A fast-forming and strengthening El Niño climate pattern could
peak this winter as one of the most intense ever observed,
according to an experimental forecast released Tuesday. The new
prediction system suggested it could reach top-tier “super” El
Niño strength, a level that in the past has unleashed deadly
fires, drought, heat waves, floods and mudslides around the
world. This time, El Niño is developing alongside an
unprecedented surge in global temperatures that scientists
say has increased the likelihood of brutal heat
waves and deadly floods of the kind seen in
recent weeks. Will that make El Niño’s typical extremes
even more dramatic in the winter?
Who’s best suited to manage St. Helena’s financially strained
and politically sensitive water system: the City Council or the
people? A group of citizens is pushing for the council to form
a permanent water and wastewater commission that would serve as
a council-appointed board of directors overseeing water and
wastewater operations, financing and staffing. … WASH
has the council’s attention. On Tuesday the council agreed to
form a temporary working group to identify how citizens can
best support the water and sewer enterprises and make the
recommendation to the council about a potential permanent
advisory body.
Wildlife officers with the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife’s (CDFW) Marijuana Enforcement Team (MET) spearheaded
several enforcement investigations in August and September.
From Sept. 4-8, MET officers targeted several illegal cannabis
operations on rural private lands in Shasta, Tehama and Sutter
counties. Officers received a tip from a hunter who stumbled on
one of the trespass grow sites and reported it. As a result,
MET officers eradicated more than 5,500 illegal plants,
arrested four suspects, seized several firearms including one
stolen handgun, dismantled several water diversions and removed
thousands of pounds of trash.
The city of Napa is set to consider an increase to water rates
for the first time in two years to cover the increasing costs
of providing service. The Napa City Council will hold a hearing
Nov. 7 to adopt the new rates. If approved, they would be
effective Jan. 1 and customers likely would see the impact on
bills in March and April, said Joy Eldredge, deputy city
utilities director. The recommended increase will typically add
up to about $5 each month in the winter and $10 each month in
the summer for average users — between 4,000 and 8,000 gallons
— each year until 2028 for residential users within the city.
With wet weather forecasted in the coming days, heavy rain is
expected in Del Norte County in the far northwestern part of
the state, the California Governor’s Office of Emergency
Services (Cal OES) reminds all Californians to be
prepared. In particular, flooding is possible after heavy,
consistent rainstorms; even moderate amounts of rain can cause
flash floods and general flooding. A mere six inches of
fast-moving water can knock an adult over and 12 inches of
rushing water can carry away most cars. It’s recommended that
when you see flooding, turn around. Flash floods can occur
anywhere at any time during stormy weather. Flash flooding can
also catch people off-guard and can take property off their
foundations. With flash floods comes the dangers of mudslides
and debris flows.
Eleven-year-old Gabriel Coleman and his friends Maarten and
Merel dug through driftwood piled on the shoreline under the
Dumbarton Bridge, doggedly on the hunt for pieces of plastic
and other debris to fill their white trash bags. “With
teamwork-makes-the-dream-work, we’ve been finding big pieces
and small pieces all over,” Gabriel proudly explained. The trio
from Newark was among thousands of volunteers who turned out
Saturday for the 39th annual California Coastal Cleanup at 695
beaches, lakes, creeks and rivers throughout the state —
including dozens of sites across every county in the Bay Area.
California is on the verge of recording a second straight year
of relatively mild wildfire damage, after historic rains put
the state on track to avoid the calamities of recent fire
seasons. … Cal Fire also says the state benefited from a
program that nearly doubled the acreage deprived of fuel by
prescribed burns from a year ago and the addition of 24
aircraft leased during fire season that improved response
times.
Astronomical fall begins Friday night, and autumn storms are
already knocking on California’s door. A major September storm
is forecast to bring heavy rains and strong winds to
Washington, Oregon and Northern California beginning Sunday
night. … The jet stream is forecast to strengthen across the
Pacific Ocean this weekend, pushing an atmospheric
river all the way from Japan to the western U.S.
Atmospheric rivers are ribbons of moisture that can ferry large
amounts of moisture thousands of miles through the sky.
Jesus Campanero Jr. was a teenager when he noticed there was
something in the water. He once found a rash all over his body
after a swim in nearby Clear Lake, the largest freshwater lake
in California. During summertime, an unbearable smell would
waft through the air. Then, in 2017, came the headlines, after
hundreds of fish washed up dead on the shore. “That’s when it
really started to click in my head that there’s a real issue
here,” says Campanero, now a tribal council member for the
Robinson Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians of California, whose
ancestors have called the lake home for thousands of years. The
culprit? Harmful algal blooms (HABs).
El Niño — a weather pattern that can cause impacts around
the world — developed in summer and is expected to persist
through winter, long-term forecasters said Thursday. In
its latest monthly forecast, the federal Climate Prediction
Center said there’s a 95% chance El Niño will
continue through winter, January to March, and it will most
likely be strong, as opposed to weak or moderate. In
California, El Niño has near-celebrity status, as the state has
seen some epic wet winters when it has developed in the past,
but meteorologists say that the state has also seen dry or
normal precipitation in El Niño winters.
The estuaries, rivers and forests of California’s North Coast
are known worldwide for their beauty, importance to
conservation and recreational value. But a long history of
human activity has dramatically altered these delicate
ecosystems, threatening the plants, animals and human
communities that rely on them. The impacts of a changing
climate have only made matters worse. But now, we have the
unique opportunity to address these problems and rapidly
protect and restore these ecosystems in the next ten years.
… Born in North Coast rivers, salmonids like coho are
keystone species in California’s vast coastal ecosystem. But a
century of unsustainable land management practices and
overfishing have decimated their numbers.
Napa County civic leaders want to keep exploring whether the
dozens of local agencies that deliver water to tens of
thousands of residents and businesses should be working
together more closely. County agencies involved with water
range from the city of Napa serving 80,000 residents to rural
districts serving a few hundred customers. They have various
water sources and make their own water decisions. A study three
years ago by the Local Agency Formation Commission of Napa
County suggested they form some type of county water agency or
district to better work together. The idea hasn’t been
forgotten.
Today, U.S. Representative Jared Huffman (CA-02) announced new
grants for his district from the FY22 National Culvert Removal,
Replacement, and Restoration Grant Program (Culvert AOP
Program). Last Wednesday, Huffman visited the site of one of
these projects to examine how the award will be utilized and
the local impacts. … The grants have been awarded as
follows: $470,000 for the Wiyot Tribe Butte Creek
Fish Barrier Replacement Design, Humboldt County
… $5,000,000 for the Avenue of the Giants Fish
Passage, Humboldt County … $15,000,000 for the
State Route MEN-1 Fish Passage, Mendocino County…
Marin County’s two largest water suppliers say they have dam
safety strategies in place but intend to update their hazard
mitigation plans in the near future. The utilities were
responding to a Marin County Civil Grand Jury report urging the
agencies to prepare for more intense “atmospheric river” storms
caused by climate change. Both agencies are required to provide
responses under state law. The June report said the seven dams
managed by the Marin Municipal Water District and the one dam
managed by the North Marin Water District are in compliance
with regulatory standards.
Two sides involved in a lawsuit over Clover Flat Landfill near
Calistoga have different thoughts on the dismissal of the case
in Napa County Superior Court. The group WhataWasteNV.org in
October 2021 sued the Upper Valley Waste Management Agency,
which oversees the privately owned landfill. It alleged a
franchise agreement update between the agency and landfill
operator allows the landfill to accept more waste and required
environmental study. … The lawsuit is part of a larger
debate over the landfill in hills framing the Napa Valley.
Opponents formed the group WhataWasteNV.org and want
to close the landfill. WhataWasteNV.org’s website
describes the group’s concerns about “storing waste atop our
community’s watershed.” “It is time to rethink this
outdated practice that increases fire risk, threatens our water
supply with contamination and risks degradation of our
community and the Napa Valley brand,” the website says.
Goats and sheep have proved their worth in devouring grasses
and other potentially flammable vegetation, all without
traditional mowing’s noise, pollution and, on hot days, risk of
igniting fires. In 2021, Cal Fire awarded more than $10 million
in grants for wildfire mitigation projects involving grazing.
North Bay residents likely have seen animals grazing on public
lands. Sonoma County Regional Parks use sheep and goats
seasonally for vegetation management at Helen Putnam, Laguna de
Santa Rosa Trail, Foothill, Cloverdale, Gualala and Maxwell
parks. Cows deploy at Taylor Mountain, Crane Creek, North
Sonoma Mountain and Tolay Lake parks. The parks agency notes
that properly conducted and monitored grazing benefits the
ecosystem by reducing invasive plant species, fertilizing the
soil and making grassland more permeable for recharging
groundwater, as well as reducing the risk of wildfire.
San Diego County’s fragile shoreline and vulnerable beachfront
properties could be in for a rough winter, according to the
California Coastal Commission, the National Weather Service and
some top San Diego scientists. “We are looking at an emerging
El Niño event,” staff geologist Joseph Street told the Coastal
Commission at its meeting Wednesday in Eureka. An El Niño is a
meteorological phenomenon that occurs every two to seven years.
The water temperature at the surface of the Central Pacific
Ocean along the equator warms a few degrees above its long-term
average, creating conditions for stronger, more frequent
seasonal storms across much of the globe.
Renowned winemaker Jayson Woodbridge is suing Napa County for
well policies allegedly restricting access to groundwater at
four of his vineyards. The vineyards, Double Vee Properties
LLC, Caldera Ranch LLC, Hundred Acre LLC and Hundred Acre Wine
Group Inc., told the US District Court for the Northern
District of California on Tuesday that Napa County violated
their rights under the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits the
taking of private property without due process. The county’s
new well policies, which include reduced water use and
permitting criteria, “impair” the growers’ rights to access the
groundwater beneath their properties by requiring them to …
Remember this time last year, when water stores depleted by
several years of drought left water managers and consumers
alike hoping desperately for a wet winter ahead? Well, Sonoma
Water says the region’s main reservoirs — Lakes Sonoma and
Mendocino — ended this August with the highest combined storage
level since 1985, the first full year the newly constructed
Lake Sonoma was filled. This, less than nine months after the
reservoir on Dry Creek reached its lowest level in history on
Dec. 9 — 96,310 acre feet, just more than a third full. Lake
Sonoma now has nearly 240,000 acre feet in it, while Lake
Mendocino, which is smaller, has nearly 84,000 acre feet, for a
combined total of more than 322,000 acre feet. (An acre foot of
water equals 325,851 gallons, or about the amount of water
needed to flood most of a football field one foot deep.)
As the Labor Day holiday weekend draws the summer to a close,
it’s been an unusually quiet season for fires across the
American west. Roughly 80,000 hectares (2m acres) have burned
across the country so far, according to the National
Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), roughly 61% less than the
10-year average for this time of year. The decrease has been
particularly pronounced in the fire-prone west, which has grown
accustomed to seeing swaths of their parched forests and
browning hillsides ignite but has largely been given a reprieve
from a summer of smoke-filled skies. … Well-timed
storms, including the unusual Tropical Storm Hilary, doused
southern California and other dry areas nearby, staving
off fire dangers that typically rise at the end of summer
and into autumn.
In 1986, I resigned my position as a news reporter in Sonoma
County to engage as an activist in a subject I’d been covering:
the 1985 junk-bond takeover of the Pacific Lumber Company, in
Humboldt County, by Houston-based Maxxam Corporation. At the
time, Pacific Lumber owned the very last large groves of
ancient redwood forest still standing outside of parks, a
precious inventory of primeval life that Maxxam was now very
busy liquidating. I would try to save this forest. …
Tree-sitting was a last resort. Our Humboldt County Earth
First! group staged many such direct actions in the redwoods,
yet every grove we occupied and otherwise agitated to preserve
got cut down or severely damaged, with the exception of
Headwaters Forest. I had discovered and named 3,000-acre
Headwaters Forest in March 1987, just five months after
quitting my job. That this iconic grove still stands is nothing
short of a miracle. -Written by Greg King, an award-winning
journalist and activist credited with spearheading the
movement to protect Headwaters Forest in Humboldt
County.
The coast is for many the epitome of Sonoma County’s natural
beauty beloved for its seaside towns and rugged, wide open
spaces. But seeing the future of the Sonoma coast means
embracing its constant movement. Big proposals like the Bodega
Bay nuclear power plant in the 1960’s, or the Fort Ross pumped
hydro electric facility today easily capture public attention
and spur opposition, but there’s one powerful force that
changes the Sonoma Coast every minute of every day: the ocean.
Early this year, severe storms battered California, bringing
huge waves that damaged infrastructure and forced people away
from the coast. That may be the new norm, as climate change
fuels severe weather that is making waves bigger, according to
a study published this month. The study, published in the
Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, uses nearly a century
of seismic records to show that mean winter wave heights, as
well as the frequency of big waves, have significantly
increased along California’s coast since the 1970s. In recent
decades, the number of waves taller than 16 feet has more than
doubled, according to the paper, which showed that the Aleutian
Low, an area of low pressure over the Aleutian Islands in
southwest Alaska, has also intensified, likely increasing
storms.
Wildfires raging in rugged pockets of California’s far north
have killed a Siskiyou County man and added particulate plumes
to smoke drifting toward the Bay Area from big Oregon
blazes. California fire map: Active fires in Northern
California including Smith River Complex California’s fire
season is here, and with temperatures rising, lightning weather
in the forecast and autumnal winds always a threat, it’s likely
to intensify over the next few months and threaten more
populated areas. Roughly 173,000 acres have burned so far
this season — up 24% from 139,000 this time last year, a
surprisingly mild season, but down nearly 80% from an average
of about 812,000 acres over the past five years, which included
three years of historic drought.
Last week, a massive marine heat wave sitting roughly 60 miles
off California’s coast oozed eastward, providing warm water
fuel for Hurricane Hilary and its historic trek north. It was a
worrisome development for researchers who have monitored this
warm mass for nearly a decade — and who are watching a
developing El Niño in the equatorial Pacific. Ever since the
“blob” appeared in the northeastern Pacific at the very end of
2013 — a massive marine heat wave that gripped the West Coast
for nearly two years in heat and drought; disrupting marine
ecosystems up and down the coast — a massive offshore heat wave
has appeared nearly every year (with the exception of 2017 and
2018); expanding in the summer and shrinking in the winter.
