Major Storm Eases Drought in California

Accuweather

By Anthony Sagliani, Meteorologist

January 30, 2014; 5:38 AM

 

As severe to extreme drought continues to grip much of California, the first significant storm since early December is bearing down upon the state.
A persistent ridge of high pressure that has been stationed over the western United States for the last several months has crumbled during the past couple of days.
This has allowed a storm track that had been sending storms into far northern Canada to dive southward, right into the Pacific Northwest and California.

While the widespread sunshine and warmth of the last few weeks may be over for now, the change in weather is marked by very beneficial, drought-easing rain and snow, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Elevations above 8,000 feet can expect snowfall amounts to exceed at least 2 feet through Friday evening. Winds will gust over 90 mph across the higher ridges.
Lower elevations, such as Lake Tahoe, can expect snowfall amounts to range from 6-12 inches through Friday.

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Driest California in 500 Years?

Yahoo News

By Kate Galbraith January 24, 2014 5:45 AM The Daily Beast

.

View gallery

Driest California in 500 Years?

SAN FRANCISCO—Weird things are happening in California. Bears, normally hibernating at this time of year, have climbed out of their caves to search for food. Some visitors to Tahoe are renting bikes, not skis.

As the East Coast digs out from its latest snow dump, Californians can only look on enviously. Here, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the state’s great water-supply source, stands at a scary 13 percent of normal. California suffered its driest year on record in 2013, but what’s yet to come is even more terrifying. Federal forecasters predict that the drought will continue or intensify through at least April—by which time, the “rainy” season will be over.

The Golden State should probably be panicking more than it is. Reservoir levels are falling, but only a few cities, including Sacramento and the Sonoma County town of Healdsburg, have mandated water-use reductions. Both have instituted cuts on the order of 20 percent for every household. Governor Jerry Brown has asked everyone to make voluntary cuts, but as drought-stricken Midland, Texas, learned a few years ago, voluntary never quite does it. (An only-in-California water-saving tip I’ve seen: go around in the buff, to save on the need to wash clothes.)

The problem is a huge atmospheric ridge of high-pressure that’s been hovering off the coast for an unprecedented 13 months. Storms can’t break through, so they go around and over it. The really worrying part, as the Christian Science Monitor explained this week, is that the longer the ridge hangs around, the sturdier it gets. Nobody knows when it will disband. (And no, we also don’t yet know if all this is linked to climate change, but California will doubtless be glad to trumpet a connection.)

“This could potentially be the driest water year in 500 years,” says B. Lynn Ingram, a University of California at Berkeley paleoclimatologist.

Assuming the drought continues, it’s going to have huge and complex effects. Among them:

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Space weather balloon launched Jan. 8th by the students of Earth to Sky Calculus has been recovered from its landing site in Death Valley National Park

Spaceweather.com

SPACE WEATHER BALLOON UPDATE: 
 
by Dr. Tony Phillips.


The payload of a space weather balloon launched Jan. 8th by the students of Earth to Sky Calculus has been recovered from its landing site in Death Valley National Park. The purpose of the flight was to study a solar radiation storm in progress at the time of the launch. Analyzing the data may take a few days. Meanwhile, here is the view from the stratosphere:

These pictures were taken by a pair of Hero3+ cameras looking out of the payload capsule. The upper frame shows the Sierra Nevada mountain range, unusually brown for this time of year as California endures a historic drought. The lower frame captures the balloon popping at an altitude of approximately 100,000 feet. Click on each frame for a closer look. The landscape shot was made using the Hero3+'s new "superview mode"--a favorite of snowboarders and now, for the first time, balloonists!

In addition to cameras, the payload contained an x-ray/gamma-ray dosimeter, a GPS altimeter, and a cryogenic thermometer. Together these instruments can form a complete thermal and radiation profile of the atmosphere throughout the flight. The students plan to pay special attention to data collected at aviation altitudes to learn how much radiation air travelers absorb during periods of high solar activity.

Officials Search For Plan As California Reservoirs Drop Below Half Capacity

By Ari Phillips on October 31, 2013 at 10:08 am

A Sierra Nevada reservoir.

CREDIT: Shutterstock: Katarish

California is known for its massive water infrastructure in which northern reservoirs, which fill up from the Sierra Nevada snowpack, supply the populous southern and coastal regions of the state. However going into a third year of dry winter conditions, many of these northern man-made oases are at precariously low levels, hovering between one-third and one-half capacity, far less than the average for October.
More than 20 million Californians and many farmers in the state’s crop-intensive Central Valley depend on northern reservoirs for their water.
“Both the State Water Project and federal Central Valley Project heavily depend on the Sierra Nevada snowpack,” Mark Cowin, director of the state Department of Water Resources, told The Fresno Bee. “We are now facing real trouble if 2014 is dry.”
Cowin said that dwindling reservoirs should be a wake-up call to Californians, and indicate that it’s time to prepare for additional water-conservation measures.
Pete Lucero of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, owner of the Central Valley Project, told the Fresno Bee that January through May 2013 were California’s driest in about 90 years of recordkeeping.
Currently the San Luis Reservoir, which gets water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, is only 22 percent of its historical average for this time of year.
At a recent workshop that brought together leaders to hear about California’s water challenges, Cowin said that decades of disagreement among environmentalists, farmers, water agencies, and other interests in various parts of California has “resulted in gridlock.” And that with “environmental laws, climate change, and population growth intensifying the conflict, there’s simply no time to waste.”

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Yosemite's largest ice mass is melting fast

Los Angeles Times

Lyell Glacier has shrunk 62% over the past century and hasn't moved in years. It's a key source of water in the park, and scientists say it will be gone in 20 years.

The photo on the left of Lyell Glacier in Yosemite National Park was taken by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1883; the one on the right was taken by park geologist Greg Stock in late September. (U.S. Geological Survey; Greg Stock)

By Louis Sahagun

October 1, 2013, 9:12 p.m.

Climate change is taking a visible toll on Yosemite National Park, where the largest ice mass in the park is in a death spiral, geologists say.
During an annual trek to the glacier deep in Yosemite's backcountry last month, Greg Stock, the park's first full-time geologist, found that Lyell Glacier had shrunk visibly since his visit last year, continuing a trend that began more than a century ago.
Lyell has dropped 62% of its mass and lost 120 vertical feet of ice over the last 100 years. "We give it 20 years or so of existence — then it'll vanish, leaving behind rocky debris," Stock said.
The Sierra Nevada Mountains have roughly 100 remaining glaciers, two of them in Yosemite. The shrinkage of glaciers across the Sierra is also occurring around the world. Great ice sheets are dwindling, prompting concerns about what happens next to surrounding ecological systems after perennial rivulets of melted ice disappear.
"We've looked at glaciers in California, Colorado, Wyoming, Washington and elsewhere, and they're all thinning because of warming temperatures and less precipitation," said Andrew Fountain, professor of geology and geography at Portland State University in Oregon. "This is the beginning of the end of these things."


Read More Here

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