Tag: drought
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Not dry, but drought remains an issue, mid-wet season 2026
By Jay Lund . . . People in and out of California love the attention that comes with declaring droughts and the end of droughts. Given the many types and locations of droughts in California, it is rare to have no drought anywhere in the state. Yet, for the last two weeks, the UC Drought…
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California’s Amazing Terminal Lakes
By Peter B. Moyle * This is a re-post of a blog originally published 11/26/2023. When Californians talk of lakes, they usually mean reservoirs, the 1500 or so artificial bodies of water behind dams. Alternately, they may be referring to the 4,000 or so natural lakes in the Sierra Nevada or to one of the…
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How’s California’s water year developing? – early February 2025
by Jay Lund The first four months of California’s water year, which started in October 2024, have been wildly variable over the months and in different parts of the state. Every year, we never know what to expect of California’s wet season until it ends, usually in late March or early April. This year is…
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California’s Amazing Terminal Lakes
By Peter B. Moyle When Californians talk of lakes, they usually mean reservoirs, the 1500 or so artificial bodies of water behind dams. Alternately, they may be referring to the 4,000 or so natural lakes in the Sierra Nevada or to one of the few large natural lakes in the state, such as Lake Tahoe…
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California Enacts Major Water Law Reform Legislation–But More Changes Are Needed
By Richard M. Frank Note: this blog is a cross-post first published on Legal Planet. The California Legislature has enacted and Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed into law SB 389, an important water law reform measure authored by State Senator Ben Allen. California has one of the most antiquated and outdated water rights systems of…
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The myth of normal river flow: Drought, floods, and management of California’s rivers
By Julie Zimmerman, Jennifer Carah, Kirk Klausmeyer, Bronwen Stanford, Monty Schmitt, Mia Van Docto, Mary Ann King, and Matt Clifford Is California still experiencing drought? Even after a winter of record rainfall and snowpack, followed by a tropical storm, this is still an important question. And if you read the headlines, the answer is…yes and…
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Evolution of Drought Response and Resilience in California’s Cities
By Erik Porse Drought is a regular event in California. In recent decades, California has experienced five prolonged drought periods (1976-77, 1987-1992, 2007-09, 2011-16, 2020-22). Urban water agencies have responded with investments in supply and demand management measures, which have made California’s cities more resilient to drought effects. What motivated these investments? Our current habits…
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This Drought is Dead – Long Live the Drought
by Jay Lund and Andrew L. Rypel Floods and droughts are not opposites and can occur simultaneously. This occurs often in California and is especially well-illustrated this year. Floods, droughts, and water scarcity are different. Floods are too much water at a place and time, and we would often pay to reduce the water present…
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Is the Drought Over? Reflections on California’s Recent Flood-Drought Combo
By Andrew L. Rypel, Jay Lund, and Carson Jeffres Early January was an unusually wild ride of atmospheric rivers. Nine sizable systems produced a train of storms beginning about New Years and lasting for several weeks across almost all of California. After three years of drought, the storms reminded us that California has flood problems…
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California’s continued drought
By Andrew L. Rypel As California’s drought deepens, it is worth checking in on the status of water supplies and what might be in store for the rest of the summer, and beyond. What started with the promise of a wet water year, ended up dry, again. In January, the 8-Station Index showed precipitation totals…
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Demystifying mist as a source of water supply
By Jay Lund (originally posted in 2015) In some of the world’s driest places, atmospheric moisture is a major source of water for native ecosystems. Some algae, plants and insects in the Israeli and Namibian deserts get much of their water from fog, dew and humidity. The spines of some cacti species have evolved to collect fog droplets.…
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Science of an underdog: the improbable comeback of spring-run Chinook salmon in the San Joaquin River
By Andrew L. Rypel, Gabriel Singer, and Nann A. Fangue “You can’t design a worse evolutionary strategy for the Anthropocene” There are many variants on this quote, and we’ve heard them often in reference to the status of native fishes in California and other freshwater organisms worldwide. Indeed, the statement rings true for Pacific salmon,…
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Can one atmospheric river end California’s drought?
By Andrew L. Rypel and Jay Lund Given the quantity and intensity of last week’s rain, an obvious question is: ‘Is the drought over?’ Alas, the answer is a resounding no. But, the data are interesting and worth thinking about in more detail. As of now, the 8 station index in the northern Sierra registers…
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Do largemouth bass like droughts?
By Andrew L. Rypel “The Delta is full of species that thrive in the lakes in southern Arkansas” ~Bill Bennett by Andrew Rypel As we rapidly enter another drought, long-standing questions on ecological impacts of increased temperatures, reduced water levels and flows re-emerge. This reality recently reminded me of some of my own previous work…
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New science or just spin: science charade in the Delta
By Karrigan Bork, Andrew L. Rypel, and Peter Moyle Science-based decision making is key to improved conservation management and a legal mandate in the US Endangered Species Act. Thus supporters of federal efforts to increase water exports from the Central Valley Project (CVP) and State Water Project (SWP) have claimed that these efforts are based…
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Jobs per drop irrigating California crops
By Josué Medellín-Azuara, Jay Lund and Richard Howitt Reposted from Apr 28, 2015 (an oldie, but goodie!) Some of the most popular drought stories lately have been on the amount of what water needed to produce food from California, as a consumer sees it — a single almond, a head of lettuce or a glass of wine.…
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The Earth is Falling! – Land Subsidence and Water Management in California
By Jay Lund, Thomas Harter, Rob Gailey, Rick Frank, and Graham Fogg Groundwater problems are mostly invisible. However, as California has come to rely more on groundwater during the drought, land subsidence from groundwater drawdown and accumulating overdraft has become a visible concern in some areas. Some of this subsidence has been dramatic. Almost 4…
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Watering up Halloween, California style
By Ghost Writer What better way to spook Californians this Halloween than to appear as a slobbering “Godzilla El Niño.” Or draped in a bedsheet as Godzilla’s opponent, “The Blob,” the amoeba-shaped patch of unusually warm Pacific water blocking storms in California. Too scary? Not to worry. Researchers at UC Davis’ Center for Watershed Sciences…
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Capturing El Niño for the underground
By Philip Bachand, Helen Dahlke, William Horwath, Thomas Harter and Toby O’Geen A much-anticipated “Godzilla” El Niño this winter may refill California’s drought-diminished reservoirs, but it won’t do much to restock the severely depleted aquifers we rely upon to get by during droughts. One reason for this is the sheer depth of California’s precipitation deficit…
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The banality of California’s ‘1,200-year’ drought
By Jay Lund California’s ongoing drought will continue to break records and grab headlines, but it is unlikely to be especially rare from a water policy and management perspective. Estimates of the current drought’s rarity range from once in 15 years to once in 1,200 years (Griffin and Anchukaitis 2014), depending on the region and…