As drought conditions persist and with the potential for another dry winter due to La Niña, some good news: the California State Water Resources Board learned Wednesday reservoirs in the northern and central parts of the state have more water than at this time last year.
State Water Project reservoirs across Northern and Central California remain below historical averages after three consecutive years of drought.
As models predict another La Niña for the coming winter, which could lead to another dry year, leaders of water agencies and other groups from across California and the western United States met Tuesday to discuss how best to get commerce and industry to use less water.
While residential water use has declined, commercial and industrial users need retrofits, new equipment and new ways of doing business when it comes how much liquid “gold” they consume.
More extreme water cuts are all but certain in the Southwest starting next year – including new water cuts for California – according to the latest government forecast for the Colorado River and Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir.
Lake Mead, which provides water to roughly 25 million people in Arizona, Nevada, California and Mexico, is losing water at an alarming rate amid an extraordinary, multi-year drought made worse by the climate crisis.
Several parts of Texas are under excessive heat warnings as temperatures are expected to hit triple digits for the 24th day in a row. Temperatures reached 110 degrees in the Dallas area on Tuesday. The high temperatures caused heat-fueled wildfires to burn several homes near Dallas on Monday and forced several people into mandatory evacuations.
A rare triple-dip La Niña is looking increasingly likely for the Northern Hemisphere. The latest outlook by NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, released Thursday, indicates there’s a 62% to 66% chance the current La Niña climate condition will persist through fall and early winter.
If that happens, it’ll be the third La Niña winter in a row – a rare phenomenon we’ve only seen twice since 1950. A third consecutive La Niña year would likely have a major impact on California.
After three years of drought, the massive state and federal water projects that serve California’s cities and farms have less water to distribute, forcing water managers to increasingly ration supplies.
While the lingering La Niña climate pattern is expected to bring soaking storms and strong hurricanes to parts of the U.S., it’s a different story here in California.
La Niña is favored to stick around through the end of the year, according to the latest outlook from the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center. While La Niña – and its opposite, El Niño – are characterized by the temperature of the Pacific Ocean, they have major impacts on the weather we experience on land.
A stubborn La Niña climate pattern in the tropical Pacific is likely to persist through the summer and may hang on into 2023, forecasters say.
La Niña has been implicated not only in the unrelenting drought in the U.S. Southwest, but also in drought and flooding in various parts of the world, including ongoing drought and famine in the Horn of Africa.
The U.S. national drought early-warning information system, called NIDIS, gave a rundown Thursday on when much of the Southwest will experience conditions that heighten the potential for wildfire.
Drought is one of the main drivers because less water means drier soils, drier plants and drier air, all conditions that fuel wildfire.
For two winters in a row, La Niña has steered desperately needed rain and snow storms away from the U.S. Southwest, exacerbating a decades-long drought that has shriveled reservoirs and spurred horrific wildfires.
Now, hopes that the climate pattern would relent and allow moisture to rebound next winter have suffered a serious blow.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
