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California WaterBlog

Tag: flood

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Not All Flood Maps are Created Equal

    By Indumati Roychowdhury, Kallee Bareket-Shavit, Ryan Miller, and Nicholas Pinter For assessing flood risk in California, not all flood maps are created equal. We compared FEMA’s flood maps to independent modeling, including climate-informed flood risk. This comparison illustrates very different pictures of flood risk, depending on the map used and how those maps were created,…

  • 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…

  • Risk Rating 2.0: A first look at FEMA’s new flood insurance system

    By Ryan Miller, Peter Hansen, and Nicholas Pinter Risk Rating 2.0 has been called the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA)’s most significant reform in 50 years.  Roughly 77% of customers of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) nationwide will see increases in their premiums, while the other ~23% will see reductions or no change.  FEMA…

  • 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…

  • Making every drop count in drought – and deluge

    By Joshua Viers and Graham Fogg A little publicized but highly curious part of the emergency drought legislation signed by Gov. Jerry Brown last month advances hundreds of millions of dollars to shore up and replace aging levees in flood prone areas of the state. Drought relief through better flood control? Really? As it turns…