Aquafornia

The Carmel River Watershed has seen record rainfall this winter beating out 1998 for the wettest year to date and the rain is not done yet. But most of that water won’t end up in your tap instead it’s flowing out to the ocean. … That 91,000 acre-feet is equivalent to roughly 29.6 million gallons of water going out to sea or nine years’ worth of drinking water for the Peninsula. … Not every drop of rainwater this winter went out to the Pacific. To date his water year the Peninsula’s water utility California American Water has banked about 500 acre-feet of water off the Carmel River, less than a tenth of what the Peninsula will use in a year, the water’s been piped to the Seaside Basin and stored in injection wells.

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Crews with the El Dorado Irrigation District are working to clear snow and debris from the flumes and canals that deliver water to its customers throughout the latest round of winter weather. Matt Heape, a hydro operations and maintenance supervisor for the district, said the focus Tuesday was taking care of a 22-mile canal system. … To do that, he explained, crews used snowcats to get to remote, wooden locations, sometimes having to snowshoe in further to reach the canals and the surrounding walkways. Much of the day included clearing walkways, plowing snow and keeping systems clear, Heap said.

From record rain, flooding and snowfall – to chilly temperatures, hail and windy conditions, it’s been more “wintery” than some San Diegans would like. So what’s going on? ABC 10News sat down with Julie Kalansky, a climate scientist and Operations Manager for the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Despite the continued heavy winter rain and snow throughout California, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently extended his executive orders from 2022 that declared a drought emergency statewide. He also asked the state water board to waive water flow regulations intended to protect salmon and other endangered fish species, as well as San Francisco Bay and Delta estuary overall. Some viewed these moves as pragmatic steps to avoid “wasting” the bounty of California’s rains out to sea. Others saw them as a declaration of war against the health of the bay.  In fact, a war against the bay has been going on for decades. Newsom’s order was merely the latest skirmish. The war’s primary aggressors are agricultural interests in the Central Valley.
-Written by Howard V. Hendrix, the author of six novels as well as many essays, poems and short stories. 

Soggy, snow-capped California faces the likelihood of yet another month of wet weather, but what remains uncertain is whether this late winter precipitation will augment weeks of record-setting snowpack, or cause it to vanish should warmer rains arrive. Last week, a frigid storm transformed portions of the state into a white landscape while toppling trees, prompting power outages, spurring water rescues and leaving some residents trapped by heavy snow. Now, with forecasts calling for more rain and snow in March — including the potential for at least one more atmospheric river system — California is girding for what comes next. … Typically, California’s snowpack provides about one-third of the state’s water supply and has long been relied upon for its steady, slow melting during the hot, dry months of summer. A deluge of warm rain, however, could cause melting snow to fill rivers too quickly and trigger widespread flooding.

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• Courthouse News Service: In like a lion: March to bring fresh snow and rain to California
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• San Francisco Standard: As California exits a megadrought, are we ready for a megaflood?
• Los Angeles Times: How the deluge of 1938 changed Los Angeles — and its river
• The San Diego Union-Tribune: Opinion - We should use technology to improve California’s ability to manage floods, water supplies

As drought-weary Californians watched trillions of gallons of runoff wash into the Pacific Ocean during recent storms, it underscored a nagging question: Why can’t we save more of that water for not-so-rainy days to come? But even the rare opportunity to stock up on the precious resource isn’t proving enough to unite a state divided on a contentious idea to siphon water from the north and tunnel it southward, an attempt to combat the Southwest’s worst drought in more than a millennium. The California Department of Water Resources said such a tunnel could have captured a year’s supply of water for more than 2 million people. The proposal from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration — one that would cost $16 billion to help 27 million water customers in central and southern California — is spurring fresh outrage from communities that have fended off similar plans over four decades, including suggestions to build other tunnels or a massive canal. 

The climate shifts that California is experiencing—with warmer temperatures, less reliable snowpack, and more intense droughts—have exposed critical weaknesses in the administration of our water rights system under conditions of scarcity. In particular, there are challenges curtailing diversions when supplies are inadequate. And on the flip side, this system also needs the capacity to better facilitate the management of abundance, by permitting the capture of more water from large storms to recharge groundwater basins. In our remarks today we recap some of the key challenges the changing climate is posing for California’s water rights system in both dry and wet times, illustrate how these issues are playing out in the state’s largest watershed, and offer some recommendations for how the legislature could help strengthen the water rights system to better respond to water scarcity and abundance.

Once hailed as the “American Nile,” the Colorado River spans 1,450 miles and supplies nearly 40 million people across seven states plus northern Mexico with drinking water, irrigation for farmland and hydroelectric power. But after decades of drought and overuse, major reservoirs along the river are drying up. As the Colorado River levels drop to historic lows, tensions are rising between the seven states that depend on its flow — Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. Their original agreement for distributing the river water lacked foresight and failed to account for dire circumstances like long-term drought. The American Southwest now faces a crisis it knew was coming. 

Meteorologist Bo Svoma hopped down into the 4-foot-deep pit he had shoveled and grinned like a school kid on a snow day. “Bo is happy!” shouted one of his Salt River Project colleagues working snow survey duty on Tuesday. There’s a lot for the metro Phoenix water supplier to be happy about this winter. What was supposed to be an unusually dry winter because of the return of the ocean and atmospheric phenomenon known as La Nińa has instead shaped up as the Arizona rim country’s second-snowiest season in 30 years. The ocean conditions that usually would push the jet stream and its storms toward the Pacific Northwest instead have driven storm after storm into the Southwest.