Valley Snowpack Overview: Predictions for the Next Five and Six Months after the Santa Barbara-Madagasoro Storm

Snowpack across California, as of Wednesday, is running more than twice the normal amount and trending near record levels for December, especially in the northern part of the state. But experts say they are “cautiously optimistic” about what this means for the coming months.

Groundwater, in particular, has been much slower to recover than reservoirs. The underground aquifers which are important to the central valley still have a long way to go before they are fully replenished from the long dry spell.

Andrew Schwartz, the lead scientist and station manager of University of California, Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow Laboratory, says they are going to need more snow falling at the lab, which is located at Donner Pass east of Sacramento. It is where he and other researchers measure snowpack totals and how much water could be found in the state.

While the storm did not break any long-standing records like last year’s snow, despite dropping several feet of snow in the highest elevations of the Sierra Nevada, Swain says mountain snowpack is now well above-average for the calendar date and that overall precipitation is relatively near average in most places.

“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. Widespread moderate rain at this point is going to heighten flood conditions in some places, so not the best news.

Schwartz said that there is only three quarters left before they can determine the outcome of the game. “So if we get to March or April, and we’re sitting at above-average precipitation, then we can start to relax. We can celebrate a bit more.

According to Miller, the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center is well ahead of where they need to be. “We’re very optimistic right now that we’re in a good spot. This year is a good year to try and save water, to try to conserve water as best as we can; we have a lot of space in our reservoirs.”

Overuse and climate change have led to vastly increased demand for water in the river. In 2023, federal and state officials must figure out a way to keep up to 4% of what the Colorado River states have used in the past.

If they don’t do that, the lakes will reach a dead pool in the next two years where the water level is too low to flow through the dams and downstream to the people and farmers that need it.

The talks were focused on achieving unprecedented water cuts in order to save the Colorado River which supplies water and electricity to more than 40 million people in the West.

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

Tom Buschatzke, the top Arizona water official, said everything was wiped out by Mother Nature when he tried to do something through the May 3 letter. We have to be aware that can happen to us again. It’s been happening to us almost every year for the past few years.”

The West is experiencing an increase in anxiety. Negotiations between the states on voluntary water cuts have been tense and closely watched, particularly between the Lower Basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada.

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. In November, the Biden administration pledged to spend millions of federal dollars to help restore California’s endangered Salton Sea – a key demand from the powerful Imperial Irrigation district in Southern California. With that funding, other states like Arizona are hoping Imperial and other California water users agree to put more cuts on the table.

If voluntary cuts don’t come close to what needs to be done the federal government will step in. That plan will almost certainly be challenged by a court.

Is the Colorado River Water Supply Going to End Soon? State Sensitivity to Climate Change and Climate Change Expert Tanya Trujillo

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.

High-elevation snowpack in the Sierra Nevada accounts for 30% of California’s fresh water supply in an average year, according to the California Department of Water Resources. After years of being at record lows, the state is seeing more than double what they normally see on April 1, when the state surveys the snowpack to forecast the year’s water resources.

Climate scientist with theNational Center for Atmospheric Research, Isla Simpson, said that it’s almost certain that climate change will make dry years worse.

Dry air can evaporate water from the soil. The Colorado River has a few things going for it, but one of them is the air sucks up water from what is left of it.

She said that there is a high chance that the lack of rain and low snowpack isn’t going away anytime soon. The jet stream, upper-level winds that carry storms around the globe, is likely to shift north through the winter because of La Nia. That means less rainfall for a region that desperately needs it.

New Year’s Eve Traffic Lights, Snow and Floods Reopened: California Highway Patrol and Sacramento Municipal Utility District Online Map Counts Multiple Storms

The California Department of Transportation said that dozens of drivers were taken to safety on New Year’s Eve after their cars spun out. The main route from the San Francisco Bay Area to the mountains reopened to passenger vehicles with chains early Sunday.

“The roads are extremely slick so we have to slow down and work together to keep I-80 open,” the California Highway Patrol said. Several other highways, including State Route 50, also reopened.

The Sierra locations above 5,000 feet received over 20 feet of snow Saturday and Sunday, with another round of light snow on the way.

In the state’s capital, at least 40,000 customers were still without power early Sunday, down from more than 150,000 a day earlier, according to a Sacramento Municipal Utility District online map.

The storms are referred to as “atmospheric rivers.” They’re a conveyor belt of water that comes from the warm waters of the Pacific Ocean. A similar storm unleashed rains, deadly floods, debris flows and hurricane-force winds, particularly in Northern California including the Bay Area, over the weekend.

Since October 1, the start of the water year, Los Angeles has received more than 24 inches of rain, which is nearly 200% of normal for the time period. In addition, San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, Stockton and Fresno have also all seen 150% to 200% of their normal rainfall since then.

Aerial video from CNN affiliate KCRA showed cars submerged past their doorhandles in flood waters from Highway 99 and the Dillard Street area. Dozens of people had been saved by Chris Schamber, the fire captain with the Cosumnes Fire Department.

The Sacramento Valley is set to see snow on Monday. A powerful storm system impacted by New Year’s Eve floods in Sacramento County, California

Spectators staked out their spots for the Rose Parade as the region dried out and no rain was forecast for Monday.

It was the first of several storms expected to roll across the state in the span of a week. Saturday’s system was warmer and wetter, while storms this week will be colder, said Hannah Chandler-Cooley, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Sacramento.

Though not forecast to be as potent as the atmospheric rivers of previous weeks, the system is expected to bring 1-3 inches of rain across the lower elevations and 2-4 inches across the foothills of Southern California through Thursday. Arizona could also see up to 3 inches of rainfall.

A powerful storm system that battered California on New Year’s Eve, bringing widespread flooding and power outages, is pushing into the Central US Monday, as more than 15 million people from the West Coast to Illinois are under winter weather alerts.

At least two people died in the storm, including one who was found dead inside a completely submerged vehicle Saturday in Sacramento County, and a 72-year-old man who died after being struck by a fallen tree at a Santa Cruz park, according to officials.

On Monday, snow is expected to fall across the Rockies, northern Plains, and eventually into parts of the Midwest where winter storm alerts are posted.

The regions of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana are at risk of severe storms on Monday. The storms will last through the night.

The Sacramento County area was particularly hard hit, with emergency crews spending the weekend rescuing multiple flood victims by boats and helicopter and responding to fallen trees and disabled vehicles in the flood waters, the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District said.

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.

West Coast Climate Precipitates for a Tropical Bomb Cyclone and Implications for the Future of the California Dry Dry Season

“It is expected that the flooding from the Cosumnes River and the Mokelumne River is moving southwest toward I-5 and could reach these areas in the middle of the night,” the agency tweeted.

The day before, rising flood waters forced evacuations in Wilton, California, as well as three communities near the city of Watsonville in Santa Cruz County.

Flooding from the Cosumnes River forced the closure of Highway 99 south of Elk Grove in Sacramento County, the California Department of Transportation tweeted. The website states that the corridor is one of the state’s important corridors.

The weather system is expected to bring light to moderate valley rain and mountain snow to the area Monday and Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service in Sacramento.

The number of storms that hit the West Coast has not been determined. But climate scientists have linked the climate crisis to an increase in the amount of moisture the atmosphere holds, meaning storms — such as hurricanes and atmospheric rivers that are impacting the West Coast now — will be able to bring more moisture inland than it would without climate change, which in turn leads to an increase in rainfall rates and flash flooding.

A series of fronts at the West Coast are likely to be caused by a so-called Bomb cyclone that will be over the Pacific Ocean. These fronts are being super-fueled with tropical moisture from a potent atmospheric river that stretches west to Hawaii.

The storm could cause widespread flooding, roads washed out, hillside collapsing, fallen trees, major power outage, and possibly loss of human life, according to the National Weather Service.

As wells run dry and reservoirs drain, Julie Kalansky, a climate scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, said these storms are desperately needed more than ever to alleviate the drought, despite the hazards they bring in some areas.

Climate change has doubled the risk of a mega flood occurring in California in the next four decades, according to a study authored by Swain.

Even though we haven’t seen the mega floods, we have definitely seen evidence of more extreme precipitation in the middle of a period that has otherwise been characterized by a pretty severe and persistent drought.

Heavy rain and mountain snow are predicted by the National Weather Service over the next week. A river storm in the Pacific is capable of dropping huge quantities of rain and snow.

State climatologist Michael Anderson told a news conference that the state was closely monitoring the incoming storm and three other systems farther out in the Pacific.

Getting the Water Rights Under the Law: Six States Proposed to Cut Subsequent Colorado River Water to Stop Collapse and Preserve Lake Mead and Powell

On Monday, six states – including lower basin states of Arizona and Nevada – released a letter and a proposed model for how much Colorado River water they could potentially cut to stave off a collapse and prevent the nation’s largest reservoirs, Lakes Mead and Powell, from hitting “dead pool,” when water levels will be too low to flow through the dams.

The maximum amount of basin-wide cuts the six states are proposing in their model is 3.1 million acre feet per year. If there are catastrophically low levels of water in the lake, it could kick in.

Imperial Irrigation District’s senior rights entitle it to use just over 3 million acre-feet of Colorado River water every year, the same amount of water as Arizona and Nevada’s entire allocations combined.

Six states are moving forward with an approach that doesn’t match the law, which is troubling. It is best to avoid litigation, but being placed into a situation where you have six states approaching things in this way raises the risk.

Negotiations and outside observers are expecting litigation this year that could end up at the Supreme Court because of state consensus proving difficult to reach and the pressure on the federal government to act.

“I don’t know if the Supreme Court would take it,” Wade Noble, a lawyer representing Yuma, Arizona, farmers and irrigation districts, told CNN. “I suspect everybody who has been lawyering up wants to make sure their legal team has Supreme Court experience. These are some of the issues that can get there.

The biggest issue in regards to water cuts is who is priority when there is a cut, and that’s why California and Arizona are at a stalemate.

There are things that people worked for over a century to protect, and they won’t be giving up that in the recent negotiations. “Doing away with the priority approach is not something that’s acceptable.”

“Decisions to cut back water deliveries below the Hoover Dam cannot wait for a complex water rights case to be litigated up through the Supreme Court. That can take years,” Hayes said. “Plus, no legal decision will solve the fundamental problem of insufficient water. It is necessary that reality be faced.

The California Department of Water Resources operates the State Water Project system, which includes Lake Oroville, and provides water to 29 public water agencies serving 27 million Californians and 750,000 acres of farmland.

State Water Project: An Incredible Improvement in the Reservoirs of Lake Oroville and San Luis in California from 2021 to 2023

There has been an incredible improvement at the reservoirs, which as of this week stood at 115% of the historical average for the date, jumping 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. By late January, the after images showed the bathtub ring was underwater once again.

The reservoir plunged to just 24% of total capacity in 2021. The intake pipes of the plant are located well below the water levels, which send water to the plant for power.

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.

According to the California Department of Water Resources, these reservoirs gained almost 10 million acre-feet of water from November 30, 2022, to February 28, 2023 – an improvement from 67% to 96% of normal and from 35% to 61% of capacity. Storage gains were made during March after recent storms. An Acre-foot is the amount of water that would fill an entire foot of water.

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. An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to one acre a foot deep — roughly 326,000 gallons.

Water Conservation in the Southwest: Expectations for the First Round of Voluntary Water Cuts in the United States and the Promise of Northern Arizona

The director of the Department of Water Resources was worried that the state wasn’t going to get any more rain and snow.

This is a traditional wet month which is actually starting off pretty dry and she pointed out that it’s expected to continue.

Kelly noted that while 10 feet of water “might not sound like a lot,” it would boost Lake Mead above the Tier 2 water cuts threshold, which went into effect in January. The Tier 2 shortage meant that Arizona, Nevada and Mexico had to reduce their Colorado River water usage, with Arizona facing the largest cuts – 592,000 acre-feet – or approximately 21% of the state’s yearly allotment of river water.

Climate change is transforming water systems around the world and making it more frequent and severe.

Stakeholders should be patient while the rest of the winter and spring precipitation is received, since officials from three lower basin states warned of any future Flaming Gorge releases that could help prop up Lake Powell.

Lake Powell was filled in the 1960s and has dropped more than 150 feet since 2000.

“We do need to see what the runoff is going to be; I’m hoping it’s going to be good,” said Arizona’s top water official Tom Buschatzke. Still, Buschatzke cautioned that hydrology can taper off in the spring; with the nation’s largest reservoirs so precipitously low, one year is not going to make enough of a difference.

“Even really good hydrology – if it tracks the way it’s been tracking – it’s going to buy us 6 months or a year at most,” he said. “It’s not going to stabilize the system in any meaningful way.”

After months of negotiations with farmers, tribes and cities, federal officials will soon announce the results of its first round of voluntary short-term water cuts in the Southwest.

Top officials at the Department of Interior and Reclamation recently told a group of Western senators that they expect to be able to save up to 10 feet of elevation in Lake Mead – or about 650,000 acre-feet of water. That water savings will cost about $250 million of the total $4 billion, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, who was in the meeting, told CNN.

The agreements to be signed for fallow fields have already been done, but the final amount of water savings in the overall deal with California farmers is still being negotiated.

Kelly said that more of the $4 billion fund would be used to go toward water savings and to help farmers with irrigation systems that use less water.

Kelly said that the amount of water that would be added to by different kinds of programs starts to add up. “One thing is clear. The amount of money put into the Inflation Reduction Act will be used to meet the immediate needs of the crisis.

Counting storm cycles in California: Brandon Mendonsa, an urban farmer, and a climate scientist from Alpaugh and Allensworth

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.

Brandon Mendonsa is a farmer in Tulare County. The water is not yet being done.

Heavy rain and snow this winter were so needed to replenish the state’s drained and debilitated supplies of water.

The number of storms in California this winter is unusual, says a climate scientist. “No matter how you slice it, no matter how you make these formal definitions, this is unusually many.”

He said that weak and moderate storms tend to bring beneficial precipitation to the state. The big rain and snow producers are the high-end atmospheric rivers, 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.

“We typically refer to these successive types of atmospheric rivers as ‘AR families,’” Hecht told CNN. The time we had around the New Year with nine kids, was more active than we typically see and it wasn’t every year that we see an AR family.

He stated that, as much as people feel like the winter has been relentless, they have gotten at least a weeklong break and multi-weeklong breaks in between. “Had we had this winter and everything that happened back-to-back without any breaks during the storm cycles at all, the level of flooding and the level of damage in California would be dramatically higher.”

The California Atmospheric River Wrought Climate: Predictions for the Highest Snowfall Rate Since 1952, and Implications for Water Supply and Demand

The Southern Sierra now stands at 283% of normal and has never been higher since official record-keeping 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.

Meanwhile, the Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab near Tahoe reported Monday that it has received 677 inches of snow this winter, which is second only to the winter of 1952, when 812 inches fell.

The acres of land that have been taken over by agriculture will decline in California due to improved water allocations. The land devoted to rice production in the Central Valley decreased last year from 517,000 acres to 256,000 acres.

In areas where levee breaches caused extensive flooding, the gains may be partially offset. “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 winter precipitation will hopefully help the state’s lakes in the short-term, which have been running at critically low levels for years.

The end-of-February storage in the state’s 154 primary state lakes is essentially normal, but storage will not include the amazing snowpack that will melt in the coming months.

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California in Los Angeles, previously told CNN that even with a huge winter like this, it won’t ultimately solve the groundwater problem. They expect the West to see drought conditions return because of climate change, but also because there is too much demand.

Because of the supply and demand problem, this isn’t nearly enough. We still got a lot of straws in the ground,” Swain said. It would take multiple years like this in a row for the needle to be moved on the aquifers.

Data from the US Geological Survey shows that there are almost 200 monitoring sites in California which show a variety of conditions from complete recovery to partial recovery of the ground water.

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

Climate Management in the Wet Seasons of California: How Well Can We Adapt to the Fluctuations in the Bay Area?

“We have to let our rivers flow differently, and let the rivers flood a little more and recharge our groundwater in wet seasons,” Peter Gleick, a climate scientist and co-founder of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, previously told CNN. “Instead of thinking we can control all floods, we have to learn to live with them.”

“Our model forecast information that we have and the other climate indicators that we’re looking at, it does look like that will probably shut off as we go into our early part of April,” Gottschalck said. The normal weather for much of California goes towards zero quite quickly, so we think there’s a break.