Stretching along the eastern edge of the state, the Sierra Nevada region incorporates more than 25 percent of California’s land area and forms one of the world’s most diverse watersheds.
It features granite cliffs, lush forests and alpine meadows on the westside, and stark desert landscapes at the base of the eastside. Wildlife includes bighorn sheep, mule deer, black bear and mountain lions, hawks, eagles, and trout.
The majority of total annual precipitation – in the form of rain and snow – falls in the Sierra Nevada. Snowmelt from the Sierra provides water for irrigation for farms that produce half of the nation’s fruit, nuts and vegetables, and also is a vital source for dairies, which have made California the largest milk producer in the country.
In addition, Sierra snowmelt provides drinking water to Sierra Nevada residents and a portion of drinking water to 23 million people living in cities stretching from the Bay Area to Southern California.
Solar panels have trouble producing renewable energy whenever it snows. With winters expected to increase in severity because of climate change, generating power in the cold, snowy season will likely become a major issue in years to come. Fortunately, scientists from UCLA just invented a way to produce energy from snow. The researchers call their handy device a snow-based triboelectric nanogenerator (snow TENG). It works by generating power via static electricity.
Weeks after the Camp Fire roared through Butte County last November, devouring entire towns, officials made an alarming find: The Paradise drinking water is now laced with benzene, a volatile compound linked to cancer. Water officials say they believe the extreme heat of the firestorm created a “toxic cocktail” of gases in burning homes that got sucked into the water pipes when the system depressurized from use by residents and firefighters.
Wildfires alter the chemistry of streams for years, causing significantly lower concentrations of dissolved organic matter, which provides a vital energy source to organisms living in streams and rivers… University of New Hampshire researchers and their collaborators with the University of California-Merced and Ohio State University examined the effects of wildfire on stream chemistry and water quality in Yosemite National Park, Calif.
The extent of the latest crisis unfolding in Paradise is yet unknown: The deadly fire may also have contaminated up to 173 miles of pipeline in the town’s water system with cancer-causing benzene and other volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. Preliminary results have shown contamination in about a third of the lines tested, though only about 2 percent of the entire system has been sampled.
Spring has arrived, which means it’s a great time to visit dozens of Northern California waterfalls. … Waterfall photographer Leon Turnbull gave his top six picks of Northern California waterfalls to visit during late spring.
The Eastern Sierra snowpack that feeds the Los Angeles Aqueduct was measured this month at 171% of normal and is expected to meet 70 percent of the city’s annual water needs. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said Friday the aqueduct will flow at or near full capacity for much of the next 12 months, providing about 119 billion gallons (450.4 billion liters).
The Yosemite toad is considered endangered, and its numbers are falling. Scientists say the amphibian chytrid fungus is one reason, but climate change also may contribute to some pools drying up before tadpoles mature.
2019 marks the sixth straight winter that scientists from NASA/JPL have been flying over portions of the Sierra range, using light-detection and ranging lasers called lidar to map and decode the snowpack. The Airborne Snow Observatory program, or ASO, is based on technology that NASA has been using for years to look at Mars and other planets.
When state surveyors measured the Sierra snowpack on April 2, they found 106.5 inches of snow, with an equivalent of 51 inches of water — … Compared to average measurements for this time of year, those readings represent 200% of normal levels. That means the snows that drew skiers this winter will soon deliver thrills to another group of outdoor enthusiasts: whitewater rafters.
This bill calls for $150M in funding over the next ten years from the state’s General Fund to conduct laser surveys via ten airplane trips over the Trinity Alps and the Sierra Nevada each year. They would also fly over hydrologic areas that drain to, or supply water to, certain major reservoirs and lakes.
From the Oregon border to the hills of San Diego County, California is a state that is destined to burn. Every summer brings new evidence of that in places like Paradise, Malibu and Santa Rosa. … Californians will continue to live in areas where the threat of wildfire is the highest. These stories explore the perils of living in those regions, and the steps that must be taken as we try to avoid another catastrophe.
Nevada County residents tend to think of the Yuba River or Scotts Flat Reservoir when they want to go play in the water. But Rollins Reservoir, while arguably getting less local love, generates a lot of income for the community from out-of-town visitors.
Now that spring is here and the sun is finally out, Bay Area residents are already reminiscing over what a rainy winter it was, one of the wettest in recent memory, with many more downpours than normal. Or was it? Not according to weather experts.
Since 1993, the Lake Almanor community has been fortunate to have representatives from the California Department of Water Resources (CDWR) assisting in the testing and assessment of the health of the lake and its tributaries. … The testers check for water temperature at the test location, dissolved oxygen, turbidity (amount of suspended matter in the water) and for various metals and minerals.
Fires like the one that razed Paradise in November burn thousands of pounds of wiring, plastic pipes and building materials, leaving dangerous chemicals in the air, soil and water. Lead paint, burned asbestos and even melted refrigerators from tens of thousands of households only add to the danger, public health experts say.
Even longtime Californians might be surprised to learn of modern-day glaciers in the state. But the fact is remnants of the Lyell Glacier, in Yosemite National Park, are about to disappear.
After closing for renovations three years ago, the Kern River Fish Hatchery opened to visitors March 25 with expanded abilities to take in, raise and grow trout. … Hatchery Manager Tony Holland said a team of state employees and volunteers plan to hike in August to a remote creek somewhere in the southern Sierra Nevada in search of genetically pure Kern River rainbow trout.
Unfortunately, the thing that almost always lingers on after an adverse event such as a prolonged drought is government’s heavy hand in regulations and mandates that are hastily put together in an attempt to mitigate the drought and get us through it.
Most winters, [firefighter Mike] Morello would be working on several of these forest treatment projects, especially prior to the bulk of the Sierra winter snowfall. But throughout late December and most of January, Morello was sitting at home. He got to spend more time with his kids, but because he was one of the thousands of Forest Service workers to be furloughed, he couldn’t spend time in the woods, trying to prevent the next Sierra town from becoming Paradise, California, where 85 people died in November of last year.
To prepare for the dry years that will come again as well as an uncertain future, healthy mountain watersheds will be key to our water supply. While the importance of forests to these watersheds is well known, new research suggests that meadows are valuable too. Meadows are like sponges, soaking up snowmelt in the spring and releasing it through the dry season.
California received some good news on Tuesday for the state’s water supply: The Sierra Nevada snowpack is well above normal, at 162 percent of average. This amount of snow is thanks to the more than 30 “atmospheric rivers” that brought storms this winter and spring. Chris Orrock, with the California Department of Water Resources, says … this is the fourth largest amount of snow in recorded history.
As farmers plant their 2019 crops, hopeful for an abundant harvest, they are unknowingly battling history. Past wildfires and other tree loss in California will likely interfere with U.S. food crops, based on emerging results of our own and colleagues’ research. … Deforestation could cause millions of dollars in lost agricultural production throughout the U.S. But policy and practice still fail to recognize the interdependence of our wild and cultivated lands.
If it seems that wildfires are burning nearly all the time these days, that there’s no longer a definable fire season in California, you’re right. Fourteen of the 20 most destructive fires in state history have occurred since 2007, and California has 78 more annual “fire days” now than it had 50 years ago.
Lawmakers are considering spending $150 million to fund new high-tech measurements of the snowpack using lasers. … The new hi-tech approach is meant to help water managers know exactly how much water they can expect in water runoff from the snowpack – and when that runoff will arrive in reservoirs, rivers, and streams.
It’s been a big year for snow in the Sierra Nevada range. This is the time of year—April 1—when the snowpack is typically at its peak and on Tuesday, when surveyors do their monthly manual survey, they’re likely to find a snowpack at about 160 percent of the average.
Despite the abundant water year we’ve had, though, over the long term climate change is transforming our snowpack and will make no-snow snow surveys more common in the future. Not only is climate change making good snow years like this one less likely, it’s also changing what good snow years mean for our water resources. And that’s going to mean a very different April snow survey in the future.
Cal Fire has awarded over $63 million in grants for 16 landscape-scale, regionally-based projects aimed at promoting health and resilient forests that protect and enhance forest carbon sequestration.
Turning the tables on California, the Trump administration sued Thursday to block the state’s ambitious plan to reallocate billions of gallons of river water to salmon and other struggling fish species. … The State Water Resources Control Board voted in December to reallocate the flows of the San Joaquin River and its tributaries. The move is designed to help steelhead and salmon by taking water from San Joaquin Valley farmers and a handful of cities.
Kevin Phillips looked out at a crowd of some 700 people, most of them his customers, and delivered a painful message that many had heard before from varying sources. But to get confirmation from the Paradise Irrigation District manager that it may take two to three years to get the town’s water infrastructure back up and running at full capacity still sent shock waves through the large auditorium.
The Paradise Irrigation District outlined plans to flush volatile and toxic compounds from the city’s water system after the Camp Fire… Paradise Irrigation District Manager Kevin Phillips … said more than 90 percent of the pipeline depressurized and created a vacuum, which sucked in toxic particulates and heat. He said the initial, immediate response was to re-pressurize the system — which ultimately took more than two months to accomplish…
Whitewater rafting businesses are holding out hope of getting a safe landing area near the Ward’s Ferry bridge over the Tuolumne River, as a condition of relicensing the Don Pedro hydroelectric project. At a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission hearing Tuesday in Modesto, speakers said an existing takeout for rafts on the Tuolumne, upstream from Don Pedro Reservoir, is under water because of dam operations. And the options for getting boats out of the water are not safe.
The California Department of Conservation (DOC) announced late last week that eight organizations have received a total of $1.85 million in grants to hire watershed coordinators to help in building local capacity to improve forest health. … Areas identified by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection as being most at risk of catastrophic wildfires were given priority for the grants.
Duane Waliser of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory … says as the climate warms, atmospheric rivers are projected to grow wider and longer. Powerful ones are also expected to become more frequent. That could increase water supply in some places. “But on the other hand, atmospheric rivers come with flood potential as well, so they’re sort of a double-edged sword, so to speak.”
The Camp Fire, the blaze that all but wiped Paradise off the map last fall, heralds something new for all of us—a state of affairs that out-going governor Jerry Brown characterized as the “new normal” (and later, the “new abnormal”): larger, costlier, more frequent wildfires in the state than ever before, burning almost year-round.
A pilot program that used ultraviolet light to combat aquatic invasive plants has shown promising results. Results from the program, which was deployed in Lakeside Marina in the summer of 2017, show the use of ultraviolet-C light successfully killed submerged aquatic plants, according to the Tahoe Resource Conservation District.
It’s inevitable. Every year, big swaths of California will burn. The question now that spring is here is how bad it will be. If recent history is any guide, this year’s wildfire season could be grim, despite a new push by state officials to keep flames at bay. For all of its lush redwood forests and snow-capped peaks, most of the Golden State is semi-arid… And a shifting climate has been delivering ever hotter summer weather.
Paradise Irrigation District general manager Kevin Philips reiterated to the board of directors on Wednesday night that the water is clean as is the water coming from the water treatment plant. … “What we are doing is pulling meters because we feel meters could have been one of the leading criteria to the contamination. Plastic meters that got heated up.”
Another round of soaking winter weather is on the horizon for the West Coast, with a series of storms expected to impact the region through midweek. … “Unsettled weather will continue across the West Coast this week as more rain and mountain snow targets Northern California, Oregon and Washington,” according to AccuWeather Meteorologist Max Vido.
An interview with Don Hankins, professor of geography and planning at Chico State and a Plains Miwok traditional cultural practitioner. He has spent his academic career working on water and fire issues in California, with a focus on applied traditional Indigenous stewardship.
Small mountain streams and the vibrant ecosystems they support were hit hard by the historic California drought of 2012 to 2015. Researchers monitoring aquatic life in Sierra Nevada streams observed significant declines in the numbers of aquatic insects and other bottom-dwelling invertebrates during the drought.
Small mountain streams and the vibrant ecosystems they support were hit hard by the historic California drought of 2012 to 2015. Researchers monitoring aquatic life in Sierra Nevada streams observed significant declines in the numbers of aquatic insects and other bottom-dwelling invertebrates during the drought.
Four months after the deadliest wildfire in California history, Gov. Gavin Newsom is declaring a statewide emergency to speed up fire prevention efforts. Citing “extreme peril” to life and property, Newsom’s Friday morning executive order will fast-track the state’s tree clearing and other forest management work.
Customers of the South Tahoe Public Utility District (STPUD) may be looking at an annual increase on their water and sewer bills of 5.0 to 8.5 percent to cover costs of replacing aging infrastructure and enhancing local fire protection.
Over 147 million trees in California forests have died over the last eight years. Most of these forests are near the southern Sierra Nevada, which shows an increasing threat to iconic California landmarks like the Sequoia and Yosemite national forests.
The Desert Research Institute, Averyt said, is engaged in research looking at long-term and short-term climate change, where the impact of human-caused warming is clear. Researchers with DRI have looked at ice cores from Greenland to map out long-term climate trends. At the same time, other researchers are looking at more immediate trends through the Western Regional Climate Center, which provides contemporary climate data for the 11 contiguous western states.
A pilot program that used ultraviolet light to combat aquatic invasive plants has shown promising results. Results from the program, which was deployed in Lakeside Marina in the summer of 2017, show the use of ultraviolet-C light successfully killed submerged aquatic plants, according to the Tahoe Resource Conservation District.
Addressing concerns that include floods, droughts, wildfires and state regulations on river flow, two state officials advised farmers and ranchers to remain engaged in those and other natural-resources issues. At the California Farm Bureau Federation Leaders Conference in Sacramento last week, California Natural Resources Agency Secretary Wade Crowfoot said his top priorities include water and wildfire protection.
Butte County Health Officer, Dr. Andy Miller, issued a water quality advisory on Tuesday for people living in the Camp Fire affected areas. Miller urges people not to drink or boil tap water. According to a press release, the health department says that “Information from water authorities indicates the possibility that contamination may be present in home plumbing systems, and therefore, residents should not rely on home water filtration systems as they may not be adequate to provide needed protection.”
Heavy snowfall this winter is expected to delay the seasonal opening of many Yosemite tourist attractions, including Yosemite Valley campgrounds, Half Dome’s climbing cables and Tioga Road into the high country, park officials announced Wednesday.
As an uncontrollable wildfire turned the California town of Paradise to ash, air pollution researcher Keith Bein knew he had to act fast: Little is known about toxic chemicals released when a whole town burns and the wind would soon blow away evidence. He drove the roughly 100 miles to Paradise … only to be refused entrance under rules that allow first responders and journalists – but not public health researchers – to cross police lines.
Bonds to continue the next phase of an improvement program are critical to the Tahoe Basin. That was the message delivered to the Nevada Assembly Government Affairs Committee on Tuesday. Assemblyman Mike Sprinkle, D-Sparks, said the $8 million in this biennium’s bonding package will cover Nevada’s share of the Tahoe Environmental Improvement Program for two years.
The water within the Paradise Irrigation District is clean. The trouble is, the infrastructure within the district may not be, according to Paradise Irrigation District’s Kevin Phillips. “The water is clean but some of the pipes are contaminated, that’s why (contamination) is so random,” he said. “One service line can be contaminated, but the one next door isn’t. If the water were contaminated, then it would be everywhere.”
A central tension for Paradise in the coming months is the health of the water system. … The fire, however, unleashed benzene and other volatile chemicals into the water system. The chemicals are not in the water coming from the treatment plant. They’re in the pipes beneath the town. The Paradise Irrigation District is the utility that serves Paradise. It’s trying to isolate the contamination in the system, but turning water on to returning residents makes that process even harder.
The story behind the salmon success on the Mokelumne goes back to the 1970s when the Commercial Salmon Fishing Association petitioned the state to increase salmon production via a tax on the commercial fishermen. The idea was to assure a viable commercial fishery into the future and the commercial anglers would be willing to pay the cost of extra production. Their funds went into the hatchery system as well as habitat projects.
In November, a wall of flames fueled by dry forests and wooden structures tore through this Sierra foothill town like the dogs of Hell. … Beneath the blast furnace heat that incinerated buildings and vehicles above ground, an intricate network of drinking water pipes below the surface became so contaminated with toxic chemicals that many are unusable. The extent of the damage and exactly how the poisons accumulated in the pipes of Paradise and in the smaller, neighboring districts served by Del Oro Water Company is not known.
Scientists found that wet winter weather, historically a predictor of more modest California fire seasons, is no longer linked to less damaging fires. The link between more rain and less fire fell apart thanks to modern fire management and accelerating climate change, the study said. “It’s going to be a problem for people, for firefighters, for society,” said study co-author Alan Taylor, a Pennsylvania State University geography professor.
The results of testing 173 water samples were released at last week’s board meeting of the Paradise Irrigation District and revealed widespread contamination. Benzene, a known carcinogen, was found in 32 percent of those samples, with an average level of 27 parts per billion (the California drinking water standard is 1 ppb). In the 35 samples that tested for additional contaminants, over a dozen additional “volatile organic chemicals” were found.
The aging, leaking Combie Canal, a concrete flume located along a steep hillside above the Bear River, received the OK for a nearly $20 million replacement Wednesday. The canal is a “critical piece of infrastructure” that serves two water treatment plants, Nevada Irrigation District staff say, with more than half of the district’s flows for deliveries made through the nearly 50-year-old system.
The southern Sierra Nevada is expected to see a pair of storm systems in the coming days that could create “significant flooding” over several burn scars in the area, according to weather officials. … Next week’s storm, which is expected to hit the area midweek, is the primary source of concern. “That storm could bring between 2 and 5 inches of rain,” said Kevin Durfee, meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “If those rain amounts do materialize, we could be looking at some significant flooding over the burn scars, and rising water levels in rivers and streams.”
Mono County hasn’t won the war, but it did win the first battle in its lawsuit against the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s decision to withdraw water allotments to its Long Valley area grazing leases. Last Friday, the Alameda County civil court indicated LADWP’s request to dismiss the suit was overruled.
This is a classic endangered species, a small, ordinary-looking fish with a peculiar common name, for a fish, which is followed by a very long, if somewhat poetic, scientific name (try saying it out loud a few times). It is perhaps appropriate that this unusual California fish is associated with the official state rock, serpentine.
On their to-do list is determining how to spread costs from wildfires in “an equitable manner” and considering whether the state should create a special find to cover wildfire costs. They face a tricky task with an array of competing interests, chief among them how to balance wildfire costs between utilities, their shareholders and their customers.
The wildfire that swept through Northern California this past November was one of the deadliest and most destructive in the state’s history. … While it may take a long time for these communities to rebuild after these natural disasters, what is often missed is how the forest will rebuild itself. It turns out forests are struggling to come back, and climate change might have something to do with it.
Every day, millions of gallons of water loaded with arsenic, lead and other toxic metals flow from some of the most contaminated mining sites in the U.S. and into surrounding streams and ponds without being treated, The Associated Press has found. That torrent is poisoning aquatic life and tainting drinking water sources in Colorado, Montana, California, Oklahoma and at least five other states.
Lake Tahoe is the place to be this winter. It holds the best snowpack in the western United States and the crowds are flocking to the world-class slopes. Traffic has been insane, infuriating and downright miserable at times — all while the snow continues to fly.
Hoping to prevent another California utility from being driven into bankruptcy by wildfires, state officials may create a new kind of insurance fund to help cover costs from the increasingly devastating disasters. … How it would work and who would fund it remain unclear, but the bill envisions electric utilities paying into the fund, while a leading consumer group has suggested shifting the financial burden to the property insurance market.
If the Trump administration wanted to increase California’s water supply by the most cost-effective means possible, it would immediately drop its attempt to raise Shasta Dam by 18.5 feet. It would instead put $1.5 billion — the cost of the proposed Shasta enlargement, in 2019 dollars — toward a completely different approach to water supply: watershed and forest restoration.
In Paradise, California, thousands of residents are trying to cope with disruption and displacement resulting from November’s devastating Camp Fire. Children attend school in a repurposed hardware store, where counselors try to help them manage their trauma. Meanwhile, amidst millions of tons of toxic debris, finding safe and stable housing is a challenge. Special correspondent Cat Wise reports.
Auburn City Councilman Bill Kirby is a major proponent of making the sculpture – already commissioned by the non-profit Let’s Never Forget organization and being created by Reno artist Peter Hazel – a feature of a newly announced salmon festival in Auburn and keeping it on permanent display after that.
In increasingly arid regions such as the western U.S., water managers are learning that careful management and restoration of watershed ecosystems, including thinning trees and conducting prescribed burns, are important tools in coping with a hotter, drier climate.
The Butte County Environmental Health Department announced Friday morning that businesses that plan on re-opening in the Camp Fire affected area and will be installing temporary water systems, including water tanks and hauling water, must contact its office prior to opening.
When 2019 started, California’s snowpack was at 67%. Now it’s at over 136% and rising. The atmospheric rivers that are dumping rain along coastal California are also dumping massive amounts of snow in the state’s Sierra Nevada.
The interrelated nature of water issues has given rise to a management approach that integrates flood control, environmental water, and water supply. The Yuba Water Agency manages its watershed in this kind of coordinated manner. We talked to Curt Aikens, the agency’s general manager, about the lessons they’ve learned from this “integrated management” approach.
If you try to figure out the total water stored in the Sierras, you run into a methodological wall. There’s no good way to get there directly. Starting about two decades ago, a small group of scientists suggested a new solution: What if they could measure the water cycle from space?
An effort is underway to hire a full-time watershed coordinator focused on forest management projects in the Yuba River Watershed and a grant from the Yuba Water Agency could help. … The coordinator would work with public and private landowners to plan and coordinate projects within the watershed, including a biomass facility in Camptonville and a forest health project in the north Yuba Watershed.
Two years after California’s historic drought came to an end, the sweeping die-off of the state’s forests has slowed, yet vast tracts of dry, browning trees continue to amplify the threat of wildfire, federal officials reported Monday. About 18.6 million trees died in 2018, mainly the result of dehydration and beetle infestation, according to new estimates from the U.S. Forest Service. That pushes the total number of dead since 2010, shortly before the five-year drought began, to 147 million. It’s a toll not seen in modern times.
Don’t be fooled by the precipitation, the snowpack, the wildflowers. When winter ends, it’s unlikely that California’s iconic landscape will sustain the moisture to withstand the 100-degree summer and fall. … State fire officials are already amassing new aircraft that drop thousands of gallons of bright red flame retardant. Emergency responders are pre-positioning fire crews in high-threat areas even before a fire starts.
The site experienced a partial nuclear meltdown in 1959 when it was the Rocketdyne/Atomics International rocket engine test and nuclear facility, as well as other chemical and radioactive contamination over the years. Denise Duffield, associate director of Physicians for Social Responsibility … said the plan calls for cleaning up only 38,000 of the 1.6 million cubic yards of soil the Energy Department says are contaminated and not remediating most of the contaminated groundwater.
The rain and even a bit of snow keep on coming. Except for a 10-day dry spell at the end of January, the San Francisco Bay Area has seen a series of drenching winter storms that have watered gardens, fueled waterfalls, recharged reservoirs, and diminished the possibility of the ever-dreaded drought. In fact, all of California has been slammed with an onslaught of unsettled weather unleashing heavy snow and rain.
Imagine Lake Tahoe with no snow year round. Every winter storm that reaches the basin brings only rain. No skiing. No snowboarding. No winter sports of any kind. … A dramatic decline in the Sierra Nevada snowpack will be felt the most in Northern California by mid century, according to a study published in December 2018 by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Incredible amounts of snow have fallen throughout parts of the Mountain West since last Friday after a one-two punch from winter storms Kai and Lucian. The Sierra Nevada, straddling the border between California and Nevada, has been particularly hard-hit, where one ski resort tallied 6 feet of snow in just one day.
A $500,000 program to mitigate for destruction of artificial habitat created by Placer County Water Agency canal leaks has ended. The Water Agency started working in the mid-2000s to fix ongoing leaks along its canals and confronted a problem of its own doing. The leaks had created what state Environmental Quality Act standards defined as artificially established wetlands and habitat for wildlife.
Twenty-three early to mid-career water professionals from across California have been chosen for the 2019 William R. Gianelli Water Leaders Class, the Water Education Foundation’s highly competitive and respected career development program. The class will spend the year examining the impact wildfires have on the supply and quality of water resources in California.
The strongest Pacific storm of the season will lash California through Saturday with high winds, feet of Sierra snow, and heavy rain that could trigger flash flooding, debris flows and rockslides. If that wasn’t enough, another colder storm is waiting in the wings behind this first system.
It’s not just skiers who have been whipsawed this season between fear of another dry winter and delight over the epic January snowfall in the Sierra Nevada. Also paying close attention: water wonks. Why? Because melting Sierra snow provides somewhere between one-third and one-half of California’s water supply. What determines just how much water is derived from that snow is called the “snowpack.”
California wildland managers said Tuesday they want to speed up logging and prescribed burns designed to slow wildfires that have devastated communities in recent years. After the deadliest and most destructive blazes in state history, officials are scrapping 12 years of efforts and starting anew on creating a single environmental review process to cover projects on private land, such as cutting back dense stands of trees and setting controlled fires to burn out thick brush.
New snow measurements to be taken Thursday are expected to confirm that snow levels in the Sierra Nevada are on par with the long-term average, thanks to a series of storms that thrashed California in January. Those results may sound pretty ho hum, but getting to average is a pretty big thing in today’s topsy turvy world of snow analysis, where the absence of pending disaster due to too little snow is something to celebrate.
The history of the planet can be found inside a sediment core at the bottom of the ocean, or the cake-like layers of a soil pit, or in the strata of the Grand Canyon. So it shouldn’t be too surprising that the climatic history of water — and a hint about its future — can sometimes be found by digging into a pit of snow.
Saying they feel an urgency to act fast, California officials this week will launch the main phase of wildfire debris removal in Butte County, scene of November’s devastating Camp Fire. But a potential problem has emerged: Nearly half of the property owners in the hill country around Paradise have not given the government permission to enter their properties to do the work. The main work, involving a complete scraping and clearing of burned-out properties, is scheduled to begin later this week.
Locals with commercial leases from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power got a chance at input into the details of potential purchase of the land under their businesses earlier this month. Now, more details and a potential timeline are coming to the surface. … LADWP was looking for input from Inyo businesses as part of a second look at its divestiture procedure. While the specific properties are not yet identified, the number of parcels hovers around 50, according to Jessica Johnson with the department’s public information office.
Governor Newsom’s first proposed state budget, released earlier this month, addresses several critical water and natural resource management challenges. Here are highlights from his plans to mitigate problems with safe drinking water, improve forest health and reduce the risk of wildfires, and encourage healthy soils to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase drought resilience.
Angelenos bearing gifts have elicited skepticism in Owens Valley since the early 1900s, when city agents posed as ranchers and farmers to buy land and water rights and then built dams and diversions that turned much of the region into an acrid dust bowl. Now, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is extending an olive branch. The department has proposed selling some of the commercial property it leases … to dozens of lessees in the financially struggling towns along a rustic, 112-mile stretch of Highway 395 between the eastern Sierra Nevada range and the White-Inyo Mountains.
Storms that soaked California during the first half of January did more than bring tons of snow to Sierra Nevada ski resorts. They also helped to significantly boost the state’s water supplies. Over the three weeks from Jan. 1 until this Tuesday, 47 key reservoirs that state water officials closely monitor added 580 billion gallons of water — as much as roughly 9 million people use in a year, according to an analysis by this newspaper.
State water quality officials cautioned the public not to drink or cook with untreated surface water from streams throughout the Camp Fire burn area after bacteria and other contaminants were detected in water samples. … Laboratory analyses of surface water samples found concentrations of bacteria (E.Coli), aluminum, antimony and some polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) that exceeded water quality standards for drinking water.
Snowpack across California is about 110 percent of normal for this time of year, thanks in no small part to an atmospheric river that brought heavy snowstorms to the Sierra range, the state Department of Water Resources’ most recent data show. Statewide snowpack is more than quadruple what it was by this time last year.
The never-ending fire season stems largely from a years-long drought that gripped much of California before easing in 2017. An estimated 129 million trees died from a lack of nutrients and infestations from bark beetles, leaving hillsides and forests dappled with kindling. The results have been grim. Record-setting fires have swept across the state, killing more than 100 people in two years. All told, nearly 900,000 acres burned in 2018 on land Cal Fire patrols. That’s more than triple the five-year average.
The biggest storm of the year packed the punch forecasters called for, walloping the Sierra Nevada with several feet of snow, and wreaking havoc on local highways and roads. Earlier in the week, the National Weather Service Office in Reno issued a blizzard warning for the greater Tahoe area, a rare report since 2008. Regional ski resorts, which had seen scant snow until recent storms swept through earlier this month, reported several feet of fresh snow in the past few days.
A simple web search will pull up nearly a million articles, videos and photos featuring Frank Gehrke. He’s no fashion icon like Kim Kardashian or a dogged politician like Gov. Jerry Brown. But he has broken a lot of news. … For 30 years, you might have seen Gehrke on TV, the guy trudging through snow with a measuring pole, talking about how deep the pack is each winter on the evening news. He retired from his post as the state’s chief snow surveyor in December, but he’s not letting go of his snowshoes and skis anytime soon.
Another Pacific storm was set to hit California on Wednesday, bringing a threat of mudslides to the site of the deadliest wildfire in state history and a rare blizzard warning in the Sierra Nevada. An evacuation warning was in place into Thursday morning for Pulga, a canyon community in Northern California. Its neighbor, the town of Paradise, was virtually incinerated two months ago by the Camp Fire that killed 86 people and destroyed nearly 15,000 homes.
California began 2019 with lower-than-average snowpack measurements — just 67 percent of the year-to-date average. Recent storms pushed that total to 90 percent as of Friday. With more precipitation on the horizon, forecasters predict snowpack measurements will “meet or exceed” the year-to-date average by the end of the week.
The century-old PG&E—which employs 20,000 workers and is slated to play an integral role in California’s clean energy future—also has a checkered history and little goodwill to spare with the public. On Thursday, the PUC launched an investigation into the utility’s safety record and corporate structure, as Bay Area residents shouted, protested and urged commissioners not to give them a bailout.
Climate models using SNOTEL data predict a decline in Western snowpack. … In December, University of Arizona researchers presented new on-the-ground findings supporting these predictions. … In parts of the West, annual snow mass has declined by 41 percent, and the snow season is 34 days shorter. Scripps Institute of Oceanography climatologist Amato Evan told the San Diego Union-Tribune that “climate change in the Western U.S. is not something we will see in the next 50 years. We can see it right now.”
Overwhelmed by billions of dollars in claims from the Camp Fire and the 2017 wildfires of Northern California, PG&E said Monday it plans to file for bankruptcy.
California will be under a siege of storm systems through next week that will send rounds of soaking rain across the state and snow into the Sierra Nevada. The storms will be guided toward California through a strong jet stream over the Pacific Ocean. It’s possible the Golden State could be affected by three or four separate weather systems through the end of next week.
Last week, the relicensing effort reached a milestone when FERC issued its Final Environmental Impact Statement. The environmental document essentially looks at what changes a licensee has proposed for a specific project, the impacts of those changes and provides conditions they must meet if awarded a new license.
Every winter, forest managers in places like California take a step back, analyze their budgets and plan on how to deal with the next fire season. But the government shutdown has shuttered a lot of those efforts, because federal lands like the U.S. Forest Service— which has been furloughed since December 22 — plays a huge role. For example, crews in Redwood National Park are “just sitting on their hands,” according to University of California fire advisor Lenya Quinn-Davidson in Humboldt County, because they can’t work on federal land during the shutdown.
The city of San Francisco is not standing down in California’s latest water war, joining a lawsuit against the state on Thursday to stop it from directing more of the Sierra Nevada’s cool, crisp flows to fish instead of people.
UC Merced researchers have evidence that California’s forests are especially vulnerable to multi-year droughts because their health depends on water stored several feet below ground.
Trump’s latest tweet drew a sharp reaction from state Republican legislators representing the area around the town of Paradise, which was mostly incinerated in a wildfire that killed 86 people and destroyed nearly 14,000 homes. State Senator Jim Nielsen and Assemblyman James Gallagher said Trump’s threat to withhold FEMA funds ”is wholly unacceptable. He made a commitment to the people who have lost everything in these fires, and we expect the federal government to follow through with his promise.”
Although Mother Nature blew the storm door off its hinges in parts of California last weekend, the state continues to run below average for rain and snow so far this winter.
In December, Frank Gehrke retired as chief snow surveyor for the California Department of Water Resources. He spent much of his 31 years with the department on skis and snowshoes, in remote corners of the Sierra Nevada, measuring the “frozen reservoir” that ultimately provides about a third of California’s water supply.
If you live on the West Coast, you may hear the term “atmospheric river” thrown around. These massive, fast-moving storm systems can transport more than 25 times the moisture as flows through the mouth of the Mississippi River.
California’s top snow surveyors, in the Sierra Nevada on Thursday with measuring poles and electronic sensor data, concluded that the state’s frozen water supply is just adequate, at best. The water content of the snowpack is 67 percent of the long-term average for this time of year, according to the first official measurements of 2019 taken by the California Department of Water Resources.
In 2014, plant biologists with the California Department of Agriculture reported an alarming discovery: native wildflowers and herbs, grown in nurseries and then planted in ecological restoration sites around California, were infected with Phytophthora tentaculata, a deadly exotic plant pathogen that causes root and stem rot. While ecologists have long been wary of exotic plant pathogens borne on imported ornamental plants, this was the first time in California that these microorganisms had been found in native plants used in restoration efforts.
Yosemite National Park officials say Hetch Hetchy and Mariposa Grove are now closed from lack of available restrooms and the impact of human waste as a result of the government shutdown.
At the end of the last century, the Sierra Nevada captured an average of 8.76 million acre-feet of water critical to the nation’s largest food-producing region. By mid-century, a new study projects, the average will fall to 4 million acre-feet; and by century’s end, 1.81 million acre-feet.
The new year will mark a half-century since a “seismic” shift in geology unfolded. Eldridge Moores was a key thinker in that shift. … I [Craig Miller] got another dose of that enduring youthfulness two years ago, chasing after him as he led me – at a brisk pace — down to the Yuba River bank. We were in search of the kind of “incompetent” rock that contributed to the catastrophic collapse of two spillways at Oroville Dam.
The snow season, which started this month, is off to a good start. A series of December storms covered the Sierra Nevada with heavy snow, leaving the snowpack at 106% of average, according to the state’s snow survey. But a new study suggests that Californians won’t always be able to rely on melting snow to trickle down the mountains each spring, filling state reservoirs for use over the long, dry summers.
In a good sign for California’s water supply, the Sierra Nevada has been blanketed by heavy snow thanks to a series of recent storms. The snowpack measured 106% of average, according to the state’s snow survey taken late last week. That’s more than double the 47% of average measured on the same day last year.
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.
If temperatures increase in California because of climate change, snow could melt earlier in the Sierra Nevada — and you might only find it at higher elevations.
The owners of a Lake Tahoe ski resort in a legal battle with an environmental group over a redevelopment project have failed to persuade a California judge to penalize the conservationists with an order to pay more than $225,000 in attorney bills. Placer County Judge Michael Jones ruled in August against Sierra Watch’s claim the county violated public meeting laws when it approved Alterra Mountain Co.’s expansion at Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows near Tahoe City, California.
There’s going to be a new governor in California next year – and a host of challenges both old and new involving the state’s most vital natural resource, water.
So what should be the next governor’s water priorities?
That was one of the questions put to more than 150 participants during a wrap-up session at the end of the Water Education Foundation’s Sept. 20 Water Summit in Sacramento.
City personnel have removed a group of homeless encampments along the Upper Truckee River. The abandoned homeless camps, which according to the city consisted of trash and other debris, were located in the Truckee River Meadow area behind Motel 6.
The Rim fire in 2013 brought devastation to a vast swath of Sierra Nevada forests west of Yosemite National Park. But the third largest wildfire in state history also seemed to have worked a political miracle, at least for a while. In the aftermath of the blaze, environmental organizations, timber interests, state officials and the U.S. Forest Service buried decades of discord to forge an ambitious restoration and reforestation plan.
Sixty percent of California’s developed water supply originates high in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Our water supply is largely dependent on the health of our Sierra forests, which are suffering from ecosystem degradation, drought, wildfires and widespread tree mortality.
We headed into the foothills and the mountains to examine water issues that happen upstream but have dramatic impacts downstream and throughout the state.
GEI (Tour Starting Point)
2868 Prospect Park Dr.
Rancho Cordova, CA 95670.
With Floriston rates, or rate of flow on the Truckee River at Floriston, meeting the required mean flow of 500 cubic feet per second, and Lake Tahoe’s elevation below the maximum of 6,229.10 feet, the Lake Tahoe Dam remained closed until last week, which forced the two [rafting] companies off the water. Lake Tahoe’s elevation was measured at 6,228.95 on June 26, according to the Water Master’s daily report, with the flow rate at Farad measured at 591 cubic feet per second.
The largest privately-owned section of the Upper Truckee River is now in public hands, paving the way for another restoration project on an altered watershed harming Lake Tahoe’s famed clarity. This week the Tahoe Resource Conservation District announced the acquisition of Johnson Meadow, a 206-acre portion of a larger watershed that, in its original form, acted as a natural water filter for both the Upper Truckee River and Trout Creek.
Water supply for California’s cities and farms is largely dependent on snowmelt from the upper watershed in the Sierra Nevada. But that paradigm is being challenged by wildfires, climate change and widespread tree mortality.
Join us for a two-day tour as we head into the Sierra foothills and up into the mountains to examine water issues that happen upstream, but have dramatic impacts on water supply and quality downstream and throughout the state.
After two heavy winters following five years of drought, grass and brush are thick in the Tahoe Basin, putting local firefighting agencies on high alert for the fire season ahead. “We will see more intense fire because there is more fuel. That’s the message we’re getting from our fire behavior analysts and fuel specialists,” said Brice Bennett, spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s Amador/El Dorado Unit.
The way people play along Lake Tahoe’s 72 miles of shoreline could change this year. The latest iteration of theTahoe Shoreline Plan comes out Tuesday. The proposal would add 138 piers, of which 10 are public.
Lake Tahoe, the iconic high Sierra water body that straddles California and Nevada, has sat for more than 10,000 years at the heart of the Washoe tribe’s territory. In fact, the name Tahoe came from the tribal word dá’aw, meaning lake. The lake’s English name was the source of debate for about 100 years after it was first “discovered” in 1844 by people of European descent when Gen. John C. Fremont’s expedition made its way into the region.
Lake Tahoe, the iconic high Sierra water body that straddles California and Nevada, has sat for more than 10,000 years at the heart of the Washoe tribe’s territory. In fact, the name Tahoe came from the tribal word dá’aw, meaning lake.
The lake’s English name was the source of debate for about 100 years after it was first “discovered” in 1844 by people of European descent when Gen. John C. Fremont’s expedition made its way into the region. Not long after, a man who carried mail on snowshoes from Placerville to Nevada City named it Lake Bigler in honor of John Bigler, who served as California’s third governor. But because Bigler was an ardent secessionist, the federal Interior Department during the Civil War introduced the name Tahoe in 1862. Meanwhile, California kept it as Lake Bigler and didn’t officially recognize the name as Lake Tahoe until 1945.
Sixty percent of California’s developed water supply originates high in the Sierra Nevada.Thus, the state’s water supply is largely dependent on the health of Sierra forests, which are suffering from ecosystem degradation, drought, wildfires and widespread tree mortality.
Join us as we head into the Sierra foothills and up to the mountains to examine water issues that happen upstream but have dramatic impacts downstream and throughout California.
California voters may experience a sense of déjà vu this year when they are asked twice in the same year to consider water bonds — one in June, the other headed to the November ballot.
Both tackle a variety of water issues, from helping disadvantaged communities get clean drinking water to making flood management improvements. But they avoid more controversial proposals, such as new surface storage, and they propose to do some very different things to appeal to different constituencies.
It’s a recipe for flooding. A tropical storm pulling moisture from the South Pacific, often called an atmospheric river, will deliver mild temperatures and heavy rain to the snow-covered northern Sierra Nevada later this week.
The storms of March may not have rained glory on the state, but they dropped enough snow on the Sierra to greatly improve the drought situation and, with another storm rolling in this week, water resources officials believe thirsty California will make it through the year.
A series of supercharged storms that blasted the Sierra in March has bolstered the snowpack that was alarmingly low before the start of the month. … On Feb. 22, an average of 4.6 inches was measured and on March 23 an average of 15.5 inches was recorded, going from 16 percent to 56 percent of the April 1 average.
A series of storms have been a boon for California’s Sierra Nevada where nearly 16 feet of snow has piled up in March, more than double the paltry seasonal total before the month began.
Every storm helps improve the state’s summer water picture, scientists and state water planners said Thursday. But even taking into account this storm and a big one two weeks ago, the Sierra Nevada snow pack — the source of nearly one-third of California’s water supply — still is only about half of normal for this winter season, with this month’s totals measuring just half of the 1991 miracle month’s final tally.
Frank Gehrke trudges through snow and ice, as he’s done for nearly four decades in the Sierra Nevada. He’s one of many state workers who takes monthly snow surveys, in the same spots, to figure out how much water is in the snowpack. And this old-fashioned way of measuring the snowpack is quite laborsome.
California water officials tromped through long-awaited fresh snowdrifts in the Sierra Nevada mountains Monday, but a welcome late-winter storm still left the state with less than half the usual snow for this late point in the state’s important rain and snow season.
The storm that wrought avalanches at ski resorts and whiteouts on mountain roads last week was so fierce that California water officials postponed their much-anticipated monthly survey of snow depth, setting the stage for potentially better news this week.
Last week’s major snowstorms brought a welcome change to the Sierra Nevada Range — the source of nearly one-third of California’s water — boosting the overall snowpack by nearly 80 percent. But despite the blizzards dumping 5 to 8 feet of fresh snow, the overall snowpack remains well below normal.
Welcome drifts of fresh snow await California’s water managers on their late-winter survey of the vital Sierra Nevada snowpack Monday after a massive winter storm slowed the state’s plunge back into drought. The storm piled snow by the foot in the mountains, forcing Department of Water Resources officials to postpone the measurement for a few days.
Despite last week’s heavy snowfall, Tahoe ski resorts know they can’t predict how strong each winter will be. They suffered through drought years earlier this decade.
A major storm system is forecast to slam into California from Alaska and Canada starting Wednesday night, bringing soaking rain to the Bay Area on Thursday and dumping up to seven feet of new snow to the historically dry Sierra Nevada by Saturday. But as welcome as the snow is during a very dry winter so far, it won’t be enough to return the Sierra Nevada — the source of 30 percent of California’s water supply — back to its average for the year, experts said Tuesday.
A winter storm is expected to drop several inches of new snow Thursday in the Sierra Nevada, and meteorologists with the National Weather Service are optimistic more systems will follow in the coming days. Thursday’s storm, which could deliver 6 to 10 inches of snow in the higher elevations, comes on the heels of a system Monday that brought as much as 7 inches of fresh powder to Tahoe area ski resorts.
In the Sierra Nevada, snowpack levels are running below even the darkest days of the drought, with cross-country ski resorts closed and mountain biking becoming the sport of choice until the snow returns. … February is historically a wet month, but not this year.
Every day, people flock to Daniel Swain’s social media platforms to find out the latest news and insight about California’s notoriously unpredictable weather. Swain, a climate scientist at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, famously coined the term “Ridiculously Resilient Ridge” in December 2013 to describe the large, formidable high-pressure mass that was parked over the West Coast during winter and diverted storms away from California, intensifying the drought.
Swain’s research focuses on atmospheric processes that cause droughts and floods, along with the changing character of extreme weather events in a warming world. A lifelong Californian and alumnus of University of California, Davis, and Stanford University, Swain is best known for the widely read Weather West blog, which provides unique perspectives on weather and climate in California and the western United States. In a recent interview with Western Water, he talked about the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge, its potential long-term impact on California weather, and what may lie ahead for the state’s water supply.
As relentless sunshine continued to pound California on Thursday, the Sierra Nevada hit a reckoning point: There’s less snowpack now than on the same date three years ago, when the winter went down as the driest in recorded history and sent shudders through cities, farmlands and the state Capitol.
The T-shirt-wearing temperatures and lack of winter rain have combined to push nearly half of California into all-too-familiar territory: a state of drought. … At Phillips Station south of Lake Tahoe, where state water officials base their monthly snow surveys, hydrologists on Thursday found just 13 percent of average snowpack.
Amid record-setting heat in the state’s south, California’s water managers will measure the Sierra Nevada snowpack, which supplies water to millions. Department of Water Resources officials will trek to the mountains Thursday to check the snow depth, one gauge of the state’s water supply.
Up to another foot of snow is possible in the mountains around Lake Tahoe on the heels of a storm packing 100 mph (160 kph) winds that triggered power outages in Reno. The storm left as much as 16 inches (40 centimeters) of new snow at Sierra ski resorts, the National Weather Service said Thursday.
This is going to be a big year for one of the state’s smallest agencies. As California redoubles its efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, officials are rooting around for new ways to meet the state’s goals. Included in their plan: recruiting billions of redwood, oak and pine trees to help diminish planet-warming gases by pulling carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Farmers, ecologists, water managers, even those tasked with fighting backcountry wildfires could greatly benefit from knowing months in advance how much water will be available from melting mountain snow every spring. For decades predicting snowpack accumulation has been largely unreliable, based solely on historical data and capricious El Nino weather patterns.
There’s a term for what’s going on right now in the Sierra Nevada and the mountains that feed the Colorado River. It’s called a “snow drought,” and Nevada climate scientists warn that Westerners had better get used to the phenomenon.
A winter storm system is heading to California, and is expected to bring the first significant snow to the northern Sierra Nevada since November, but spare Southern California the threat of mudslides.
California skiers and riders are facing the best conditions of the season after recent storms dumped snow from Lake Tahoe to Mammoth Lakes, frosting slopes ahead of the long Martin Luther King holiday weekend.
The grassy brown Sierra meadow where California’s water managers gave the results of the winter’s first manual snowpack measurements Wednesday told the story — the drought-prone state is off to another unusually dry start in its vital winter rain and snow season. “We would like to have had more snow,” Grant Davis, head of California’s Department of Water Resources, told news crews gathered in this mountain field, bare of all but a few crusty dots of old snow.
It’s been almost a year since Los Angeles residents felt any real rain, and precious little snow is in the Sierras, but water managers say it’s too early for fears that California is sliding back into drought as abruptly as the state fell out of it. Water officials carry out the first of their regular ritual winter snow measurements before news cameras on Wednesday.
California’s already towering Sierra Nevada summits rose to new heights during the drought, albeit by just a hair. A study by NASA scientists published Wednesday found that the granite peaks of the 400-mile range were pushed nearly an inch upward between 2011 and 2015, a phenomenon linked not only to known tectonic forces but the expansion of the land as it dried out and shed water weight.
The Sierra Nevada mountains grew nearly an inch taller during the recent drought and shrank by half an inch when water and snow returned to the area, according to new research from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. Researchers used 1,300 GPS stations throughout the mountain range to closely observe how its elevation changed during the drought.
California’s forests are seeing a continued die-off of trees even a year after last year’s heavy rains ended the state’s crippling drought. The U.S. Forest Service announced Monday that 27 million trees died over the past 13 months after five dry years left them severely dehydrated and vulnerable to bark beetle attack.
For years, Sierra residents have murmured about winter rain falling on trails that used to be covered in snow, but there has been no scientific evidence to back up a change in the snowfall pattern. Now, a new piece of research suggests the snow line, the point of elevation above which rain turns to snow during winter storms, may be changing.
Tahoe Resource Conservation District is three years into a long-term aquatic invasive species eradication project on the Truckee River — and the progress is encouraging. TRCD is working to eliminate Eurasian watermilfoil from a 3-mile stretch of the Truckee River, starting above the Tahoe City dam and continuing down to Alpine Meadows Road.
Sixty percent of California’s developed water supply originates high in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Our water supply is largely dependent on the health of our Sierra forests, which are suffering from ecosystem degradation, drought, wildfires and widespread tree mortality.
It’s only Halloween, but winter is on the way. Two storm systems moving out of the Gulf of Alaska are on track to bring the first substantial snow of the 2017-18 winter season to the Sierra Nevada, starting Friday, and widespread rainfall across the Bay Area over the weekend.
Mountain meadows are starting to get some respect. For over a century, meadows were the first alpine environments targeted for development, grazing and farming, because they tend to be flat and packed with rich soil and nutritious plants. But we’re starting to understand that meadows have a much more important role to play for society at large. Meadows, it turns out, are water banks.
Sixty percent of California’s developed water supply originates high in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Our water supply is largely dependent on the health of our Sierra forests, which are suffering from ecosystem degradation, drought, wildfires and widespread tree mortality.
On this tour, we headed into the foothills and the mountains to examine water issues that happen upstream but have dramatic impacts downstream and throughout the state.
GEI (Tour Starting Point)
2868 Prospect Park Dr.
Rancho Cordova, CA 95670.
One of north Lake Tahoe’s cutest residents, the American pika, has disappeared. UC Santa Cruz researchers have discovered an extinction spanning from Tahoe City to Truckee, the largest pika die-off in the modern era.
Endangered California frogs are getting an immunity boost from scientists who are scooping them up from remote Sierra Nevada ponds and sending them to big city zoos for inoculation, giving them a fighting chance to beat extinction, officials said Wednesday.
Federal officials promised Tuesday to protect Lake Tahoe for future generations, a pledge that one said doesn’t rule out also maintaining a robust regional economy.
Intense seasonal changes in 2016 — hallmarks of climate change — killed huge swaths of forest around the lake and nourished invasive species, according to the annual Tahoe State of the Lake Report released Thursday by the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center.
Lake Tahoe’s famously clear waters continue to warm, and the surrounding forests face dire threats due to drought, disease and insects, according to the annual Tahoe State of the Lake report by researchers at UC Davis. The second deepest lake in the United States after Crater Lake, Lake Tahoe has warmed by half a degree Fahrenheit each year for the past four years — 14 times faster than the historic rate, the report said.
Tahoe is brimming, nearly full for the first time in 11 years, and stunningly beautiful in all its blue-water glory. … When the first heat wave of the season hit in mid-June, more than 12 billion gallons of water flowed into the lake in a single week.
The population at Lake Tahoe swells by up to five times its year-round population on busy summer weekends. The influx of tourists taxes an infrastructure designed for fewer people.
Trails, roads and campgrounds throughout the Sierra high country were hit hard by snow and runoff from one of the largest snowpacks in recorded history, leaving public agencies scrambling and summer visitors feeling lost.
Visitors to North Lake Tahoe this summer will notice the steady flow of the Truckee River, the high water level of Lake Tahoe, and dense green growth that has sprung up across the region thanks to record snow and rainfall this winter. But they’ll also see an increasing number of dead trees.
The barrage of storms that pounded the Sierra Nevada this winter and spring added up to a snowpack that’s massive. Amid a major heat wave all of that snow is now melting — and fast. How fast?
Sixty percent of California’s developed water supply originates high in the Sierra Nevada. Thus, the state’s water supply is largely dependent on the health of Sierra forests, which are suffering from ecosystem degradation, drought, wildfires and widespread tree mortality.
Join us as we head into the Sierra foothills and the mountains to examine water issues that happen upstream but have dramatic impacts downstream and throughout California.
In singing about the Kern River, Merle Haggard put it best: “It’s a mean piece of water, my friend.” As a heat wave tightens its grip on California, the water in the massive Sierra Nevada snowpack is being squeezed into the state’s rivers and reservoirs, creating dangerous conditions downstream.
Sleds and skis in June? A rare winter-like storm brought more snow to the Sierra Nevada on Monday, giving skiers the opportunity to enjoy the slopes as summer gets underway.
Every year for almost half a century, California snow surveyor Pat Armstrong has trekked the rugged Sierra Nevada with three simple tools: a snow core tube, a scale and a notebook. For as long as he can remember, state water officials have relied on the accuracy of those tools to deliver crucial data on the size of the Sierra snowpack and its ability to sustain a growing population.
People came here for the forest, to live among 200-foot-tall pine trees that shaded their mountain cabins and scented the air. But in the span of two short years, tens of thousands of those trees are gone, ravaged by bark beetles until their green needles turned orange.
To say backpackers and hikers will encounter more snow than they’re used to is to drastically understate the problem. The snowpack throughout the Sierra rivals, and in places exceeds, records set during the massive winter of 1982-83. “We are in rare territory here with the winter we’ve had,” said Chris Smallcomb, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Reno.
As of Tuesday afternoon, lake level was at 6,228.18 feet, just .92 inches from Lake Tahoe’s legal limit of 6,229.1 feet. The Upper Truckee River was just shy of 8 ½ feet — about 2 feet from flood stage.
Climate change is causing Lake Tahoe to warm sooner in the spring than it has historically, disrupting the normal mixing of shallow and deep water and undercutting gains made in reversing the loss of clarity of the cobalt mountain lake, scientists say.
With snowpack 200 to 300 percent of normal, the Tahoe area fire season will likely be delayed this year. Grass is the primary fuel for wildfires. It probably won’t be drying out until July and August.
