The first day of spring will kick off with a weather pattern that feels a lot like this past winter. A Pineapple Express-fueled storm will make landfall along the Central Coast near Santa Barbara. And while the bulk of this storm will impact Southern California, its outer bands will reel in rounds of showers, gusty conditions and thunderstorms to parts of the Bay Area over the course of the day.
California state emergency officials are positioning crews across several counties to brace for more damaging floods as another atmospheric river is set to slam storm-fatigued California Tuesday, threatening to whip up hurricane force winds and deluge the state with more rain and snow.
“Now’s the time to make sure you and your family are prepared,” the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services tweeted Monday. “Gather supplies for a go-bag, prep for a power outage and if told by officials to evacuate, don’t wait!”
Attention has turned to the capacity of California's reservoirs after a series of recent storms have filled some lakes to the brim. California was hit by several atmospheric rivers over the winter, releasing a deluge of precipitation. Higher than normal rainfall has remedied much of California's years-long drought, but a flood risk has led to officials releasing water from several California reservoirs, a process depicted in several videos circulating on Twitter.
The massive amounts of rain and snow that have drowned California this month due to several atmospheric river storms have been captured in pictures taken from space.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite took false-color images of Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area on March 16 in both 2023 and 2022, showing the scale of rain and snow compared to this time last year.
The images show vegetation in light green, water cover in dark blue, and snow in light blue, highlighting how large the snowpack of the Sierra Nevadas is this year and flooded areas are in the wake of the stormy weather.
California has experienced an exceptionally wet winter with 11 atmospheric rivers battering the state since late December. A twelfth such storm is due to land on Tuesday, threatening to cause even more flooding, landslides and road closures.
Atmospheric rivers are vast airborne currents of dense moisture carried aloft for hundreds of miles from the Pacific and funneled over land to fall as bouts of heavy rain and snow. Here's what such storms mean for the near and long term.
WASHINGTON — Storm-ravaged Californians are still digging out from historic levels of snowfall and girding for more heavy rain this week. But Biden administration officials are looking ahead to a wildfire season that could bring more devastation once the state dries out.
Vice President Kamala Harris detailed $197 million in new federal grants on Monday to help fortify high-risk communities against wildfires.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — After weeks of rain and rising water levels throughout the region, trash and debris are being washed onto areas like Bannon Island in the delta area of Sacramento County. The River City Waterway Alliance, an organization that focuses on restoring and protecting Sacramento waterways, on Monday morning assessed and documented the debris while planning for future cleanup.
DWR will begin reducing releases from Lake Oroville to the Feather River this afternoon. Water outflows from the lake will be reduced to 27,500 cubic feet per second (cfs) by 6 p.m., with 16,500 cfs flowing through the low-flow channel within the City of Oroville.
The California Water Plan will hold a virtual public workshop over Zoom on March 29, 2023, from 1 - 4 p.m. The Water Plan Team will provide an in-depth overview of draft chapter content for Update 2023. The workshop will serve as a venue interested parties to provide input on the draft content and recommendations.
This online short course will review the fundamental principles of groundwater and watershed hydrology, water budgets, water quality, and water law and regulation in an intuitive, highly accessible fashion. Through real world examples, participants learn about the most common tools for measuring, monitoring, and assessing groundwater and surface water resources. We then review the key steps and elements of planning for groundwater sustainability and implementing projects and management actions.
Series: April 13, 20, May 4, 19, and June 1 | 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
This tour ventures through California’s Central Valley, known as the nation’s breadbasket thanks to an imported supply of surface water and local groundwater. The southern part of the vast region, the San Joaquin Valley, is the focus of this tour as it faces challenges after years of drought, dwindling water supplies, decreasing water quality and farmland conversion for urban growth.
This tour explores the heart of California water policy – the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay – to learn about the critical role the Delta plays in the state, Delta planning initiatives, water project operations, fish passage, ecosystem restoration, levees and flood management, Delta agriculture and water supply reliability.
Groundwater Resources Association of California - The popular Annual GSA Summit is getting revamped in collaboration with the ACWA Groundwater Committee and SGMA Implementation Subcommittee. This is a once-a-year get-together to foster progress on SGMA implementation, collaborating with ACWA members and implementers and GRA technical experts.
When: June 7 - 8, 2023 Where: Kimpton Sawyer Hotel in Sacramento
DWR is responsible for managing and protecting California’s water resources and works with others to benefit the State’s people and to protect, restore, and enhance the natural and human environments. DWR operates and maintains the State Water Project, oversees dam safety, provides flood protection, helps in emergency response, assists regional and local water agencies, promotes water conservation and safety, and plans integrated watershed management – in all to advance water resource sustainability.
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