Drought, Weather & Snowpack

The Department of Water Resources (DWR) presented Dr. Bin Guan with the 2018 Climate Science Service Award for his tool that identifies atmospheric rivers in weather models. The work supports experimental forecasts of these large storms earlier than current models. … DWR staff presented the 2018 award to Dr. Guan on December 5 at a DWR/Water Education Foundation workshop in Irvine. The topic of the workshop was improving sub-seasonal to seasonal precipitation forecasting. 

The storm that pelted Southern California on Thursday flooded roadways, triggered mud and debris flows in the burn areas of Malibu and dumped several inches of snow on mountain passes, shutting down the 5 Freeway through the Grapevine for much of the day. … Since the start of the water year on Oct. 1, downtown Los Angeles has received more than 4 inches of rain — more than the average amount of precipitation for this time of year and significantly more than last year, when about 1/10 of an inch of rain fell.

Related Articles:

• Associated Press: Storm brings flood fears to Southern California burn areas
• The San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego’s wildfire danger plunges after back-to-back storms​
• Los Angeles Times: The fire-and-flood cycle returns with a vengeance in Los Angeles with fierce rain and mudslides
  

California’s Sierra Nevada, the state’s increasingly crucial reservoir, is off to a well-above-normal snowpack to begin the wet season. Many of the peaks are seeing double the normal amount of snowpack compared to early-December averages.

Related Articles:

• Sierra Sun: Latest storm drops 3.5 inches of snow on Truckee
• San Francisco Chronicle: Snow already piled high, ski areas open gates

State Sen. Benjamin Allen (D-Santa Monica) introduced the Wildfire, Drought and Flood Protection Bond Act of 2020 as another tool the state can use to offset a pattern of increasingly destructive and deadly blazes. 

Even before the tornado formed, California’s fire season had been unrelenting. The ruinous Wine Country wildfires the previous year began to seem less a singular catastrophe than a foreshadowing. … “As much as I hate to say it, this is what the future of wildfires looks like,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA. “Except the acceleration hasn’t ended yet.”

More heat and drought. Less water. More heat-related deaths and hospital visits. Bigger wildfires. Fewer native trees. Maybe more valley fever cases. Someday, possibly less food and less energy, not counting solar energy. These and other impacts of warmer weather in Arizona and the Southwest are laid out in a chapter of the new federally financed National Climate Assessment devoted to this region.

Bay Area residents should brace for cold sheets of rain this week as unusually low temperatures accompany two storms expected to blanket the region through Saturday, forecasters said. The system, currently over the ocean northwest of the Bay Area, could get stronger as it moves south and drops up to 6 inches of snow over Lake Tahoe, according to the National Weather Service.

Dam operators are planning to store nearly 4 billion extra gallons of water this winter in Lake Mendocino, the reservoir near Ukiah that plays a critical role in providing water for residents, ranchers and fish along the upper Russian River and to communities in Sonoma and Marin counties.

In a mild climate like that of California, virtually everything grows. Rainfall is suited to any species – even those from furthest part of the globe that adapt to a long, dry season. Plants adapted to extremes of vast continents of Asia and Africa are mind boggling in number. It is hard to say how many foreign species will naturalize here if given a chance. It’s even harder to say how many already have.