Drought - Page 4

With three new storms hitting this week, the sections of California in severe drought have shrunk from 42.66 percent a year ago to just 2.13 percent on January 10.

California, and especially the state’s North Coast region, has experienced “the wettest winter” in decades, thanks to recent steady rains. Local weather has featured widespread flooding, power outages, high tides, falling trees, school closures and even a tornado.

California’s crippling five-year drought has come to a temporary halt in the northern part of the state, as roughly 350 billion gallons of water came pouring into the region’s biggest reservoirs over the past few days, boosting storage to levels not seen in years.

California is enduring what officials warn is the most powerful storm in a decade to hit Northern California, and what a member of an El Dorado County Sheriff’s representative said is inducing a “state of panic” among the public.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is retiring after 24 years in the U.S. Senate — and many in California’s Central Valley are glad to see her go. The liberal Democrat had a rocky relationship with the region over water issues, especially in the last few years.

It’s a White Christmas for California — at least in the mountains, where a slew of winter storms has left behind glittering drifts of beautiful snow just in time for the holiday.

At least one person has died and five others have been inured — including a 4-year-old little girl — after a eucalyptus tree came crashing down onto a wedding party in Whittier’s Penn Park around 4:30 p.m. on Saturday afternoon.

The Senate overcame a filibuster effort by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) to pass the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) early Saturday morning, bringing relief to farmers in the Central Valley — and potential lawsuits by environmental groups.

Outgoing Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is challenging fellow California Senator and liberal Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) over the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), which emerged from bipartisan compromise in both houses.

This weekend, heavy snowfall in the Sierras brought much-needed relief to the mountain range and helped provide ski resorts with a nice cushion as they open for the winter season.

President-elect Donald Trump has stated his commitment to helping California’s farmers attain more water, as the Golden State prepares to enter its historic sixth year of a crippling drought, with a federal water policy in place that favors fish over agriculture.

Results of a new U.S. Forest Service aerial survey revealed that, since 2010, more than 102 million trees have died in a 7.7 million acre swath of California forest land, and the culprit is drought.

A new proposal by the California Water Resources Control Board aims to double the amount of water that flows from the San Joaquin River to the delta and the sea, cutting back on allocations for farms and households to save fish.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump made a quiet, lightning-fast visit to California’s Central Valley on Tuesday, listening to local concerns about federal water policy, which continues to divert water from farms to an endangered fish.

A deer, which was apparently seeking refuge from California’s scorching summer heat, plunged into the pool at King Middle School in Berkeley as dozens of students were participating in swimming lessons.

The State of California has released a new plan to save the endangered Delta Smelt, including a proposal to flush up to 250,000 acre-feet of water from reservoirs into the Pacific Ocean in the summertime, despite ongoing drought.

A new study conducted by Stanford researchers suggests that California has groundwater resources “three time greater” than previously estimated.

Two fires broke out on Monday near Los Angeles in the midst of sweltering heat on the first day of summer, forcing local residents to evacuate and sending billowing clouds of grey smoke into the clear blue skies above the city.

Sacramento liberals have tried to starve agriculture during California’s ongoing drought through water restrictions. But farmers could increase production, while decreasing water usage by 25,000 gallons per acre, if they increase the concentration of organic matter in the soil by 1 percent.

Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump told an audience in Fresno on Friday: “There is no drought.”

California Gov. Jerry Brown issued an executive order Monday making some of the state’s temporary drought restrictions permanent.

With Northern California’s massive Shasta and Orville dams about to fill up for the first time in five years of drought, the state is about to lift mandatory statewide water conservation order for most cities and farms.

California doesn’t have a water crisis because of a drought or because of climate change. The state’s water crisis is the direct result of bad regulations, poor planning, and a generation of politicians unwilling to tackle California’s issues.

Farmers and water agencies who receive water from California’s State Water Project (SWP) will see deliveries increased to 60 percent this year, a sign that despite California’s continued record drought, the state’s most critical reservoirs have slowly returned to near-normal levels.

Donald Trump’s resounding, poll-beating victory in the New York primary sets a clear precedent for the California primary: he is going to compete in the rural areas that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has dominated in the caucus states thus far in 2016.

Nearly two in three Californians call the state’s current four-year drought “extremely serious,” and nearly nine in ten (86 percent) plan to permanently reduce the amount of water they use, even after the drought ends, according to a poll that came out Thursday.

On Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced that the federal Central Valley Project (CVP) would boost water deliveries to California farmers to five percent from the zero percent the CVP had allocated the past two years.

The water content of California’s Sierra Nevada snowpack — the source on roughly a third of the state’s annual potable water supply — measured 87 percent of average on Wednesday.

The Federal Bureau of Reclamation accelerated water releases from Lake Shasta earlier this month from 5,000 to 20,000 cubic feet per second over concerns that the reservoir could overflow, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) penned an open letter to President Obama on Thursday urging an increase in water pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to thirsty farms and communities in Southern California.

A Central Valley farmer with whom President Obama met and posed for photo-ops in 2014 is slamming the White House’s new water plan, saying he was misled about Obama’s intention to listen to farmers’ demands for water.

The Pacific El Niño is back with a vengeance — and with it, the hope that California can climb out of its devastating, four-year-long drought.

Operators began releasing water from Folsom Dam for the first time in four years after El Niño-fueled storms dropped billions of gallons of water into California’s largest reservoirs over the weekend.

The Independent reports:  The Middle East has just experienced its worst drought in more than 900 years, a Nasa report has found. Scientists said that a 15-year dry spell in the eastern Mediterranean, which ended in 2012 and is thought to be

BEVERLY HILLS — Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa spoke with Breitbart News on Wednesday about a possible gubernatorial run in 2018.

California had been hoping that by this time of year, rains from a record-strength Pacific El Niño would bolster state water supplies and help it recover from a devastating, four-year-long drought.