority funds conservation in the Imperial Valley that generates highly reliable and cost-effective conserved water for the San Diego region. This conserved water supply is largely insulated because of IID’s high priority rights, which IID retains.)
A “dangerous and deadly heat wave” is on the way for the Southwest through the weekend, the Phoenix National Weather Service warns.
More than 30 million people are under heat alerts, and more than 50 daily high-temperature records could be broken through the weekend – including in Death Valley, California, one of the hottest places on earth.
Dangerous and potentially deadly heat will settle over the Southwestern United States for the next several days, with temperatures in some locations expected to break records and exceed 110 degrees.
More than 22 million people in California, Nevada and Arizona are under some sort of heat-related alert through at least part of the weekend, the National Weather Service said. A heat wave is defined as a period of abnormally and uncomfortably hot and unusually humid weather that lasts for two or more days.
The nation’s power grid is under stress like never before, with regulators warning that the kind of rolling outages that are now familiar to California and Texas could be far more widespread as hot summer weather arrives.
A large swath of the Midwest that has enjoyed stable electricity for decades is now wrestling with forecasts that it lacks the power needed to get through a heat wave. The regional grid is short the amount of energy needed to power 3.7 million homes.
When California suffers a heat wave, it leans heavily on hydropower from the Pacific Northwest to keep the lights on.
But that hydropower may not always be available when it’s most needed, as climate change is shifting the ground on which the West’s dams sit. Higher temperatures means snowmelt occurs earlier in the year and leaves less water available for power generation during the depths of summer.
In Cantua, a small town deep within California’s farming heartland, the heat had always been a part of life. “We can do nothing against it,” said Julia Mendoza, who’s lived in this town for 27 years. But lately, she says, the searing temperatures are almost unlivable.
By midday on Thursday, the first day of a protracted, extreme heatwave in California’s Central Valley, the country roads were sizzling with heat. A young volunteer with a local environmental justice non-profit who had come to check in on the neighborhood collapsed on the sidewalk, her face bright red and damp. Construction crews working nearby quickly swept her into an air-conditioned car and handed her a cold bottle of water.
This is how California’s water crisis is going these days: The only functioning well in the rural community of Teviston broke in early June, leaving more than 700 residents without running water as temperatures in the Central Valley soared to triple-digits in a drought.
“It’s day to day” for the people of Teviston, said Frank Galaviz, a board member of the Teviston Community Services District, in an interview with The Fresno Bee.
Water lines on the banks of Lake Oroville in Butte County have depleted so rapidly that the reservoir’s hydroelectric power plant may have to shut down for the first time ever, straining an already encumbered power grid during the hottest part of the summer, California officials announced Thursday.
Since 1967, the Edward Hyatt Power Plant has been a crucial source of electricity for the area and usually has the capacity to power up to 800,000 homes, pumping water from the lake through its underground facilities, according to CNN. However, water levels are currently approaching 700 feet, exacerbated by a severe drought and triple-digit temperatures.
Kou Her’s family has run the 12-acre Herr Family Farms in Sanger, just east of Fresno, for the last 20 years, raising a variety of vegetables for Bay Area produce and farmer’s markets. In those 20 years, Kou and his parents haven’t seen anything like the heat wave gripping the Central Valley this week.
