Flooding and mudslides are expected in California during a storm

Water, Climate Change, and the Arizona River: How State and Local Governments Are Trying to Prevent Water Steady-State Stewardship

Plagued by decades of overuse and human-caused climate change, demand for the river’s water has vastly outpaced its supply. In 2023, federal and state officials must find a way to keep as much as 4 million acre-feet of water in Lakes Mead and Powell – 30% of what the Colorado River states have historically used.

The lakes are so large they could reach a dead pool, where the water level is too low to pass through the dam, in the next two years.

According to Sarah Porter, the director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University, federal officials are working to prepare for the possibility that they will be sued over mandatory cuts, so they can demonstrate it is not an arbitrary action.

In May, western state officials wrote a letter saying that they were leaving 1 million acres-feet of water in Lake Powell. Then, they watched as the same amount of water disappeared due to system losses and evaporation.

“Everything we tried to do through the May 3 letter was wiped out by mother nature,” top Arizona water official Tom Buschatzke told CNN. I think that could happen to us again. It was happening almost every year for the last few years.

Anxiety is growing in the West as reservoir levels plummet. The Lower Basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada are concerned about the impact of voluntary water cuts.

Those talks have stalled amid disagreement on how much water each state should sacrifice and how much money farmers, tribal nations and cities should be paid to reduce their water consumption.

State negotiators are themselves waiting for the feds to decide how it will dole out $4 billion in drought relief money, which the Biden administration fronted from the Inflation Reduction Act to essentially pay people to not use water.

But, he says, “it makes it a little more difficult because of the uncertainty and not knowing” what the difference will be between the money the federal government is offering, and the voluntary cuts districts are willing to make.

Other important deals have been struck. The Biden administration pledged millions of dollars in federal funds to help restore California’s Salton Sea, a key demand from the powerful Imperial Irrigation district. Arizona is hoping Imperial and other California water users will agree to more cuts on the table.

If voluntary cuts don’t come close to what’s needed, the federal government may step in. But that plan would almost assuredly be greeted with a court challenge.

Snowfall and Storms for the Colorado River Basin: Predictions for California and the Southern Hemisphere During the December 1st Snow Event

At a December conference of Colorado River water users, Assistant Secretary of the Department of the Interior Tanya Trujillo addressed that likelihood, according to Porter.

But what the river basin needs is weeks of above-average snowfall, which melts in the spring and runs downstream to replenish the reservoirs. And ultimately, the Colorado River cannot be saved by the occasional wet winter amid growing, longterm drought.

In the short term, the storms will improve dry conditions in Northern California. But in the long term, he said climate change has already made its mark and that it would take a lot more than one exceptionally wet year – it will take consecutive wet years and cooler conditions to bust this drought.

It is not certain how much of this storm will make a difference to the conditions inCalifornia, which has still not seen a refill of water since February of last year.

Dry air tends to cause the water in the soil to evaporate. This is another reason water shortages are plaguing the Colorado River; not only is there enough rain to fill reservoirs, but the air also sucks up water from what’s left of them.

She said there was a high possibility that the lack of rain and low snow level wouldn’t go away soon. La Niña is expected to persist through the winter, which typically causes the jet stream – upper-level winds that carry storms around the globe – to shift northward. That means less rainfall for a region that desperately needs it.

The latest in the parade of storms ushered moisture into California Sunday, lashing the state with high winds and dumping more rain and snow over the region before it was expected to spread inland Monday.

Winter storm watches have already been issued for the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, where an additional 1-4 feet of snowfall is possible late Monday through Wednesday afternoon. The San Bernardino Mountains are under a winter storm watch with snow forecast to reach up to 4 feet by Wednesday with gusts up to 85 mph.

There were 103,000 homes, businesses and other power customers without power across California and Nevada as of Sunday night, down from a high of more than 300,000 outages on Saturday, according to Poweroutage. The US.

Sacramento County, Sacramento River, and Oakland, Calif., a weather agency warning of floods and flood risk in Sacramento, Sacramento, and Humboldt

“Too many road closures to count at this point,” the weather agency in Sacramento said in an afternoon tweet. Sacramento County urged residents in the unincorporated community of Wilton to evacuate, warning that flooded roadways could “cut off access to leave the area.”

Since December 26, San Francisco received more than 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain, while Mammoth Mountain, a popular ski area in the Eastern Sierra, received nearly 10 feet (3 meters) of snow, the National Weather Service reported.

US Highway 101 – one of California’s most famous routes – was also temporarily closed in both directions in South San Francisco Saturday with the California Highway Patrol reporting “water is not receding due to non-stop rainfall & high tides preventing the water to displace.”

The weather service predicts that the storm could bring over one inch of rain to the Sacramento area before moving south. There are chair lifts that are closed at a ski resort south of Lake Tahoe due to flooding and operational problems, and a photo is posted on social media showing a tower with empty chairs.

Though not expected to be as potent as the atmospheric rivers of previous weeks, a system is expected to bring several inches of rain to the lower elevation and the foothills of Southern California through Thursday. Up to three inches of precipitation could be seen in Arizona.

The Stockton Police Department posted photos of a flooded railroad underpass and a car that appeared stalled in more than a foot (30 centimeters) of water.

It is worth noting that last year was somewhat less wet than this one and the state was still mired in drought for the remainder of the year.

A Flash Flood Watch was in place along and west of 5 Freeway to the Sacramento River, where there were worries about excessive rainfall and flooding on the Cosumnes and Mokelumne Rivers.

Humboldt County, where a 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck on Dec. 20, also saw roadways begin to flood, according to the National Weather Service’s Eureka office. A bridge that was temporarily closed last week due to earthquake damage may be closed again if the Eel River, which it crosses, gets too high, officials said.

The next atmospheric river is expected to arrive Tuesday with high winds, heavy rain, mountain snow and the risk of more floods as it heads towards southern California. Soils in the Golden State are still overly saturated from last week’s storm, making the ground vulnerable to more flooding and rapid runoffs, the National Weather Service said.

“Strong winds could cause tree damage and lead to power outages and high waves on Lake Tahoe may capsize small vessels,” the weather service in Reno said.

On the Sierra’s eastern front, flood watches and warnings were issued into the weekend north and south of Reno, Nevada, where minor to moderate flooding was forecast along some rivers and streams.

On New Year’s Eve, dozens of drivers were rescued from the snow on the side of the freeway near the lake, according to California Department of Transportation. The route to the mountains from the San Francisco Bay Area was open again to passenger vehicles with chains.

In Southern California, several people were rescued after floodwaters inundated cars in San Bernardino and Orange counties. No major injuries were reported.

Multiple deaths during the Pasadena Rose Parade on Monday: Atmospheric River storms are forecast for Sacramento County, California

On New Year’s Day, the region is drying out and no rain is expected in Monday’s Rose Parade in Pasadena.

The National Weather Service predicted another round of heavy showers for Southern California on Tuesday or Wednesday.

According to officials, there were at least two deaths during the storm, one of which was found dead in a submerged vehicle in Sacrenaga County and the other was a man who died after being struck by a fallen tree.

A winter storm warning is in effect across the Rockies and northern Plains on Monday as snow is expected to fall.

There is a chance of storms with damaging winds, tornadoes and hail in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana on Monday. In the afternoon there will be storms that will last through the night.

Multiple flood victims were rescued by boats and helicopter as well as other incidents, including fallen trees and disabling vehicles, during the weekend in the Sacramento County area.

An evacuation order was issued Sunday for the rural Sacramento County areas of Point Pleasant, while Glanville Tract and Franklin Pond were under an evacuation warning.

The flooded Cosumnes River could reach I-5 and other areas in the middle of the night.

A series of fronts will move toward the West Coast because of a so-called “bomb cyclone” that will intensify over a short time. These fronts are being super-fueled with tropical moisture from a potent atmospheric river that stretches west to Hawaii.

“This [storm] is going to bring a whole litany of concerns that are probably greater than we had initially anticipated a few days ago,” Swain said. Flood conditions in some places are not going to be good with widespread moderate rain at this point.

The National Weather Service warned of a “relentless parade of atmospheric rivers” over the coming week, producing heavy rain and mountain snow. Atmospheric river storms are long plumes of moisture stretching out into the Pacific and are capable of dropping staggering amounts of rain and snow.

Julie Kalansky, an atmospheric scientist with the San Diego based Scripps Institution of Oceanography, believes that storms are needed more than ever in order to alleviate the effects of the El Nio.

The experts are contemplating how California could be able to use all of the rain to replenish the water table. And they say the best thing to do would be to let the land flood in a controlled way, so it has a chance to absorb into the aquifers, instead of being channeled through levees, rivers and reservoirs and ultimately lost.

Ed Clark is director of the National Water Center and he says that at least 44% of the US is at risk for flooding this spring. The potential for spring floods is heightened by the historic snowpack in California and the spring rain.

“Although we haven’t seen the mega floods, we have definitely seen more extreme precipitation in the middle of what has otherwise been a period characterized by a pretty severe and persistent dry spell.”

State climatologist Michael Anderson gave a news briefing late Saturday and told the story that officials were keeping a close eye on four other systems farther out in the Pacific.

Improvement in Lake Oroville since the 1990s: Water Supply jumped by 112% in 2021, and by 20% in 2022 after the mega-dry

After the mega-dry of the 1990s sucked away nearly all of its water supply, Lake Oroville saw a huge boost.

Before-and-after photos show incredible improvement at the reservoir, which as of this week stood at 115% of the historical average for the date — a notable jump from just 61% in February 2021 and 77% in 2022.

The before images show a “bathtub ring” of dirt around the edge of the lake, marking how far the water levels had fallen. The bathtub ring was under water again by late January.

Although recent storms have increased water supply, there is still a hard time recovering from the damage done to the ground and the current emergency orders focused on it are being preserved.

The capacity plummeted to just 24% of what it was. The lake’s water level sat well below boat ramps and exposed intake pipes, which are used to send water to power the plant.

The plant is the fourth-largest hydroelectric energy producer statewide, according to the California Energy Commission, with the ability to power up to 800,000 homes when operating at full capacity. About 13% of the state’s electricity was generated by hydroelectric power plants as of 2018.

The state of California has already invested over $8 billion to increase water supplies and storage and plans to spend an additional $337 million on flood protection. There are ways to capture and store more water when there are storms.

The State Water Project’s two largest reservoirs — Lake Oroville and San Luis — gained a total of 1.62 million acre-feet of water, which is roughly enough water for 5.6 million households for an entire year. The amount of water needed for one acre a foot deep is roughly 326,000 gallons.

A State of Emergency Order issued in San Bernardino County after a Wet, Dry, and Mostly Wet Month after the Colorado River

The Director of the Department of Water Resources spoke to the state about the lack of precipitation and snow this month.

She said that this traditional wet month is starting off dry, and given the forecasts it is expected to continue.

The amount of water in the state has gone up by 7.5 million acre feet since last year, which means there is more water available and it won’t melt in the spring. “But it will be a challenge to manage all this snowpack. A lot of the rivers that have snow have limited channels so getting that water out safely is going to be a challenge.

The Colorado River feeds Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the two largest reservoirs in the country. Record-low water levels in both lakes have triggered mandatory water cuts for some Western states in the last year. Lake Powell has a new record-low, while Lake Mohave is above its record low set last year.

It is an example of how the world is changing because of climate change.

A state of emergency was issued in 13 counties, including San Bernardino County, after the winter storm left many people trapped inside their homes.

Authorities there had conducted almost 100 rescues by Wednesday evening, San Bernardino County Fire Chief Dan Munsey said in a news conference, though authorities have not learned of any serious injuries or deaths.

We are responding to medical calls. These trapped vehicles have fires in them. Munsey said that the people in the houses where the trees have been through will be taken to the evacuees.

State of Emergency Measurements in the Valley of Los Angeles and Santa Barbara County, California, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office tweeted on Wednesday

Newsom declared a state of emergency for San Bernardino County and 12 others – among them Los Angeles and Santa Barbara counties – late Wednesday, with his office saying in a statement that a significant number of state personnel had responded to support San Bernardino County.

In order to bring additional snow plows and road crews to the county, the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services is working with the California Fire Department and the California National Guard.

It could take a week to 10 days to dig out the mountain communities hampered by the heavy snow, officials warned in a news conference Wednesday. The fire department said that residents were not allowed to access roads on Wednesday. Over 500 miles of roads in the county need to be plowing in the mountain areas.

The recent snowfall and the amount of snow that fell in the last week has led to the National Weather Service warning about the risk of accidents in some places. Residents in a three-story apartment building in Olympic Valley had to be evacuated after it was struck by an avalanche Tuesday evening, engulfing the bottom two stories, the sheriff’s office said on Facebook. The building’s occupants were uninjured.

Huntington Lake in the Sierra Nevada saw 144 inches of snow, per a report from the Fresno County Office of Emergency Services, which reported 10 to 12 feet of snow near China Peak, leading to the closure of Highway 168.

Mount Baldy in Los Angeles County recorded 106 inches of snow since February 22. In the past two days, 29 inches fell, while the other 77 fell late last week and through the weekend, according to CNN’s Taylor Ward.

Thousands of residents in California have been evacuated since the first day of winter, according to Tulare County Sheriff’s Office Chief Eric M. Mendonsa

Thousands were under evacuation orders Sunday in two small central California towns – Alpaugh and Allensworth – as officials worried roads could become impassable and isolate residents, according to the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office. First responders from dozens of agencies, including the California National Guard, were out Sunday afternoon helping residents evacuate – a sight that has become familiar in the flood-ravaged state this winter season.

Tulare County farmer Brandon Mendonsa said there was a lot of destruction. The water is still pouring in, but this is far from finished.

Powerful winds are also a concern. According to the Weather Service gusts could reach up to 80 mph, which would be strong enough to down trees and power lines.

The snowpack has reached an all time high. The state’s largest reservoirs, which were recently at critically low levels, have been replenished and are way past its historical averages. Even with all the rain, the wells are having a hard time recovering.

The University of California at Los Angeles has a climate scientist who states that this winter is an unusual number of storms. No matter what way you slice it, no matter how you make these formal definitions, this is a lot.

Weak and low-end moderate storms tend to be less impactful and primarily bring beneficial precipitation to the state, he said. Meanwhile, the high-end atmospheric rivers are the big rain and snow producers, which lead to more severe impacts.

Hecht said this year has already outpaced the state’s average annual number of atmospheric rivers. Many of them came in a rapid series of storms in early January.

Hecht told CNN that atmospheric rivers are usually referred to as “AR families”. We don’t see AR families every year, but the stretch of nine months we had around the New Year was a more active family than we typically see.

Groundwater Management in the Southern Sierra After a Recent Atmospheric River Storm: Implications for California’s Landscape and Forests

The Southern Sierra has never been higher since official records began in the 1950s. The Central Sierra is at 231% of normal, which is almost at record high, and may reach that point soon after this most recent atmospheric river storm.

The storms have increased soil hydration and is great for California’s vegetation. April 1 is a time when the state has the highest fuel moist content, and this year it was the case for the California wildfires.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, the acres of land that have been fallowed because of the lack of water will decrease for the sake of the next growing season. Land for rice production in the Central Valley, for example, decreased from 517,000 acres in 2020 to 256,000 acres last year, according to the USDA.

But “those gains may be partially offset in areas where levee breaches caused extensive flooding,” Rippey said. “Severely flooded agricultural land, including areas along the Salinas and Pajaro Rivers, may not be planted in 2023 due to soil contamination, pathogenic testing or simply missing the appropriate window for planting.”

The state has been running at critically low levels for a long time, thanks to this winter’s precipitation.

In an interview with CNN, Andrew Schwartz of the Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab predicted that all this snow would be helpful to the state.

Even with a huge winter like this, it won’t be able to solve the groundwater problem, as previously stated by aclimate scientist with the University of California in Los Angeles They think there is too much demand on the system and that climate change will bring about the return of the dry conditions of the West.

This isn’t enough due to a supply and demand problem. We still got a lot of straws in the ground,” Swain said. You have to do it multiple years in a row to really make a difference.

There are nearly 200 groundwater monitoring sites in California, according to data from the US Geological Survey, all of which show a variety of conditions from complete recovery to partial recovery of groundwater reserves.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/23/us/atmospheric-river-winter-california-drought-climate/index.html

How Californians Will Live with Floods – Comments on Governor Jerry Newsom’s 2021 Executive Order on Water Use in the State of California

Peter Gleick, a climate scientist and co-founder of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, previously told CNN that they need to allow the rivers to flood a little more and draw water from the ground in wet seasons. We must learn to live with floods and not think we can control them.

Despite the removal of some of the state’s restrictions on water use, other steps will still be taken to strengthen the water supply for vulnerable communities and maintain water resilience, after a parade of atmospheric river storms have battered the state.

Newsom is also rolling back his 2021 order, urging residents and businesses to cut back their water consumption use by 15%, even though urban water usage was actually up by 19% months later.

“It’s incumbent upon us to continue to maintain our vigilance and maintain some provisions of the executive order to allow for fast tracking of groundwater replenishment projects, stormwater capture and recycling programs here in the state of California,” he added.