In a boost for California’s water supply, a series of recent storms that blanketed the Sierra Nevada in snow has built the state’s snowpack to its highest December level since 2015.
The snowpack — a key source of the state’s water supply — measured 113% of average this week, roughly 40% higher than the snowpack during the same time in 2018, according to the Department of Water Resources.
Even before he was sworn into office, Gov. Gavin Newsom threw his weight behind a series of tentative deals, brokered by his predecessor, that were intended to bring lasting peace to California’s never-ending battles over water and endangered fish.
The deals, designed to reallocate water from the state’s major rivers, have yet to be finalized a year later.
Now, one of the nation’s most powerful farm irrigation districts says it will back out of the agreements completely if Newsom follows through with a pledge to sue President Donald Trump over a federal plan to pump more water to farmers from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the fragile estuary on Sacramento’s doorstep.
Agricultural and urban groundwater users in Merced County may soon have to sacrifice for the future, if a new state-mandated sustainability plan that limits consumption moves forward.
Last weekend a film called “Dark Water” opened in theaters, starring Mark Ruffalo as a corporate man who discovers that his company is responsible for putting bad chemicals into the public water supply. Predictable drama ensues.
The plot of “Dark Water” centers around the harmful human and animal health effects of PFAS and PFOS.
You may have heard of the Pineapple Express – not the 2008 buddy comedy about marijuana, hit men and corrupt cops – but the long, narrow “river in the sky” that brings tropical moisture from Hawaii to the West Coast.
Atmospheric rivers, which have been studied for nearly two decades, are flowing areas of water vapor in the upper atmosphere driven by areas of low pressure over an ocean. They are the source of most of the West Coast’s heaviest rains and floods.
Federal water managers are starting to review a crucial 2007 agreement for seven Western states to share drought-diminished water supplies from the Colorado River ahead of talks about revising and renewing it beginning in 2026, U.S. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said Friday.
Bernhardt called for a report next December, ahead of a deadline set in the older deal, which established a schedule of strict water cutbacks to states if levels keep falling at the key Lake Mead and Lake Powell reservoirs.
NBC 7’s Llarisa Abreu explains how San Diego has benefitted from the recent rain.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – On Monday, the California Department of Water Resources announced an initial State Water Project allocation of 10 percent for the 2020 calendar year.
The initial allocation is based on several factors, such as conservative dry hydrology, reservoir storage, and releases necessary to meet water supply and environmental demands. State allocations are based on conservative assumptions and may change depending on rain and snow received this winter.
On-and-off rain for the better part of a week is expected to continue Tuesday and Wednesday in the Bay Area, but a larger storm will likely swamp the region starting Thursday, officials said.
A weather system from the Northwest and coast is expected to bring rain to areas that have not been affected as much by the recent storm, such as San Jose and Redwood City, according to the National Weather Service.
Fresno tied an almost 70-year-old single-day rainfall record Sunday — while areas north of the city like Merced were hit even harder, according to the National Weather Service.
Sunday’s rainfall in Fresno exactly matched the Dec. 1, 1952, high of .78 inches of rain.
“They tied it to the hundredth,” said Jim Dudley, a NWS meteorologist. “Right on the nose.”
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
